EVERSPACE™

It took me a little to fully understand what is happening and how things work, but when I understood, I enjoyed every jump. The graphics and movement freedom is great, the randomness make each episode fun. Overall there is quite the replayability.

fun. makes you feel cool story characters look like copied from stock photos thats why only 4 of 5

I've toggled and/or untoggled options like 'center crosshair', 'controller input smoothing', and 'auto-roll', unbound the mouse axes, and fiddled with the controller sensitivities, but I still get unprompted erratic start/stop jerkiness in roll/pitch/yaw motions while playing on stick. It also doesn't detect my rudder pedals. I find it unfortunate. Everspace certainly feels like a competent space-themed 6DOF shooter, but I can't recommend it in good conscience.

Been waiting for a spaceship-piloting game my whole life where I still have full movement control of the vessel and then fly it however I like, practicing maneuvers otherwise typically impossible to flight/orbit-set spaceship games. Always loved the idea of proper space dogfights that aren't just physics calculations from auto-targetting systems the whole time. I greatly appreciate the thought put into this concept and, even more, the execution. I wish the map was even more three-dimensional and that they weren't as disk-like in layout to give that extra kick in the dread of the vastness of space (obviously aside from settings within planetary rings, of course). Also, the menu's sound design sounds like it's from the late 2000s; it needs to be less jarring with dings and more ultra-futuristic with wide-tone, maybe softer notifications/alerts, and generally less "arcadey". Brilliant experience for those like me looking for something like this.

Everspace boasts a lot about its difficulty, but don't let that discourage you. Setting the game on easy mode doesn't affect the combat much, the main difference I find is that on medium and hard they're much more stingy with fuel. Once I caved and went to easy mode I had a lot more fun with the game since my runs lasted much longer (because I wasn't constantly out of fuel) and I was making much more progress. Everspace really doesn't hold your hand, though, and I'm still learning about the game even 20 hours in or so. Took me a few runs to realize you can (and should) upgrade your guns and shields each run using the resources you find in each map node, and that your sensors don't automatically detect all the resources in each node upon entering the location--you need to explore each point of interest for treasures whenever you make an FTL jump. And that's a large part of the fun of Everspace. There's always something new to discover and explore, lots of guns and gadgets to experiment with and upgrade, and lots of mysteries to investigate. I only just figured out you can fly inside those giant monoliths you come across periodically, and that doing so causes... well, I won't spoil it. Although I'm still playing on easy mode 20 hours in, I'm having a blast. Five stars.