EVERSPACE™ 2

Freelancer 2.0 that we never got, nuff said.

I like storyline games and somewhat easy to use controls . There's a lot I don't know about how to equip ships etc, but I have fun with this one. My son had to bail me out in a couple of hard spots, but I'm learning...

Have not played many Space Flight games, but this is by far the top rank personally. The ship controls work great for navigating tight spaces. Dogfights are actually enjoyable, unlike others of its kind. There are things to do besides shooting enemies. Exploration, mining, and mine defusal are all fun, low stress activities. Really appreciate the quality of life features, like the story recap. Have trouble keeping up with everything in the cutscenes, so reading summaries help alot. Got hooked when leaving the Ceto star system and switching to first-person perspective. But it is a crime against humanity that this does not support VR. It should be really easy to implement. To avoid the review bombs from the first game, just split it out to a dedicated release like The Talos Principle VR. Would be more than happy to repurchase this for [u]GOOD[/u] VR Support.

Weak

解密是一大败笔啊，要是没有攻略真不敢想全探索要几百个小时，不过飞船确实开爽了

I am a Kickstarter backer of Everspace and Everspace 2. I enjoyed the first game and was excited for the second. But every time and get myself to play it again, I am burned out after one or two hours max. The formula that worked quite well for a roguelite does not, in my opinion, fit an open world story focused game. The game looks amazing and combat itself is crisp. But it gets repetitive very quickly. A roguelite with quick per-session progression can live with constant and similar fights. A singleplayer open-world campaign with much slower progression does not. Weapon upgrades, at least those that I found so far, are often just slightly bigger numbers. And most loot is just junk. A large portion of the loot is also commodities that you can sell with different commodities being more or less valuable depending on your sector. This is fine for a space game like Elite Dangerous or X4, where you can play as a trader. In a combat focused ARPG, this feels like a last-minute add-on that does not add much to the game but keeps cluttering your inventory. You cannot even properly play as a trader as data for commodities demands is not available within the game but has to be found by looking it up manually in each sector (or online). After the 10th time, the puzzles of bringing an energy-sphere from point A to B through a small wreck or asteroid also gets a bit stale. Especially as soon as you upgrade you ship to something bigger. I found a nice thick gunship with a turret that really suits my play style. But it is so chunky that it makes all these secrets/puzzles a hassle to fly through. Yes, I could switch back to a smaller ship, but why offer me a bigger ship, when 50 % of the points of interests in a map favor nimble ships? Don’t punish your players for unlocking a bigger ship or make them choose between having fun in one part of your game or another. The game also incentivizes going for all these points of interest, as you need the rarer materials to upgrade your ships. Even though most of the later upgrades are quite boring and do not feel very rewarding. The story is fine, voice acting is good and the characters are likeable. But so much time is spent in repetitive combat and map exploration with the above mentioned issues that I simply do not want to keep playing.

Starship Diablo

If there's one thing you take away from this review, I just want to tell you that all of the criticism of this game is valid, but it shouldn't discourage you from playing it if you even remotely like spaceship flying RPGs. Freespace, NMS, Elite: Dangerous, SPAZ, Endless Sky, the space section in Halo: Reach, if any of those were something you want more of, this game has it in spades. It earns the Very Positive rating it has, it's an excellent game holistically. Okay, regarding that criticism- Yes, this game can get a bit repetitive at times, but it's much better than its first iteration in that regard. There are more enemy factions with their own gimmicks, and there are tons of mutators on gameplay that will force you to toss up your strategy and approach, especially the closer you get to the endgame. There's also way more equipment, better equipment balance, and way more ships, so you'll have a much better time finding your niche. I found that I really had to bend the rules of the first game to play the way I want, meanwhile in this game I felt plenty powerful once I got my build going, while the game still remained regularly challenging. The biggest criticism I see of this game is the story, and honestly I think it's a bit overblown. My largest problem with the story is, just like with the last game, our protagonist, Johnathan Space. He is the most... Avengers Captain America buzzcut ass generic hotshot ace pilot white guy you've ever met. If you can stomach that, the story's actually pretty decent. I'd call it on par with something like... The Dying Light series. Maybe not quite that bad. The dialogue and voice acting can be clumsy, sometimes the game takes itself too seriously or not seriously enough at the wrong times, the missions can meander pretty significantly from the main plot thread, the villains are all moustache-twiddling comically evil psychopaths, but the arc is over-all compelling and the twists, while somewhat predictable, have emotional weight. If you don't go in expecting like, Halo 2 or Halo: Reach, you'll find the story does exactly what it needs to do for a game like this: It drives the action, and it does it pretty effectively. It is [b]way[/b] better than No Man's Sky's story, not even in the same league. Another critique I see tossed around is the puzzles, which this game has in spades- I actually quite liked them. They presented a nice break from the combat. Don't go in expecting Baba is You or The Talos Principle- Think more Legend of Zelda: Windwaker or Skyrim and your expectations are set right. One compliment I'll actually give out here is that the puzzles are actually all unique- I have yet to encounter a reused one. And there's easily a few dozen of them strewn throughout the game world. Each one is hand-crafted and I actually had a good few "aha" moments amongst the more common very-obvious-square-block-square-hole puzzles. The criticism regarding spending more time finding the puzzle pieces is also valid- The developers could have done a better job of leaving breadcrumbs as to where all the pieces are. Outside of those three major points- Repetition and somewhat underwhelming story- This game is excellent. My wife hates sci-fi and comments on how beautiful it is every time she walks in. It is completely, 100% bug- and stutter- free, even running on Linux/Nvidia. Mechanically, it is [i]perfect[/i]. Ships have this realistic weight to them that was missing in the first game. Watching a missile arc in to deal the final blow on a hard target, or amping up a really good weapon drop you found with modifications and upgrades feels exactly how it should. You don't really encounter a point in the game where you are too lacking in power or are too powerful- The progression feels well-paced. I find myself actively going out of my way to attack random enemies just because it's so much fun to engage in dogfights, something I don't really do in other games. The loot is fun and varied, and I found myself wanting to try out almost every weapon I came across and often being pleasantly surprised that a weapon whose stats don't look all that great makes up for it in other ways. The faction count has gone up from 2 in the first game to... 6? 7? Unique factions, some having very different mechanics than the others. You can genuinely play your way, there's a ton of different playstyles to try out. Bonus points for having one of the best climactic boss fights in any action game I've played. It just put a big smile on my face, you'll know it when you run into it. I wish it was the final boss fight, and I wish there were more dynamic encounters with that kind of scale and mechanical complexity in the game. If Everspace 3 adds anything, more encounters like [i]that specific bossfight[/i] are what I want out of it. I think the one thing I missed from Everspace 1 [i]was[/i] the roguelike gameplay loop, and I can see why some people are disappointed that this game... Doesn't entirely do away with it, but it's a postgame thing and even then calling it roguelite is a stretch, it's more of a gauntlet mode. I feel like when each encounter meant the reset of a run, dying had a lot more weight. Something I'd love to see out of an Everspace 3 is a more open-ended roguelite mode, something akin to Noita. I feel like that'd be such a fantastic crown jewel in the Freespace gameplay loop. Tl;dr play Everspace 2. It's a good game. You'll notice the flaws, they aren't subtle, but the good more than outweighs the bad.