izigame.me

Everspace 2 feels like a love letter to the old Wing Commander series of games but with a relatively interesting but unintrusive storyline that gives you that Skyrim vibe in that you can ignore it for as long as you want while you gallivant about and do a billion side missions to level and gear up before eventually wandering back to check in on the story. Mix all that in with the sensibilities of a modern looter shooter and Bob's your uncle, you've got yourself some hot Everspace 2 action.

I've read other reviews that say the main campaign is relatively short, and I can't speak to that as I have had an absolute blast exploring all the nooks and crannies of the game so far and am still in only the second of seven systems in the game after 50 hours of gameplay (I play slow and enjoy the experience, what can I say). The side missions are fun, nothing's too frustrating or hard to overcome with a little bit of perserverance, and you always feel like the time you spend doing the thing was adequately rewarded. That's pretty much all I ever ask for from side content in games: make the time between story beats worth spending.

And speaking of the story: the voice acting is serviceable, not particularly inspired but inoffensive and occasionally even charming in spots. There's very little animation in the rare cutscenes that play during story beats, most of the storytelling happening in hand-drawn graphic novel style frames with voiceover that do the job just fine. The story itself, however, won't keep your attention firmly gripped for very long. Again, think Skyrim here: there's a story, and you'll eventually get around to doing it, but first you can do these bajillion other things to get better gear, earn money, get a cooler ship, find rare upgrades, etc. So yeah, I suppose you could do the campaign quickly if you wanted, but you'd be cheating yourself out of the bulk of what the game is trying to offer you...

... which is this: the actual flying your ship. Flying around is extremely intuitive, with controls that are very easy to customize in as much detail as most sane people would possibly want. Not only can you rebind keys to your heart's content, but you can adjust dead zones, adjust sensitivities, and all kinds of other nonsense that I won't bother going into insane detail about. There are lots of different styles of ships to fly with various advantages, perks, and special abilities, and you can customize the look of your ship at home base with more options you'll continue to find as you explore the universe, so you can even fly in style if that's your thing (and it's definitely mine).

I run this game on a pretty old computer: i5-6500 CPU @ 3.20GHz, 16.0 GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 on High graphics settings, and it runs pretty smooth for me most of the time until I enter a couple specific locations with a lot of stuff going on when it starts to get pretty choppy. (Use that information how you will.) When not in those specific places, though, this game is gorgeous. The various space locations I've visited so far have been well thought out, interesting (even the "boring" ones), and had enough variety that I didn't find myself visiting recycled locations very often even when hitting random encounters. Very good level design overall.

The only serious concern I could see the average player having with this game might be with the price tag. $50 for a game that has great gameplay but no real story-based animation to speak of and only mid voice acting might be a turnoff when there are compelling AAA games out there at similar price points that can offer all that and more. I picked this game up when it was on sale for 50% off, so for me I felt immediately satisfied with my purchase and went back and bought the Supporter Pack (again, I like to ride in style!), but I could see a lot of people finding a $50 pill hard to swallow. I wouldn't blame you if you did what I did and waited for a sale, but it's a fantastic game worth playing.