EVERSPACE™

Recently I got back into playing Everspace after playing it a few years back as I wanted to know why I quitted because I was a long way in and I have somewhat of a weakness for the spacesim genre. First impressions of Everspace are very good, good graphics, sound and music and initially gameplay seems fine untill... First let me tell you that Everspace is a Roguelike. What this means is that you play, die, play, die, play, die... etc. you get the idea. In between you can spend the credits you earned on upgrading your stats and ship stats which is an extensive tree so theorethically you should be better equipped to deal with your next playthrough. However you start out so pathetically weak even a few upgrades don't mean squat and even more so for a long time you start out with the same peashooters every time, so it depends a lot on luck if you get better stuff. What also doesn't help is you have a very limited sensor range, while you can spot enemies far away, you can only detect loot if you are like 20 meters away or so. Then there is the biggest annoyance, at least for me, is that your ship is so mindnumbingly slow. So you're always hitting on the afterburners to at least go a little faster but if you then happen to be bounced by enemies appearing out of nowhere you're as good as dead as the afterburners drain of the same energy source as the weapons. Perhaps I could forgive all this if progress, and my ship, was at least a lot quicker but you need to spend at least 40+ hours to get halfway. Too bad I got completely exhausted after playing through the same slog after 12 hours or so during my latest playthrough and I'm not lusting for more. So if you see videos and screenshots of Everspace and you think, yeah that looks cool and I want to play that, buy Subdivision Infinity or Rebel Galaxy Outlaw instead.

I have 26 hours into Everspace without attaining more than the most basic level of understanding in the story. The game is a confusing mishmash of exploration with little reward (I flew for four game minutes to find an out-of-the-way wrecked freighter that gave me... 2 scrap?), combat with little success (In the third parsec of sector two I got jumped by TEN Okkar and Outlaw fighters with accompanying drones?), and crafting with little result (I upgraded all my weapons only to be blown apart when the warning not to fly into a black hole came AFTER I had already crossed the event horizon, due to not having a clue what it was?) I'm fine with dying while playing a game, and I like the persistent perks, but the way this game works is annoying for the sake of being annoying. You develop a loadout that you like, which allows you to make it a little bit further into the game-- then you die and start with basic junk and your body (if you even have the perk to recover anything) is FOUR SECTORS OR MORE AWAY FROM YOU! That is about 45 minutes to an hour of gameplay just to get MAYBE one or two of the weapons you had upgraded-- which you will have replaced long before you get that far. The repair and fuel systems are a disaster. Hull repairs are done with nanobots, and you will NEVER find enough of these to be meaningful to your "run". (A run is one iteration through the game.) Sometimes enemies will damage components of your ship, When that happens, you will limp on, hating the game and yourself for playing it, until you're finally shot down. You'll never have the specific resources to actually repair something when that happens, so the best thing you can do is to auger into an asteroid immediately. Fuel is scarce for no reason, leaving you stuck in parsecs until capital ships arrive-- and you will NEVER defeat one of those. There's a story, but it only advances when you make it deeper, which means you forget previous installments by the time you get to a new one.

This is definitelly not space simulator or story driven RPG. It's challenging space action focused game with big rogue-like elements. Everspace is more like FTL, Binding of Isaac or any other dungeon crawler with huge focus on meta progression between runs. Also crafting element from resources you find is crucial to successfully play game. Exploration of limited space sectors is where you find resources and goodies before you jump into another sector. This is not open-world, more like open limited sectors. Death and enemies are everywhere and much stronger enemier will spawn sooner or later so you can't explore sectors how long you want. Sometimes you find trader or events very similar to FTL. You MUST upgrade weapons, craft missiles, upgade shields or you die quickly and horribly ...well you die horribly very very often whatever you do. Only option is get good and try again..and again(great for masochists). Optional easy mode is also thumbs up beacause my first run ended in 10 seconds after I ehm..died horribly. If you are OK with this type of game I can easily recommend to anybody. Gameplay is pure excellence, stunning graphics, nice variety of weapons, tons of upgrades and consumables. Keyboard+mouse controlls are great. Developers really tried to balance three different ships and sufficient amount of perks which you take for each run. Each ship came with different attributes and start equipment so it will outline you differrent ways how to play this game. This variety helps you to find your own game style and I didn't find anything too much OP. Overal easy 5 stars and big recommendation. Looking forward to any updates and future projects of definitelly very talented developers from ROCKFISH Games.

Well, well, well...its a pity. This optical juwel could have been such a great space saga - stop. Did I say "saga"? Sorry. This game ist unfortunately so far away from beeing a saga how it could ever be. Because: It has nothing to tell. And where is nothing to tell, there most dont want to dwell. In fact there is litteraly no story, which simply leaves you alone with a feeling of lack of sense and kills any drive to reach new regions, find again and again the same stuff, jump...where again? The upgrade system looks good, but even there you feel like in a smartphone game, where you have to earn thousands of creadits to get something substantial. Also with the upgrade "encounters" there is much too less interaction. No allies, no identity of your own company, guild, nation, whatever. No Quests. No orders. Just looting and shooting. During the opening sequence you get two big questions, after that nothing of it is not mentioned anymore. You can play his game, if you just want to shoot at something moving in an idyllic space setting, but it probably wont catch you for long.

I had my eye on this for a while but didn't want to spend the money given how the reviews seemed to describe the deaths as very arbitrary. I ended up getting it as a freebie for spending enough dough during the Winter Sale. My instincts were more or less correct but that's not to say there's nothing to like. I'll keep it simple, it's a visually gorgeous space combat game where you travel from area to area fighting enemy ships and salvaging materials in order to craft items, repair your ship, etc. It plays like a standard loot game in that way, randomly rolling the items and weapons that you'll find. The combat itself is very fast paced and "twitch." Fairly simply stuff here, fire lasers or guns with left click, missiles or similar with right click. Where the game and I differ is how it handles death and progression. It's one of those situations where the game knowingly starts you off without a chance in hell. Your entire goal is to collect whatever credits you can before you're dead, then spend them on the long-term goal of maybe one day getting a ship that's actually capable of finishing the game. You keep perks but lose all your loot upon restarting. But since it's a rougelike, death is very arbitrary. The game might just plop you into a swarm and you've got no chance. Or, one will appear after a certain amount of time. It suggests you take evasive maneuvers but that ain't happening, everyone else is much faster and more maneuverable than you are. If you're lucky the game will give you enough fuel. It's one of those games that I often describe as pointing a limp finger at you and going "ah ha you died." I'm not crazy about having to spend hours playing to finally earn actual gameplay balance. And recording your stats feels like a huge asterisk is needed since it's not so much skill as much as luck and the perks that define your success. But if you're into that then this is a pretty nice space fighter. Just don't expect to play more than a few minutes at a time.