Roguelikes may have been enjoying his moment in the sun in recent years (ask Hades, our game of the year for 2020), but Everspace 2 shows that procedural generation is not the only way forward. The original Everspace is a cool space fighter, but the sequel has changed the course towards a more traditional action RPG style, and its series of missions in an open space region looks much more like Freelancer or Rebel Galaxy Outlaw as a result . But it maintains its free movement system, which makes its combat stand out in style from other space snipers. There is already a fair amount of it to explore on its initial access launch, and it keeps things interesting by mixing up some puzzles to end the flashy dogfights.
The story that is here is a very strong start: it takes our clone pilot from the first game, except with the interesting twist that this time we are in his last life: if he dies now, he is dead forever. So far, little has been said about the fact that the galaxy hates clones now and most of those who discover its true identity will avoid it, but it looks like a setting that can add something to your quest to make you a mercenary and escape from lawless region of space in which it is abandoned. Granted, the main character is a little on the tasteless side, as you might expect from a disposable clone – he only shows passion when he’s talking bad about ramen. However, his fellow characters – including the back AI companion – have a little more personality. Even the unique characters who give you side missions in spaceports have an above average flavor and voice acting. There are no opportunities to guide the story with dialogue, but at least it looks like you’re going to places that are somewhat intriguing.
First of all, Everspace 2 is about combat. Having recently played more traditional space fighter games, like Star Wars: Squadrons and Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, it was a minor struggle for me to get back to that particular rhythm of flying: instead of accelerating to advance at a constant speed, like an airplane, here your ship moves much more like a typical sniper character. If you are not pressing a button, you will stop (unless you disable the inertia buffers; in this case, you will continue to move, but will have to push to change direction). This Descent-style dog fight is a lot of fun when you get the hang of it and allows you to do a lot of machine gun maneuvers that you don’t see elsewhere. Somewhat unusual, Everspace 2 definitely looks a lot more suitable for mouse and keyboard controls than gamepads because of the number of inputs needed to make good use of it, but gamepad controls are certainly workable.
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Each weapon has an energy and kinetic damage rate, so fights are mainly to switch between them as needed to drop enemy shields or armor, spitting out an occasional guided missile, stupid rocket or mine as you go. You also have to manage your cooldowns effectively so that you can activate your ship’s special abilities at the right time to explode or incapacitate the most powerful enemies, or simply make a quick escape. There is a good variety here where you can change and customize your skills: one of the initial powers is an EMP explosion that deactivates all enemy ships around you for 10 seconds, allowing you to shoot the most dangerous ones for free, and I increased with a power-up that reduced its cooldown by two seconds for each enemy I killed during the effect. The other initiator is a prison-free card that propels your ship out of danger at high speed, allowing you to move on when things get tough; I increased this to go 80% faster, but for only half the time. You unlock more of these skills as you go, and I quickly learned that using them well is what allows you to survive fights against groups of high-level enemies.
Your final skill, however, is linked to your choice of ship, and there are now a handful available to buy after you accumulate some credits by flying with your initial fighter. Your initial ship fires an electric beam that chains other targets and can eliminate a group of fighters and their drone escorts at once, while the giant ship I upgraded to activate a tower that automatically fires at anything around you for 20 seconds as you continue to explode ahead. I was a little disappointed that the ship didn’t work significantly differently, but it gave me much stronger armor stats and allows you to carry more primary weapons, at the cost of slots of equipable consumable items (although this is quite pointless because you can pause and switch them at any time in the middle of the fight).The variety of enemies is not huge, but it is good enough to keep things from getting too repetitive: I knew I had to approach a fight differently when I saw a heavily armored enemy with the equivalent of a space rifle, or when I had to take out certain types of drones before they could entangle me or self-destruct up close. Large ships are rare in the first missions in history, but it is fun to dismantle their towers when they appear.
Then, of course, you collect the sweet, sweet sack from the aftermath of the satisfying explosion effects. There is a very good variety of pew-pew-pew lasers available, from fast-firing cannons that take a moment to rotate to sniper and shotgun shots, constant beams and more. All of them and unusual, rare and superior equipment come with some very useful bonus effects. Some of my highlights included a shield generator that emits a smaller EMP wave whenever the shield collapses, disabling anything around me long enough to lose a stalker; and a superior Gatling machine gun inflicted more damage when my ship was in the sunlight and even more when fighting enemies of a higher level than me. I also like the upgrade system that allows you to increase the level or rarity of a piece of equipment you want to insure, disassembling other pieces of the same rarity, although at this early stage the levels come and go fast enough to restrict the equipment to just an update makes its usefulness limited. Perhaps at the last levels it is more important to update incrementally, but there is still not enough content in Everspace 2 to take us this far.
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In addition to combat, the precise level of motion control allows Everspace 2 to do much more with the puzzles than you see on most space snipers. Many of your loot rewards are hidden behind obstacle courses and hidden in corners that an X-wing could not easily reach. You will be sent to do things like picking up key items and moving them into position to unlock containers and passages where you have to navigate your ship through tight spaces, rolling to fit through closed doors, all on a ticking clock. Some of these puzzle activities led to more downtime than I’d like, because your sensors are not especially long-range at first, so you have to navigate aimlessly in search of things to interact with, and sometimes areas are excessively dark and I had to use my weapons as sonar to see where the walls were. But it’s great to have something to do in a game like this besides shooting everything I see.Everything looks and sounds good, including the totally new planetary environments. The visual variety and attractive terrain details they add are impressive; when you’ve been looking into the void of space for a while, flying low in a canyon in bright sunlight is a very different look. This is not to say that spatial areas are visually monotonous – far from it. Everspace 2 does an excellent job of being beautiful, with colorful scenarios and atmospheric effects highlighting large asteroids and platforms in the distance to entice you to explore them, and you are sent to caves and huge shipwrecks regularly.
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What is shocking is the transition between zones. Getting in and out of a trip faster than light causes a brief loading screen – the kind of thing that most games today hide with a flashy animation effect. It is not a big deal, but I have noticed this every time; since No Man’s Sky managed to make a smooth transition between atmosphere and space and vice versa five years ago, these seams have become more difficult to ignore.
In total, it took me about 13 hours to burn the entire history of Everspace 2’s initial access, and this is taking into account frequent stops to accumulate XP and loot unexplored locations that popped up on my map as I strove between missions. It also comes to an abrupt end during what appears to be the start of a new mission, rather than a logical breakpoint. The other obvious sign that this is a work in progress – in addition to very occasional bugs and the watermark in the corner of the screen saying so – is that some of your storyboard-style scenes are placeholders that only provide the essence of stuff. to have the voice actors interpret them. And although the final screen prompted me to explore the remaining missions and side activities, I definitely lost a little motivation to look for a better loot after the plot was over and I only managed a few more hours.It is also when it becomes clear that Everspace 2 does not have much of a commodity market. Yes, you can buy and sell small quantities of things like liquor and ramen for different prices at different ports, but there is no system to control all of this, so establishing a trade route does not seem like a practical way to make money right now. Furthermore, you are never attacked in transit between ports, so even if you could do that, it would be an extremely tedious way to make a living.