Wait... Is there an Evochron: Renegades? I seem to remember playing a demo for that. I wanted to like it, but I couldn't really get into it. Every time I entered combat, I died after the first hit. In all fairness, though, I was a bit distracted when I went through the tutorial, so I forgot half the stuff. And I just sucked at it. But it seemed like it would be cool, and I could probably enjoy this most recent one if I spent the time to get into it.

Yeah, Evochron: Renegades was the first Evochron game, followed by Evochron: Legends and now Evochron: Mercenary. I forgot to mention above that combat actually is quite hard at first... you need to learn drifting techniques and how to evade missiles to survive. Most players get killed very quickly in their first fight. Hopefully the tutorial in Mercenary teaches combat techniques better. I had to visit the forums and read some combat guides to learn how to survive.