Everspace 2

Everspace 2 (or EVERSPACE 2 as it's stylized) was on my list of most anticipated game releases of this year. I loved the first game: space combat is not a genre I usually play nor like but Everspace was a big exception. And so I hoped this second one would be more of that. Many rejoiced when Rockfish Games decided to abandon the roguelike structure of the first game and make this sequel to have more usual, static locations. I wasn't so sure that would be for the better, and as it turned out, it and other design decisions resulted in Everspace 2 being a stretched and tedious, 100-hour treasure hunt for a completionist like me.

Too much Freelancer in this Everspace

In Everspace 2, you continue playing as the clone pilot Adam Roslin from the first game. There are no more clones to respawn as and Adam is keeping low profile, freelancing in Cluster 34's Demilitarized Zone. Eventually his adventures get him involved in preventing another war with the Okkar. Cutscenes are again in the low budget and unengaging comic book slide style. In general, story and dialogue are not the highlights of the game.

The fun core gameplay, the arcade space shooter experience, is still there in this one. It's just divided between constant puzzles, finding secrets, and travel time. I was appalled when I learned how long it takes to travel between locations. It was like Mass Effect Andromeda all over again. Eventually, by completing a planetary system's respective challenge -- which involves practically visiting most of the system's locations -- you do get a fast forward button to considerably shorten the waste of time.

It's such an unfortunate direction Rockfish took Everspace. The first game was such a tight package. You always kept moving forward and the chasing fleet stopped you from hanging around in a system long enough to get bored. Side quests continued seamlessly on your following runs, new clones picking up where previous ones left. There was no backtracking.

Most of Everspace 2's randomly generated content -- such as investigating unknown signals or taking jobs -- can be fun the first time you do a particular event. But already on the second time each of them feels repetitive, especially if it's a job that requires traveling first (and then back again possibly). One type of repeatable content that retains its entertainment value are high risk areas whose coordinates you can find as random loot or buy from a black market vendor. In these HRAs, you fight waves of enemies until a boss ship jumps in. Destroying it gives you a bunch of loot which feels rewarding. The HRAs have random modifiers that usually make the encounters more difficult and increase the quality of the loot dropped at the end.

Collect-a-thon nobody(?) asked for

I think I've in the past noted the difficulty of finding hidden things in a 3D space. Everspace 2 raises that onto a new level of exasperation because you can move in any direction. There's no up nor down; hidden loot chests can be absolutely anywhere. The majority of them are in obvious places but finding everything is often a struggle. The game acknowledges you having found every secret in a location and rewards you with an achievement for clearing every single location. The game is probably more enjoyable if you can avoid chasing that 100%-clear satisfaction dragon. I did feel pretty satisfied when the achievement popped up but this time the journey there was unusually bothersome. I resorted to using a guide a few times when the frustration grew unbearable.

There's some in-game benefit for finding every chest because you do get loot to sell for credits or to break down into crafting components. Boxes rarely contain the best stuff though: I think the most valuable thing you can usually find are the HRA coordinates that will then reward you with a lot of higher quality stuff at once when completed. You also need to keep upgrading your ship's weapons and modules to keep up with scaling enemy levels.

Mechanically too shallow for its length

The experience system feels thin; another tacked on element to stretch out the experience. You get a perk only every five levels until the current maximum level of 30. The in-between levels just give a general boost to your stats. The perks don't feel particularly exciting either, not really affecting your playstyle while still getting levels.

Everspace 2's itemization is surprisingly limited and lacks variation. It was barely an inconvenience to find weapons and modules with the exact same affixes at every level -- which resulted in very little experimentation once I discovered the Umbra-blaster - Penumbra-flak Eclipse weapon set pair. Their set bonus is +30% damage for 5 seconds after rotating main weapons: practically a permanent buff for little effort. I don't know how that bonus compares to other weapons but other than the outlaw set, there seemed to be no others. To my disappointment, my favorite weapon in the first game, the beam laser, had been practically reduced to the go-to mining tool. It didn't feel as effective against enemies.

The game is very restrictive with its legendary items that are actually exciting pieces of loot that you could use to support a build. Before finishing the story, there are only 3 legendaries to find -- as quest rewards. And of those you can only equip one at a time until you get a rank IV ship (which are very expensive) that can equip whole two legendary modules at once. After beating the story, you unlock Nightmare difficulty on which tougher enemies can randomly drop legendaries.

Fun when focused on its core

You can then also start running ancient rifts which are like HRAs but you get to pick between phases which modifiers to add to the run. Rift difficulty is determined by lunacy level chosen at the start: the higher lunacy, the higher chance to get a legendary drop at the end. 500 lunacy guarantees a legendary but you can go up to 1000. Like the HRAs, I found the rifts to be a fun activity. It's like the game finally became fun once all the annoying nonsense had been done.

Even though playing just on game pass, I decided to go for all achievements for a change, which required completing a 500-lunacy rift. I jumped right into one and discovered it to be a bit too difficult for the current little-thought setup I had. I lowered the lunacy and started working my way up. Lunacy 300 I could still beat but at 350 I would at some point just suddenly explode from full shields, armor, and hull.

While it's no doubt possible to beat it with the Sentinel ship class I had been using since the start, I ended up buying another rank IV ship, a Stinger, to follow a guide by Steam user aByZMal. I already had most of the build's key components, so it didn't take particular effort to "respec". While the build was an improvement in many aspects, I particularly liked how it restored shields when using Teleporter. Shields depleted? Spam Teleport 4 times to get them back. To help me on my 500-lunacy run I had the legendary modules Thundercore (shocks the targets you EMP) and Wrath of the Fallen cargo unit (40% chance to have destroyed enemies to fight on your side for 10s).

In addition to No Asteroid Unturned and Legendary Lunatic, the achievement to complete the trio I considered the most difficult was Ludicrous Speed! that requires beating each of the game's races at platinum rank. It's kind of perfidious that the first race you get access to in Everspace 2 is arguably its most difficult one. Even bronze rank at it (which is required in each race to complete the whole race side mission) is very challenging with the starting Sentinel ship you're likely flying at that point. The crushing feeling of it reminded me of that time I tried the first air race in Just Cause 2.

To be able to get platinum rank in the races you need a faster ship. The Vanguard rank IV is the fastest of them and with few speed and handling increasing modules -- and a handful of mouse sensitivity/deadzone adjustments -- I was able to get platinum in every race. The longer ones are the easier races while the shorter ones offer very little leeway for mistakes.

Beauteous as ever

Everspace 2 is even prettier than the first game. It runs similarly on Unreal Engine 4 but the previous recommended system requirements had basically become the new minimum ones. Despite that, Everspace 2 defaulted to maximum settings for me and even ran almost at 60 FPS on them. The game was initially very unstable for me, however, crashing fairly frequently in combat. I couldn't get past the main mission in Avonrest until I stopped using flak -- I had seen a mention of the weapon being the possible culprit.

Rockfish has later confirmed that there indeed was, for some unknown reason, a rare crash caused by flak when combined with old hardware and Effects setting on Epic. I discovered the latter part myself: the crashes stopped with Effects on High. I had already beaten the game when the patch to fix that was released -- the game pass version also seemed to drag one version behind Steam.

Other technical problems I had included unplayable framerate in Gilbert Naval Base and the two locations next to the exploding Khione star. Even minimum settings only helped the tiniest bit. That problem may have been fixed now too. One final issue I discovered when trying to stop the crashes: Shadows setting on anything but Epic made fog/nebulas flicker. That was fixed by some patch and/or because I updated my GPU's drivers. I feel that has something to do with Unreal Engine because Mortal Shell's fog was affected by the Shadows setting too.

But beautiful Everspace 2 is. I particularly loved the engine emission colors. I have recently in few different projects tried to mix about all the colors this game uses in the emissions and for some stars/nebulas. They're so very delightful.

The music of Everspace 2 I didn't like. It's similar to that of the first game -- I even took the effort check -- but for whatever reason it didn't work so well this time. Maybe it's because the soundtrack gets old due to the longer playtime or maybe it just wasn't to my liking.

Edited 2023-06-05: Fixed some minor errors in the text.
Edited 2024-05-01: Fixed typos and grammar.