EVERSPACE

Fun arcade-y style roguelite space ship game. This is what I thought Elite Dangerous might be, but that game requires too much "technical" knowledge of the game and ship for it to be enjoyable to me. This game I can hop-in, play for a few hours, step away for awhile, and be able to jump right back in when I'm ready.

Game definitely worth taking a flyer on for a buck fifty... the whole galaxy is your shooting gallery!

~ I started with the Encounters DLC so I'm not really sure what's base game or not, but the DLC is definitely worth buying for all the extra stuff ~

Something that always seemed to be missing in the 6DoF genre was large, open space maps with a few bits of terrain to hide behind, in contrast to all the cramped tunnel mazes. This game does exactly that with giant, often gorgeous and somewhat-randomly generated asteroid fields dotted by wrecks and junk. Even after seeing hundreds of the huge areas, I was only sometimes noticing repeat structures.

Perhaps as a necessary element for an open field game where enemies can shoot you from anywhere, they've leaned into being a deadly roguelite action experience. In this sci-fi setting full of alien races and robots, you have “infinite” lives and just as many single-fighter ships. You can buy permanent perks after each run, but anything not spent is lost.

Each run starts relatively easy but soon there'll be mines around things you want, tougher foes like giant ships and weird space creature, and menacing natural hazards from black holes and solar storms. Luckily there's a lot of friendly NPCs to meet along the way, starting with the local neutral mining corporation that offers trading and will fight anyone, and later a colorful cast of weirdos who give you missions and can start jumping in to fight alongside you.

There's four ships to choose from: the basic all-rounder Interceptor, the speedy Scout which can get a better sensor range and jump faster, the tanky Gunship that can install turrets and improve drones, and the smart Sentinel that can hack faster and install more mods. Additionally, the four ships each have up to three starting loadouts, and can be further improved from the start by finding powerful enhancements to install or with perks to grant extra equipment.

Primary weapons come in a nice variety for different styles of play. You might have one with strong hull damage and another with strong shield damage where you switch back and forth as needed, while other weapons do both types well enough and hit instantly. There are extremely strong short range weapons for those who get good at dodging or have a strong shield, the heat-seeking weapons and shotguns are fun to use but ineffective, the super long range rifle requires some skill but can take out enemies before they know you're there, and a few have area splash which works great on foes flying in tight formation. They all use energy to fire and can be strengthened in a number of ways.

Secondary weapons range from the basic auto-guided missiles and strong dumb bombs to the beautiful missile spam battery and giant electric storm. The one I used most was the shield-ignoring corrosion missile because it could kill almost any small shield-reliant ship with one hit.

Next there's a large variety of fun tech, which is the third-most energy cost beyond primary weapons and boosting. These include shields which either have more hitpoints or return faster after being destroyed, EMPs which temporarily disable foes, big explosions with damage based on your energy, turning enemies into allies, electric storm machines, devices that slow down time, short-range teleportation, invisibility and much more, though many are restricted to certain ships.

Lastly, you can also pick up or create consumable items, such as boosters, drones, overrides, quick jumps, nanomachines and the (somewhat useless) mines. As is common with videogame potions, they can be easy to forget or you might save them too long, but like everything else, they can be crafted from basic ingredients found in the field. The crafting system is quick and easy to use, with the only restrictions being your inventory and having the recipe.

This is the kind of game where your knowledge is a big part of how far you go. You need to learn which weapons and devices are actually good, you need to prepare for future threats, and you'll discover how close you can get to black holes. If you shoot an item box on a station's landing deck, they'll turn hostile and try to kill you because you were supposed to know that wasn't yours.

All of this takes place in a decently interesting political situation. Two space empires were fighting but then signed a truce and created a demilitarized zone which became a haven for outlaw pirates raiding the area's giant mining company. You were a scientist for one of the empires and now you need to cross the zone while being chased by outlaws, the mining company if you attack them, and of course the other empire because you're not supposed to be there.

The sci-fi writing is excellent; the tech feels fully thought-out and used well, and there's a bunch of good arms manufacturer lore entries in the codex. Unfortunately, the writing for scenes and dialogue tends to be really awkward or stilted. Certain final scenes just kill off characters without warning. Only the main voice actors sound like they know what they're doing and at a B-movie sort of level, while everyone else feels like the team pulled in a rando who tried to sound dramatic.

Buying upgrades after a run is a great reward at first, but starts to feel like doing taxes if you want to use every last hundred credits. Your choices are to throw away money or do math every time. And each run can be a serious time commitment, anywhere from 2 to 4 hours if you search every field for the things you need to survive later, though you can save and quit at any time and continuing brings you back to the start of the field so you never lose more than ten minutes or so of progress.

Combat is very fun when you get used to the speed and create a good build, but you might want to start at the easier difficulties and work you way up to harder challenges. Restarting a map if my emergency shield activated was how I first reached the ending, and certain enhancements helped a lot afterwards. Every enemy will lock on, thus the most important thing to learn is dodging, which is moving in a spiral pattern so shots from ahead or behind will arrive where you were.

Lastly and perhaps least importantly, there's an option in the main menu to play hardcore mode, which is extremely hard to the point of being unfun. First they make you buy your perks again and not having enough core energy is a common cause of death, then they add a further rough downgrade between each of the 7 sectors such as disabling secondary weapons or breaking your engine.

But overall, the main game is fun across 50 or more hours and well worth trying, especially for 6DoF enthusiasts and anyone who likes space shooters.

This game really surprised me! The first time I tried it so long ago, I didn't get far before dropping it. Recently though, I came back to give this another shot after playing Everspace 2. For some reason, the gameplay just clicked for me now and I really started enjoying myself! In particular, I found myself admiring the purity and more action-focused nature of this game's design over the more overstuffed and underfocused sequel!
PROS
+Roguelite structure makes it a pure action experience with no fluff that makes you want to use all your resources cleverly to win due to the pressure of losing it all
+Unlike most rogue games, there's enough of a narrative to justify the looping roguelite structure and give the game a greater sense of purpose and motivation
+3 ship archetypes to pick from and lots of equipment/enhancements adds some decent variety and builds to play with to suit your playstyle and keep things fresh
+Crafting systems helps fight against randomness: if you don't get the weapon you like, just craft it
+Nice sense of progression both in terms of statistical power and player proficiency: I really felt like I was getting skilled and loved pulling off tricks like using debris as tactical cover
CONS
-Despite the inclusion of a narrative, the roguelite looping structure can inevitably make the gameplay feel rather purposeless: just feels so futile to lose it all, start over and go through the same build-up over and over
-Metaprogression can feel like an unnecessary hurdle: having to go through a bunch of sacrificial/unwinnable runs until you get enough upgrades and blueprints for it to feel fair. Also most of the metaprogression are statistical upgrades which you barely notice.
-While I understand the reason, it can feel annoying to have the energy bar shared with so many systems, especially boost, since it makes you feel forced to move around slowly when you're trying to get to places so you don't get caught with your pants down (the sequel fixed this)
-Randomness can make some runs just feel screwed over despite player skill and crafting

A very different game from EVERSPACE 2. You get one life and your simple goal is survival as you navigate from one area to the next. Quite challenging. You'll lose your ship easily in the beginning, but start to hold your own gradually after a run or two as you add capabilities to both your ship and pilot (the only perks that stay with you each time you attempt a run). Be sure to always search for fuel and don't make my repeated mistake of getting sucked into a black hole. 7/10.

Its strange to me that the ratings for this game have gone from very positive to mostly positive over the years and mixed recent reviews despite the game not changing at all. It seems that people may be judging this game through a different lens now but I do not know what that would be. Regardless while this game isn't perfect its a beautifully crafted fun little arcade space rogue-like. The game play is great and perfect for sitting down and going through a few sectors for short sessions, upgrading your ship and unlocking new load outs and abilities in subsequent runs. Something I noticed playing this vs other rogue-likes is I never really get upset when I die in this one, it always feels deserved. Whether I took on an Okkar Corvette thinking I was stronger than I was or I stumble upon an ancient alien being that zaps me from existence because I got too curious, its all part of the experience and you spend your credits upgrading one of the 4 unique ships and start again to stumble upon new things. There's definitely some FTL inspiration here but its not nearly as punishing (not to say this game can't be pretty challenging). If you don't like rogue like games this will not be for you. But if you want a time killer that will immerse you and take you on some great adventures then this is definitely worth a meager $20. As a side note the $10 DLC is highly recommended and adds even more replayability although it definitely could've been a free update.
EDIT: Just in case my hours seem strange compared to the stance im taking, I spent dozens of hours in Everspace on PS4.

This game plays pretty well on a keyboard with a mouse. I haven't tried a touch-pad but I'm guessing a mouse is the way to go. I started by playing this with a game controller instead, and everything seemed to play much worse. But I can't be sure it wasn't just because I was a complete newb - I was dying so much and really not having any fun. After switching to the keyboard/mouse it started to get fun and I can see why the game is popular. It also didn't hurt reading a "things I wish I had known when I started playing" guide too.
This reminds me a LOT of the dogfights in X3! This is a "concentrate on dogfights and leveling up your ship" game loop. I might write more later, but I imagine because the game has been around since 2017 I won't have much to say that hasn't been said already in other reviews. Hint: If you like dogfights you'll have fun playing this!
Stuff that doesn't sit well with me:
Remember I mentioned X3? What this game refuses to do, sort of, is let me choose when to do upgrades. In other space games if I earn enough money to upgrade my ship, I won't waste another minute trying fight, and will go and do upgrades. But the point of Everspace is to be an **arcade game, not a simulation game**. So if I want to immediately go upgrade my ship, I have commit suicide in order to go back to where I can do ship upgrades. That's a bit immersion-breaking. Sort of a fundamental game-loop thing which is why I avoided Everspace for so many years and only bought it at a steep discount.