A swashbuckling space adventure with plenty of depth under the hood - Everspace 2 quick review

PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Play it! Everspace 2 casts a wide net, fusing gear-based RPG loot with arcade-style six-degrees-of-freedom space shoot-em-ups like Descent, and it’s managed to hit almost all the sweet spots of its inspirations. The action takes place across an open-world starmap that’s constrained just enough to keep things from getting overwhelming, so if you’re a would-be starfighter who’s been put off by the complexity of more “serious” space games like Eve Online or Elite Dangerous, Everspace 2 is well worth your time.

TIME PLAYED

I’ve spent almost eight hours playing the release version of Everspace 2, after a couple hours last year with the initial Early Access build. During that time I’ve played through a decent chunk of the story, and I’m interested to see where it goes. It’s taken me through asteroid fields, into deep mining facilities, and through the wreckage of gigantic ruined capital ships. As I’ve made my way through the story, it’s been easy to pick up side missions or explore sites off the beaten trail, where there’s usually a gang of raiders ready for some dogfighting.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Easy to pick up and play. Everspace 2 doesn’t overwhelm with a vast array of commands for things like landing gear and weapon groups. This is a game about jumping into the cockpit, pulling cool maneuvers, and blowing up enemy starfighters, and it doesn’t waste any time getting into the action.

• Highly customizable. Everspace 2 works great on a standard gamepad, but it’s perfectly playable with keyboard and mouse or a more purpose-built joystick. There are plenty of additional settings for difficulty, whether you want a first-person cockpit view or a third-person chase cam, and the amounts of auto-aim and stability assist the game provides. Everspace 2 is first and foremost an arcade-style space shooter, but it’s totally possible to set it up to pull those quick drift turns that look so cool in Elite: Dangerous.

• Smart loot system. I’ve really enjoyed upgrading my ship (and acquiring new ones) in Everspace 2. Weapons systems, cargo holds, scanners, engines, and more can all be upgraded either by trading at spaceports or by crafting my own equipment once I’ve found the necessary blueprints. Here again, the game has managed to find a sweet spot. New components and gear show up at what feels like the “right” rate—not too fast, but not too slow. I’m never too far from a fight, so when I find a new flak cannon or laser battery, there’s always something to try it out against nearby.

• Exploring is fun. As I mentioned before, there are plenty of opportunities to veer off the main path during the Everspace 2 story. As I traveled the system using my jump drive, I frequently saw markers for unknown signals and distress calls pop up, and it was almost always worth dropping out of hyperspeed to investigate. These random encounters could be ambushes, rescue missions, or just straight-up fights with rowdy groups of pirates, and I’d usually leave with a shiny new component for my ship.

WHAT SUCKS

• A paint-by-numbers story...so far. Honestly, what’s keeping me interested in Everspace 2 so far is the combat and loot systems, not the narrative. It’s not that the story is bad, it’s just a fairly rote story in the opening chapters. Imagine the Eve Online tutorial spun out into an animated series on Netflix, and you’ve basically got the idea.

• Some control fussiness. I’ve had to fiddle a bit with the settings in order to get my Xbox controller to where I feel should be the “default”—the thumbstick dead zones were out of whack at first, and the game kept pulling input from my mouse and keyboard as a fallback, leading to on-screen button prompts shifting back and forth at the worst possible times. It’s not a big deal, but it’s a little annoying to have to tell a game that I don’t actually have four hands.

💬 Are you planning on strapping in for some old-school space dogfighting in Everspace 2? Or have you been following along in Early Access? Let me know with a comment below.