Everspace 2 Review: Is It Better Than Its Predecessor?

Whether you grew up on Star Wars or Star Trek, or a plethora of other excellent space movies, old or new, you likely considered getting into one space simulator or the other. If you still haven’t gotten into the genre, perhaps Everspace 2 could be your introduction to it.

Rockfish Games – the developing studio behind the Everspace sequel – did an excellent job of balancing the content just right, with a little something for everyone. Naturally, if you’re not into space games, it’s not going to be your cup of tea, but if you are… well, prepare to be blown away.

Story

To start off with what you would first encounter after loading the game up, let’s talk about the story.

In and of itself, the story is not what one would call very deep or complex, but it is definitely more than enough. With roughly 12+ hours of fully voice-acted dialogue, Everspace 2’s story offers a nice little something for those of us coming from more RPG-oriented games.

You probably shouldn’t expect to be moved by the story, but you’re unlikely to be too disappointed either. Rockfish managed to make it an overall satisfactory experience through witty conversation, as well as a plethora of jokes and puns – seriously, they did not go easy on the jokes, there are a lot of them.

Performance

It’s time to go over Everspace 2’s performance… good job on this one, Rockfish.

Many times now, games would release and go live after months, or even years, of development and funding, only to be bitter disappointments in one aspect or the other… or both. This has become a somewhat common occurrence by now, as developers often release unfinished games, due to pressure from the publishers, the community, or any other reason. This, in turn, causes a lot of performance issues – FPS drops/spikes, unpolished graphics, errors, crashes, etc.

Contrary to my expectations though, Everspace 2 was exceptionally smooth. No errors, no crashes, and no FPS issues, aside from ones usually credited to driver issues or messy installations.

It’s a nice and fresh breath of air to see a game go through Early Access the way it should – iron out all the bugs and issues, polish the game visually, improve on the feedback – and then get out of it properly, with a fully functional live release.

Graphics

Yet another department that Rockfish absolutely nailed… the graphics.

They did what should be the norm within the video game industry, but it was somehow forgotten.
They released the barebones of a product they wanted to make, got funded through Kickstarter, went live with Early Access, received feedback and improved on it, polished the game visually, and voila!

Everything in the game, from space fights to those on planets, closer to the ground, looks flawless. Visually, Everspace 2 is practically ideal – even on lower-end computer setups, the game appears to be running as well as possible. This just shows how nicely optimized the game is, and while there are minimum requirements when it comes to PC components, it still does a great job of utilizing whatever is given.

I believe I’m definitely not alone when I say I’m looking forward to seeing how this beauty of a game will fare on consoles, once it releases – Rockfish has said they aim to achieve this by the summer (of 2023).

Controls & UI

Ah, yes, the controls…

As is the case with every new space sim that launches, Everspace 2 was subject to a lot of doubt and judgment about the way its controls function. Most diehard space simulator fans will tell you that a space sim needs to have overly complex controls, with an even worse UI.

This, however, is not an opinion that Rockfish shared, seeing as they made controls very intuitive and relatively simple, therefore allowing you to play the game and fly spaceships without previously having to obtain 2 PhDs to understand the control. We won’t point fingers here though, if you know, you know.

The UI, to no one’s surprise, was developed by an artist who has been a huge fan of the Destiny 2 universe ever since the series was introduced, almost a decade ago. Remnants of D2 can be noticed in the picture above, or any other picture attached in this review – the similarity is overwhelming. Some would argue this isn’t exactly positive, as many players are not satisfied with Destiny 2’s UI, but alas, this is what we got and it is, to say the least, simple and functional.

Gameplay

Finally, let’s talk about the gameplay itself.

Everspace 2 is loaded with content that you could probably stretch out to more than 100 hours of gameplay. The story, side missions, mining, crafting, customization, and random brawls… the game does a great job of keeping you occupied, and never really bored.

Whether you’re following the main storyline or exploring around, you’re almost always going to be engaged by the game in one way or another, so there’s hardly ever a time when you’ll sit there thinking to yourself “man, this part is really boring”, which can’t be said for all the games out there, as some have very dull parts.

This, paired with the Everspace 2’s intuitive and simplified flying mechanics, make for some incredibly fun space rides – wherever you find yourself, there’s always action, waiting around the corner.

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