EVERSPACE™ 2

Eversince playing Elite in the 80s on my BBC-B I've been fond of spacegames.
This one delivers, lots of fun, less roguelike than Everspace 1 (which I thourroughly enjoyed aswell) but instead an endless openworld game. Lots of fun!

Fantastic and rewarding looter/shooter!
This is a top tier arcade-style space combat game.

Spacecraft + module build options are diverse allowing for multiple play-styles.
There are so many options for different lanes of progression and the game does a great job at giving you several goals to work towards.

The art style and scenery are beautiful and there's enough variation to keep things fresh.
It's a joy to fly and fight in this universe.

The story is enough to keep you engaged and is so far really fun, and I like the voice acting and their style of semi-animated comic-like cutscenes.

It's Freelancer. Just a very good homage with an extremely tight gameplay loop that will disappear hours from your life. There's some jankiness here and there, mostly with things like Vindicator drones. Overall, the game is incredibly stable. There's a great central story to follow if that's your jam. There's a lot of freedom to explore, random events, semi-random events, location-based missions, etc.

No game is a 10/10 but this feels really close.

Personal rating: 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟
Everspace 2 nails that sense of being in space. You don’t just click and fast travel—you fly, dodge, warp, andenjoy the scenery mid-route. Its immersion is better than big titles like Starfield simply thanks to NOT having fast travel easily available.

Combat is a blast—fast, punchy, and just chaotic enough to keep you on your toes. Whether you're sniping drones or unleashing missile storms, it’s always fun. The ship variety is excellent, and crafting strikes a great balance between depth and simplicity.

I do wish there was multiplayer - Playing with others would be amazing - but even solo, this game shines. Can’t wait to see where the devs take it.

Довольно хорошая космическая стрелялка, даже несмотря на то, что имеет мало общего с первой частью.
Из плюсов - куча битв с кем угодно любой степени сложности и возможность все апгрейдить и выбирать (и менять) оружие и корабли. Из минусов - когда много противников понять кто из них на каком расстоянии визуально практически невозможно.

Just a fantastic space shooter with a solid storyline. If you're a fan of the first game and are willing to play a version that isn't a roguelike, dive in. Excellent story and cutscenes with distinct and talented voice actors. The gameplay is very fun and challenging and puts you in your place when you push it too far. I love that because it adds to the air of a dangerous universe. Ship customization is pretty fun to play with as well. Hopefully this series continues.

Tip: If you find it becoming repetitive, start exploring. That keeps you progressing without it feeling like a slog.

Looter Shooter in space. Extremely good controls. Very addictive loop. I would love this gameplay in a giant shared world space sim, maybe Everspace 3?

Top tier game, absolute class-act studio. Only studio I've seen in over 3 decades of gaming that voluntarily lowered the price on upcoming content to help their community in the face of international economic uncertainty.

To any Rockfish devs that see this; y'all are fucking legends. I hope each and every one of you the absolute best of success and just know that, at least one random dude out there, is going to buy the expansion just to support y'all on this decision alone. Keep on doing good in this world!

Just a little update there is full jotas support. I jave the t.flight one and it even jas a profile for that. The button numbers are correct. No problems. It is actually very playable with hotas. I like it more than with keyboard and mouse. Have found no info indicating this. Had it in library and just tried.

The space flight feels just as good as the first one and there is a lot of interesting new content, however it feels like the soul of the first game is gone. A lot of what has been added just wastes your time and stops you from actually playing the fun parts of the game.

Abandoning the rougelike model and switching to a more traditional RPG progression makes the game feel a lot lower stakes to me and makes progression feel a lot slower. Instead of constantly upgrading your ship and trying new things you will sit on an OP weapon for a long time.

The gameplay also feels like it is primarily driven by fetch quests. So much of your time is spent waiting for your ship to complete FTL travel to a region to get a few things so you can FTL back to the region you just came from.

A lot of the regions are also quite small. This was fine in the original game because you had this constant pressure to complete the region fast and move onto the next one, but in this game it mostly lead to me saying "that's it?" after spending a minute traveling to and loading into/out of an area. Even worse, you will often have to travel back and forth to areas you've already finished to complete a fetch quest and the only thing you will do in that area is mow down any weak enemies that respawn and get in your way.

A lot of the other systems, like crafting, also just feel like they are there to waste your time. I think in a space sim you either need to go for fully immersive systems, like elite dangerous or star citizen, or just make it a combat game. Slapping generic RPG features on top of that just pads the game out for no reason.

I was a huge fan of the first game, so I was really hyped for this game to come out. I was disappointed, because this game is not for me. Don't get me wrong, there is a lot to like about this game—the story is really interesting, the characters are endearing, the world is beautiful and interesting, and there is an overwhelming amount of content to experience—but the change in genre from rougelite to looter-shooter sapped all the challenge and charm out of the game for me. I really enjoyed the intensity and desperation present in Everspace 1's combat, every second of that game felt like a fight to survive. In Everspace 2 however the combat just feels like filler, there isn't much challenge and there are no stakes because there is no punishment for dying. If you like looter-shooters and space dogfighting you'll probably like this game, but those looking for more of a focused challenge can skip this one.

RPG in space. Very good story, and eager for DLC's to continue it.
Overall reasonable amount of ship classes and components. Does get a tad grindy, like all RPG's can :)

I just achieved 100% over 130ish hours played, this is my analysis:
Great game 9/10. Story is amazing, gameplay is fun and challenging, diversity of ships, guns, playstyles. etc.
Completely worth it.

A bit deeper: early game is tedious as you're prone to die constantly 'till you manage to get the combat maneuvers right, and late game can be pretty chaotic as one second you're 100% HP, next second you're 1%, the next second you're back to 100%; problem here is that it's not something you can manage or decide, simply try to deal with.

I do want to see more content, more ships, guns, modules, etc.

Great vibe game, combat is excellent on mouse and controller!

Some of the story voice acting is wooden, however its not all of it and the story itself is quite well paced, has loads of variety with how it interacts with the game systems, and has some surprising and unexpected story events.

Sound and visuals are superb, not sure why they say HDR mode is experimental as its a really good implementation with colors popping and some nice depth to the wonderful space (and other!) environments.

I haven't had any crashes or bugs, and both play on PC, and stream it to my tablet (with a controller attached) - both a very valid ways to play (controller may even be a little easier).

Highly recommended.

If you like space games, it doesn't get much better than this. The voice acting is frequently pretty bad, but that's the only true negative I found to this game.

It is a fun individual ship based combat sim! They saved some space to not animate the cut scenes, but overall I am enjoying this game!

I did not expect this !
I did not expect Everspace 2 would be so much better than the 1st one !

The gameplay is ok, the combat are simple, once you get use to it, it's going to be fine.
The different thing here between this and Chorus is that, there's a lot of loot !
You farm a lot, and you travel a lot !
The Universe/ Galaxy is really huge, the Space travelling had always been interesting, you will discover small side area every once in awhile, eventhough you are doing about the same thing over and over again.

The Level up system/ passives/ inventory management really seperate this from the Roguelike version !
Turns out i don't like the Rogue like version...

9/10 I would buy this on full price if i could !

Absolutely excellent Freelancer homage with mechanics that were simply not available or thought of back in the day. Visually impressive with an excellent loot and shoot gameplay loop combined with great mouse/keyboard controls, this Freelancer homage should not be missed. Well worth the money. I have been playing these types of games since Wing Commander 1 and 2; while this doesn't have the narrative strength of those titles, this should be in the library of anyone who is into this type of game. HIGHLY RECOMMEND.

Nice shoot them up in space with a story line and a big enough universe.

I have completed virtually everything the game has to offer without dedicating hours more to mindless grinding to marginally improve my ships nor buying the expensive DLC content.

The game is just way too shallow.

To briefly summarize my gripes with the game:

- The playstyle diversity is very poor between ships (which are essentially classes) as only the large ships have good differentiation. Small ships are also way too weak defensively to be fun to use.
- Itemization is not exciting or compelling with most of the legendary gear and set items being very underwhelming
- Certain weapon types feel nearly mandatory to use just to deal with Drones (hit-scan or Flak.)
- The leveling gameplay loop involves spending a bunch of time looking for hidden puzzles to open chests for underwhelming rewards, but you need to do it to find Mainframe Components which gets very stale after the second system. The unlock to aid with this activity is poorly implemented, and the lack of spacial orientation (no grid/coord system) makes even using guides to help you find stuff annoying.
- The Commodity system to make money is extremely shallow with most items not being worth your time/effort to move around, even at maximum trade values compared to doing literally any other activity and just vendoring the drops
- Buying new ships without selling your current is punitively expensive, taking hours and hours to grind out the resources at the highest tiers.
- Ship passives are horribly balanced and it can take hours to find ships worth purchasing, even after you have 4 chances at something good. This is particularly true for trying to make smaller ships competitive in the post-game Rift system.
- FTL flight is irritatingly slow without completing the explorer unlocks and entering new areas feels really bad
- Renown system is totally pointless
- Perks are poorly balanced
- Crafting is virtually worthless outside of Catalysts
- Catalysts are terrible balanced since some don't replace existing item prefixes, making them the only real choices

I really wanted to like this game way more than I do. The endgame just isn't compelling enough to keep going for very long after the story, and definitely not compelling enough to try and max out different ship types.

like most good rpgs with leveling, yes there is some grind. do i think its bad grind? no. leveling is fairly quick compared to most of the grinds ive been involved in, and the loot is fantastic so far! i keep finding hidden points of interest i wouldnt have found if i wasnt trying to solve the puzzles, like the dude stuck in in the in part of the earlier game.

the tutorial zone did feel a bit draggy though, especially with the story... but once you reach that second zone the story picks up and its worth every penny.

im playing on easy and combat is very forgiving compared to ES1, which is a different genre entirely. i am fully enjoying this with my Thrustmaster Hotas X as well. super fun,

It is like Starlancer, privateer and Freelancer all rolled into one. The trading aspect is a little weak and the level cap is too easy to reach even within the first system. But the space combat is satisfying as is the space craft control even with M+K. There are some aspects that could be improved in addition to the trading system, like a little bit more info early in the game as to what is required to complete an area to 100%, multiple resource tracking on the map that i can think of right now. The continued developer support is also a big plus, with another expansion being shown.

I finished the main game, and started going through some of the titans DLC. Everything clicks after a few hours, and the game becomes a bit easier. Overall this is a great space action game, similar to Chorus, with a much larger scale and open world feel.

The secondary quests are worth finishing, just for the stories that go along with them. Overall this felt like a living universe with a lot going on.

The puzzling is almost entirely focused on finding things in hidden areas of a map. It's fine, but not quite as "tactical" as a more directed game.

I can't wait for the next DLC.

Awesome space combat. Love it. And contrary to a lot of the negative reviews here, I enjoy the puzzles. Also, it looks spectacular with lumen turned on. Noice!

Tip: get comfortable switching between flight assist ("intertia dampeners") on / off - I've set up one of my mouse buttons to toggle it, and constantly switch it up during combat and exploration. Cutting inertia dampeners and spinning round to fire off a salvo of rockets backwards at pursuing fighters is the good stuff.

Controls S T I L L do not work correctly. Cluster of garbage.

Boring overall, it overstays its welcome. I have clocked in 31 hours in Everspace to finish it and 40-something in this one and I am not even close to the end. By 10 hour mark you have seen pretty much everything the game has to offer. Same weapons, same puzzles, same fetch quests, same enemies. If it had a bit more combat variety and a better upgrade system aside from just numbers going up, or it was a 25-30 hour game and not a 100 hour to completion, it would be better. What is the point of fighting the same ships a thousand times if all that changes is enemies level going from 5 to 20 and my weapons rarity going from white to purple? It's not like the game offers you 100s of weapons to try out like Borlderlands for example. Gameplay of an MMO without the human aspect to make it lifelike will not work.

it's fun until you find too much puzzle, too much hidden object

Would have refunded. Starts out fun, lots of potential. Then it just becomes a cheesy gotcha simulator where ships that instantly destroy you spawn 360 degrees around you. Being good and having beat the first game with my eyes closed doesn't prepare you for the cheaty crap this game throws at you for a lack of good mechanics and innovation.

It's should be a fun game but the lack of clear directions makes it like a game of finding things in a vast map, which makes it getting more and more boring

Its a good game if you like the core game loop. I found after 10 hours however I couldnt afford cool ships, combat felt the same and I had to go to great lengths to get any kind of loot. Its not a bad thing at all, its probably paced nicely but after 10 hours I would expect some kind of upgrade that makes me feel more powerful.

Story is decent with likeable characters, and there's a good variety of builds and weapons for your ship. Combat feels satisfying, even if I wish it had a bit more depth or complexity.
35h to complete the story in a Vindicator ship. I will probably make a second run someday with a different class.

Overall, it's a solid 8/10.

Everspace 2 is everything I wanted the franchise to be. I disliked the rogue-lite aspect of the first and would mod it into an RPG and this one is already like that.
It's great, reminds me of darkstar one.

Fantastic game! Highly recommend grabbing it if you like to keep busy doing tons and tons of missions and looting plenty of goodies!

The game is finnaly within my price range. TBH, I've plaid it from a different media way back in EA and almost finished the main story. The game has some grind, but it is not a WoW-type of a grind.

A co-op of 2 mode would have been nice to have with a DLC story line different than the main story and locations. I would love to see some pilotable frigate and destroyer class vessels, but I know that this game does not fly with such.

Everspace 2 does remind me a bit of Freelancer, but only a bit. While there's good combat, itemisation and exploration, the story is really disappointing and has a poor pacing. Also only 6 explorable systems with only 3 that have enough content and only a few worthwhile secondary missions.

Not having played nor having any knowledge of Everspace 1 wasn't a problem at all to enjoy it but a lot of side characters do reference knowing "adam" from before.

There's also a problem with the difficulty setting and some puzzles where they shouldn't scale at all.

While it is quite slow to start and it takes a while to get into it, there's an addictive part to exploring some systems and it is what made me spend so much time in it and gave a positive opinion in the end. Mention to the sound design and the music too, that is varied enough as to not get repetitive.

I recommend Everspace 2 for those that want an overall fun but not deep experience.

Had a lot of fun with this game. Late game is very grindy, but that's pretty normal for looter shooters in general.

Extremely fun. I play with HOTAS, and while it took a little bit to get the controls sorted, it's a really fun game to play with that setup.

There is a lot of gameplay here too, and I like it a lot more than everspace 1. The pacing of this one is much nicer and enjoyable.

This game is incredible! If you loved the old Freelancer game and have been trying to scratch that itch, or if you just love a beautifully-crafted game of exploration, storytelling, and a truly delightful model of ever-changing space combat with a wide variety of play-styles you can dive into, this game is for you! There are no micro-transactions or pay-to-win mechanics at all, and the entire game is completely playable without any DLC, which is a rarity these days. That said, I would highly recommend getting the expansions, as they add some really fun and different activities to the game that can be completed alongside the main plot.

The game does a fantastic job of progression and hostile-leveling, making it challenging and engaging without feeling like an invincible deity with infinite money that can crush everything and buy anything too quickly. I'm a map completionist, and one of the late-game abilities allows you to see exactly what you have left to explore in each location, which is delightful! The inventory and crafting system is easy to use and allows for players to explore without having to constantly dump cargo at shops or home base. The variety of ships and weapons encourages players to find the style of ship and play that works best for them.

The main plot is well-written and engaging, and does a really great job of universe-building without getting players bogged down in minutiae. It builds well on itself and gives players the knowledge needed to explore and engage with the side missions and optionals at your own pace. There is a really fun series of end-game activities and repeatable missions, so there's still plenty to do after finishing the main plot, even if you've already explored the entire game!

The only issue I've run into is that I've had to reduce my resolution in some systems/locations due to the sheer volume of ambient details and atmospheric elements present. That is a minor issue, and I could probably fix it with either better graphics hardware or more fine-tuning on the quality settings, but wanted to mention it all the same.

Overall, absolutely love the game, and can't wait for the next DLC to come out! 10/10

Initially came off as a true Freelancer spiritual successor, turned out to be botched in the details.

Terrible story, utterly boring characters, literal blank template MC with no personality whatsoever. Whole thing gives off a children's game vibe.

Shallow exploration, but decent gameplay. Unfortunately the CONSTANT loading screens ultimately made me quit. They're obscenely pervasive and completely ruin any desire to explore. There's a loading screen between every FTL engine activation. This means at least 2 loading screens between any travel decision. 4 if you switch systems. Going anywhere became a massive chore.

Great game. I enjoyed it best with flight assist off. Writing is a bit too PG but this is a 9/10 overall.

Love this game but puzzled at the inexplicable lack of native VR support. I played this a bit with UEVR and all I can say is that it's a game that is absolutely meant to be played in VR. The VR elevates the experience in such a huge way (especially during dogfight sequences) and I cannot believe that they decided not to include support for it. Huge missed opportunity.

I really enjoyed playing this with UEVR, unfortunately it's a hacky solution and it makes the parts where you warp between areas completely undoable which makes the game basically unplayable with it. I wish there was a way to skip those warp sequences because then it would at least be fully playable with UEVR.

This game is built on Unreal Engine which has VR functionality built into it already (that's what UEVR is tapping into). The fact that UEVR delivers such a good experience (in the parts of the game where it works well) as a hack shows that it probably wouldn't take much to get a proper implementation done for VR in this. Ever since Eve Valkyrie got shutdown VR players have been looking for this kind of experience, and this should be it. It just needs the support so that we're not having to rely on a janky workaround for it.

I saw that the developers had a thread going on some forum and people were being rude to them so they decided not to do a VR implementation. Those people in that forum represent a minority of VR users. I hadn't even been on that forum until I came across that thread a few minutes ago. I'm sorry you guys had a bad experience on there, but please don't punish the broader VR community just because of a few idiots. Thanks.

Really liked the first game. Unfortunately this game has less combat and more story and puzzles. They should have stuck to what they are best at.

hardcore mode is unplayable without legendary items but easy and normal doesnt require such thing and acctualy fun ..

The arcade like action is really enjoyable, specially if you setup you controls to make maximum use of the available movement and tools.

I did not enjoy some of the puzzles or miscellaneous activities that much, but some people may enjoy it.

An excellent story, immersive world and a compelling cast of characters. Game is perfect for casual and dedicated player alike, offering a little something for everyone.

This is actually a very fun game. Its like diablo 2 in space. Unfortunately the only thing i don't like is that you cant have more than 2 pieces of legendary weapons or accessories equipped on your ship at one time... That deserves a negative review, in and of itself.

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Update 3/1/2025

Okay. The Leviathon thing is so fucking stupid... This is getting bad.

Good fun! Just what I was hoping for in a space/flight arcade/RPG

I really loved the first one and this one is pretty good. I will recommend it, but it is not a perfect game.

Pros:
Well built interesting world
great graphics
fun fights (arcady, not flight sim)
sound track
Some interesting characters and lore
Side missions

The story is mid. The only real gripe I have is the swarms. Dear lord. I get that it is supposed to be difficult but I am really tired of being jumped by 2 to 3 elites when in the middle of a fight. Or when it seems you are winning an engagement only to have 5 enemies jump right on top of you. It almost had me whipping a controller. Also, the missions where you control drones are not great and the trading just kind of feels tacked on. I would give this a solid 7.5 out of 10, but I am a sci fi nut. Loved it but it definately has flaws. Really hope for an Everspace 3.

Had a lot of fun beating the game for the first time, and am looking to try a nightmare run now that it is unlocked. Story gave me some real Freelancer nostalgia and the early endgame has been a lot of fun so far.

Normally I tend to be harsh with my review for games whenever I find a niche aspect that rubs me the wrong way but in this case I genuinely stopped playing because I couldn't continue.

Past the first 15 to 20 hours the game goes from a buttery smooth ~200 FPS (1080P) to an absolute nightmarish sub 20 FPS on certain planet surface environments.

My suspicion at first was that this is plain bad optimization, only to hit the web and learn that I was right and worse, it's been an issue since about 4 years ago when peeps first got their hands on this game.

I've tried fiddling with settings both off the top of my head as well as following other people's advice on what made the FPS melt-down more bearable for them, but on a good day I barely managed to scratch 25 frames.

Add to that a certain story mission where a little more maneuvering finesse is required and you get a recipe for disaster.

Love the game and everything about it so far but this just killed it for me and, since this is still an issue this far down the line, I can't be arsed no more.