Everspace 2

Now that I've sunk over 36 hours into EVERSPACE™ 2, I'd like to share my thoughts.
The game runs very smoothly for me. No crashes, no wild bugs, nothing to spoil the fun. Technically, everything feels polished, which, sadly, isn't always a given these days.
The story is told in a pleasant way, often through images and dialogue, without constantly overwhelming you with text. You can tell that a lot of emphasis was placed on atmosphere. I often find myself wanting to do "just one more mission"—and then another two hours have vanished.
Resources are almost always scarce. If you want to craft and upgrade, you can't avoid gathering them. I've found that, whenever possible, I also buy certain materials from the shop to get upgrades faster. This doesn't feel unfair, but rather like a conscious choice between time and resources.
I really appreciate the little puzzles, like: Where's the battery to open a barrier or a container?
These moments are a welcome change from the mindless shooting and noticeably liven up the gameplay. You're not just flying from one fight to the next; you actually have to use your brain for a bit.
The ship battles are generally smooth and feel fast-paced. BUT: I'm over 50 now, and I'm finding that the keyboard isn't always as responsive as I'd like it to be in hectic situations. Deflecting missiles at the right moment, activating gadgets, or firing the shield generator just when the shield is completely down—it doesn't always work as smoothly for me as the game intends. Often, it ends up with me just firing at the enemies and praying I somehow survive the tough fights. It works surprisingly often… but not always.
What I personally miss a bit is something like a bar or a quiet meeting place where you can just relax for a while. A place that briefly gives you the feeling of not being constantly rushed from one goal to the next. That would really enhance the atmosphere and allow the game a few more tranquil moments.
The bottom line: EVERSPACE™ 2 is a lot of fun. The flying, combat, exploration, and short breaks for reflection blend together well. And most importantly: After all this time playing, I'm far from finished. There's still plenty to discover.
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Call me when both DLC's are bundled for like 15 bucks.
Until then, find an experienced story writer.
The gameplay is very! solid, just *please* pay an acutal writer with a story focus on world building.
It lessened the experience so much when cutscenes were like two thirds fluff and one third information.
Stop that. If you take control from me to show me something, make it poignant or make the characters consequential.
Thumbs up because thumbs down would be cruel.

It scratches the "Freelancer" itch, which in turn scratched the "Privateer" itch, which in turn scratched the original "Elite" itch... With that said you know 2 things: A) I am old... B) The game has a decent fun capable pedigree... I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

One of the best good looking/eye candy arcade space ship shooters overall. If you are a veteran of this genre (coming from 2000 era Freelancer/Starlancer like myself), you will love to try this one.

●Pros:
✓Wide galaxy to explore
✓Different classes of ships to play
✓Expansive storyline and plot
✓Multiple side quests, allowing you to side track when you want to.
✓Customizable ship appearance/skin as well as booster trails
✓Eye candy graphics, one of the best space ship simulators.
✓Underwater travel in planets (This is the only space sim I've found that implements this)
✓Puzzle solving and critical thinking involved, not just brain dead shoot2win.

●Cons:
✗Can be grindy, especially if you're trying higher levels of Lunacy Rifts - but you don't really need to grind it. You can decide where your endgame is.
✗No modding. Devs decide what content is released via DLCs
✗No multiplayer (strictly single player game), as the devs intended
✗Can't use bigger ships like battleships, as this game is focused purely on flexible combat ships (bombers, fighters and scouts).

Overall it's still a good game to try, especially if you need a break from other genres or just want to try a good space sim. There are other space sim games that offer you to field in or utilize battleships for large scale battles, but this game solely focuses more on the single player experience of plot and space exploration.

This game sat in my library for years unplayed. I decided one night to give it a shot and then found myself unable to stop playing.

Of all the games I have played for over 45 years, this one had the best soundtrack of all. That is really saying something. This soundtrack is simply phenomenal and matches the locations. The incidental dialogue was also fantastic. The developer has outdone themselves with this game and deserves ample praise.

Truly, this game was an unexpected gem. Most puzzles I enjoyed, especially the challenge of uncovering how to win and prevail.

I crashed a single time. There are only two criticisms I have of this game. First, the level cap was too low with DLC. It should have been at 40 or at least 35. Second, the racing for me was simply impossible. I felt so aggravated I just skipped that mission altogether.

This game is worth the money, as is Wrath of the Ancients. They deserve a lot of praise and I will buy other games they make if they are of similar quality. Truly an awesome title and you should buy it.

So needlessly complicated. Every item has stats, but also a level, but also a rarity level, but also an enhancement slot, and also sometimes it modifies both your regular ship stats like shield HP and your "ship character stats" which each also modify your ship stats. Then if you want to modify an item you can upgrade the level, or the rarity, or you can remove the entirely purposeless level restriction. But doing so requires no kidding five rows each with three to seven different types of resources. To make a gun pew-pew 10% better.
Voice acting is good, there's more story, the open-world map system works very well. They already developed a perfect system for the first game. I don't see why they felt the need to take a focused and logical item-combat system and turn it into a Byzantine hellscape.
Review update: after finding a play style I like a bit better (long-range sniper) I like the game a lot more. Still could do with about half the stats being eliminated.

This is a nostalgia filled review but not with a rose tinted glasses, why am I even telling you this, you'll understand after reading it.
This is NOT a space sim game, this game is more appropriately classified as an open world looter shooter game with spaceships as your controllable avatar, but having said that this game :
Is the closest thing to a 2020s made sequel to the 2003 Freelancer game, a game that regarded by many as a space sim game.
So, in this game you play as a pilot and you'll follow a rather by now the usual story driven space adventures that spans multiple star systems in which are explorable with your spaceship, and also including several planet based locations that are explorable. (This doesn't mean you can explore them on foot, everything in this game is being done with your ship or on occasional circumstances you'd control a space bot)
Now, aside from visitable planets the other difference from Freelancer is that in this game you'll find many environmental puzzles to unlock loot or progress through certain parts of the story and it's all solved with your spaceship hence why this game also in a lot of times feels like a contemporary action RPG, you solve those puzzles by grabbing things, placing things into specific places and sometimes rotating objects etc... and in many of the explorable places usually there are specific location challenges that you can solve to unlock the rewards.
Speaking of exploration, this game is like Freelancer where there are explorable sectors that you have to get to other star systems by the way of Gates also very much similar to the X series, and then in the systems itself you just have to use "jump drives" to explore the system and jumping in and out from and to the explorable spots, the main spots in the systems are ether static locations, but there are also randomly generated locations like in Elite Dangerous, usually contained random locations with space wrecks and mining opportunities, or distress call from random friendly needing your help, but can also be random enemy "bases" with enemy spaceships that you can try to destroy for the XP and loot.
Now talking about rewards, as I said the game can be described as a looter shooter game, because that's also true, and this has some similarities with some space sims in the past where you can loot stuffs from destroyed ships in space but in this game this aspect has been much more intensified to the point that it resembles Diablo kind of games where you practically has to hunt for better equipments (guns, engines, armors etc) for your ship by actively seeking combat in the hopes that your defeated enemies dropped something valuable and worthwhile...
Aside from looting you can also buy and sells them in certain space stations that you would encounter throughout the game, and in fact if you want to acquire new ships you practically has to buy them from select space stations where they would only has a few of randomized selections that you can buy amongst the broader list of buyable ships in the game.
Speaking of buying, in this game you can also do space trade like in many open world other spaceship games, you'd need to buy cheap and sell expensive from and to specific stations to generate profit or you can also acquire the goods from spaceships that you destroy but there's no any dynamics to the trading system unlike in say the X games or Elite Dangerous where supply and demands would react to your trading related actions (including disrupting other traders ships), AFAIK there's no such complexity in this game, the focus is more on the looter shooter RPG thing.
So now I'm going to talk about the other aspect of the looter shooter RPG thing in this game, where like Freelancer (if my memory isn't failing me), in this game you start from a level 1 rookie and climb it up in a very RPG system, by destroying enemies and completing missions, your spaceships get bonus whenever you (the pilot, the main character) level up but there are still like 8 levels of spaceships where the only way you can level up is by buying better level ships, and for that you need to grind a bit, the grind isn't really too bad though unlike in some of the other space games that I mentioned.
What's rather unlike in other space games is that in this game your ship equipments are transferable between all other ships that you acquire and they can also be levelled up, so your level one guns can be upgraded into level maximum, and this equipment levelling is following your main character levels, not the 8 levels of ships that I talked about...
And that is provided that you have the right materials to upgrade them, which brings me to the crafting system, which follows standard contemporary >2010s open world games where you gather stuffs to craft your equipments where equipments and materials have levels of rarity and yada yada etc, materials are gathered by the looting system or you can buy them from stations.
Another RPG aspect of the game is that ships can have special weapons (abilities) and special devices that sort of letting you cast RPG esque various time and refillable energy (just like mana system in traditional RPG) constrained "spells" be it like super boost, AoE EMP jamming etc... the special devices are transferable between your ships, but the super wrapons are tied to the type of the ships, in this game there are only 3 types (or classes) of ships, each one of them has specific super wrapons and whenever you buy them they'd also has randomized "perks" that is tied to that ship, so buying 2 exact type of a ship will still gets you different "perks" and for this one aspect you're at the mercy of the RNG.
In this game you'd meet "companions" that you only see in texts and limited hand drawn conic style cutscenes (on the plus side they're all voice acted) but the companions provide you with their unique perks where you have to provide them with materials to unlock the benefits for you, further gamefying those type of "interaction" that's usually absent in space games.
I haven't finished any of the main storylines at the time of this review but so far it has been serviceable, the main story related gameplay has some variations in them in line with the location based puzzles and challenges that I mentioned previously, so it has more variability than the older games like Freelancer, the story itself is nothing to really write home about at this point of video gaming history.
Now, this game supports practically every controller hardware that usually being used to play space sims, including HOTAS and HOSAS controller system or even comboing a stuck on one hand and a mouse (or a keyboard for that matter) on the other hand... I tried to use my HOTAS for this game but I quickly conclude that while it's doable, I don't think the control system fit such config, some people said that the HOSAS is much better fit but I disagree, mainly on the basis that the game is too fast paced to be used with most modern higher end HOTAS/SAS hardware, you can do that, especially given the game also has options for auto aiming regardless of the controller, but still I feel in a game this fast paced using such expensive controller would only causing more wear and tear to them at no benefits for gameplay or immersion.
A cheap console controller is preferable IMP for this game, but even that in the default keybindings is quite limiting and has some problems (the default spaceship roll system is one of the problem with the keybinding, but I also saw that they have some preset that you can choose), long story short I conclude the game is best controlled with a mouse and keyboard control setup.
Visually the game is nice, it was using Unreal 4 which has been upgraded into Unreal 5 with modern bells and whistles including DLSS4, you can also choose to use software Lumen to enhance the Global Illumination effect on this game but as with many other games using Unreal 5 it would cost your frames.