izigame.me

TLDR: If Steam had a neutral review option, this would be the ultimate candidate for me. It's good in a lot of ways, usually fun, but is let down by death-by-a-thousand-cuts mediocrity that pushes it into the negative end of neutral. If you're just looking for something that plays like a shlooter in a starship, you'll probably enjoy this, but if you're hoping for something comparable to other space flight sims, this game is lagging behind its competition in most meaningful ways. It's the perfect 6 out of 10.
I'll start with what the game does well.
It looks amazing, with strong art design that particularly shines in its environments - it's easy to make space look samey, but Rockfish are endlessly creative in making different systems stand apart from each other, and even different zones within those systems unique. It's graphics and art direction are probably its best qualities.
The dogfighting is pretty fun, when it works well. It's snappy and responsive with good feedback, most weapons feel fun to use, and enemies are generally fun to destroy.
The loot and progression is reasonably satisfying, and taps into the sort of primal urge to grind that gets me really into games like Warframe, so I've sunk a lot of time into it so far and I'll probably sink in a lot more.
That said, everything I've just listed comes with caveats.
The good art direction doesn't quite extend to the UI, which becomes a confusing mess when you're engaged by a large number of hostiles that are in close proximity - bright, flashy particle effects wash out damage and enemy direction indicators, making it difficult to identify what's hitting you and kill it fast enough to keep your shields and armour from getting shredded, particularly given the level scaling loves to pit you against enemies that are one level higher than you.
The dogfighting quickly turns from satisfying to frustrating in situations like that, and it's let down further by some baffling design choices, such as allowing enemy ships to shoot down your flak projectiles, which deal self-damage if they detonate too close, functionally turning the flak cannon into a suicide gun in any serious engagement considering how many projectiles are being flung your way.
The build variety is fine but truly, deeply feels like it's missing something, yes you can find a ship gear you like, and while some equipment plays well with other equipment, there's no meaningful synergy between any of these things. I don't feel like I have a build the way I would in Diablo or Grim Dawn or Payday 2, I feel like I have a loadout, like in Call of Duty. I'm not at the point in the game where legendary items have been introduced yet, but that seems to be an endgame feature, and those unique modifiers that allow synergy between kit items are really, really needed earlier on.
Unfortunately everything else about the game takes a dip into 'bad' for me.
The mission variety initially seems good but quickly reveals itself to be shallow and repetitive. A lot of effort has gone into the environments as mentioned above, but you'll quickly realise that the cosmetic variety is hiding a handful of repetitive mission objectives. Kill a boss. Kill targets until a boss spawns. Destroy all the marked targets on a base, then a boss spawns. Solve an environmental puzzle that always involves getting a battery or energy orb and putting it in a thing that wants a battery or energy orb. It's a slightly obscured version of Ubisoft map box-ticking. The world is beautiful but shallow.
This problem is made substantially worse by the uninteresting loot, which makes exploring the world feel unrewarding. You're not doing it because it's fun or because you might get something cool, you're doing it because it's part of pushing the numbers up and playing the endless catch-up demanded by the level scaling. If I'm not excited to see what's in a chest in a game built around loot and RPG progression, hasn't something gone wrong? Even sidequests, which should be an opportunity to get some optional loot and XP and add variety with some smaller side-narrative content, are reduced to a dull slog by the final problem.
Perhaps most damningly, the writing is awful to the point that it must be seen to be believed, leaving the game feeling truly soulless. The world throws around a lot of interesting ideas, clone soldiers, corporate oppression, the lasting impact of war, how extreme circumstances can push good people to do bad things, but the story and characters don't meaningfully interact with any of them. The writing chooses instead to place the emphasis on largely-unfunny humor that results in a jarring tone that wildly swings between sombre and kooky. If it had more personality, if it better executed the ideas it does have, this might not be a problem, but that's not the case. The lack of narrative substance is made far worse by the protagonist, Adam, who is too much of a character to be considered a player surrogate, but also believes in absolutely nothing, and has no interesting traits beyond his wisecracking and occasional acts of charity, and even then, his kindness is mostly limited to paying jobs. Let me give you some examples that exemplify why he's such a dead fish of a lead.
Adam is the most recent in a lineage of clone soldiers, finally free of the cycle. It's a fascinating pitch, but his character hasn't been meaningfully impacted by his background in any way. He's just Some Guy, whose past is only referenced in throwaway jokes, or in one scene where he retrieves the AI from the first game from a destroyed ship that contains his previous corpse. It's talked about in the moment, he seems briefly shaken, then the incident is never mentioned again. The premise is completely wasted.
Adam is a fundamentally decent person whose situation has resulted in him partaking in a variety of illegal activities for the sake of survival, but he loathes 'outlaws' and kills them on sight, even after a sidequest where you discover these outlaws were also fundamentally good people pushed to extremes, and yet the story never investigates why nothing changes. It's hard not to see it an attempt to add the impression of depth and moral grey that's instantly undermined by the game's need to throw enemies at you by the thousands without making you feel bad about killing them. It doesn't even do the Destiny 2 Eliksni thing where they're separated into factions, some friendly some hostile, justifying their continued presence in the game as enemies, you're just killing the members of an organisation that were driven to do awful things by an oppressive leader, and the writing either doesn't realise it, or is actively trying to sweep it under the rug to prevent the player from questioning their actions.
Early on, Adam is searching for a macguffin. He arrives at a planetside scrapyard, and is briefly trapped there by a failing robot, who's desperate for parts it can use to repair itself. Adam explains to the robot that he needs his ship, and it shouldn't steal from the living, and the robot agrees, letting him go. Adam says 'poor guy,' then flies away, doing nothing, and presumably leaving the robot to die immediately after making it clear he sees the robot as human enough to pity.
He feels hypocritical and mercenary instead of charming, like he only ever acts when he stands to gain, and even the few stands he does take make no sense. It's a mess.
Final thoughts: Like I said at the top, it's a shlooter in space. From that angle, it's fine. But if you're looking for a space sim, and the format doesn't matter to you, Chorus has more interesting narrative ideas that it follows through on, Elite Dangerous is more compelling and immersive, Rebel Galaxy has more personality and soul.
Everspace 2 is fun, when it works, and it's pretty to look at, but it's hollow of any of the things that call me back to its competitors.