🚀☄️🛸 Everspace 2 | Early Access | PC | First Impressions | "A Barrel Rolling Shooter Looter In Space" 🚀☄️🛸 @everspace_game @Rockfishgames #IndieGames #GameDev #Everspace2

EVERSPACE 2 pitches itself as a fast-paced single-player spaceship shooter with deep exploration elements, tons of loot, RPG elements, mining, and crafting. 

The devs, Rockfish Games, have tried to create an experience that is story led with plenty of secrets, puzzles, and enemies to face off against.

I’ve always loved the idea of a space exploration game where you tinker with your ship, do some exploring and follow a story but normally bounce off these games because they are too hard to just pick up and play and require hours of time investment just to learn the basics.

BUT I can safely say that Everspace 2 is for everyone!

Ever since the days of Wing Commander in the ‘90s I’ve never been able to find that easy to pick up and play gameplay that puts you straight into the action without the need to have a degree in Astrophysics in order to pilot your spacecraft. 

Everspace 2 is a game that immediately grabs you and allows you to live out that Star Wars fantasy with barrel rolls and pulse cannons a plenty. 

When you boot the game up for the first time you will be thrown straight into the action with a great tutorial that gets you into the game immediately.

You play as Adam who is a clone of the previous character from Everspace 1 and you are sent on a dubious tutorial mission that leads to you finding yourself in a sticky situation that then kicks off the main story to great effect. 

The ship is a pleasure to handle and the combat is all about slick manoeuvres and locking onto your adversaries in order to unleash the fury of your lasers. I found myself picking up the controls really quickly and using my joypad on PC to do this was a joy to behold.

The fighting is easy to pick up too and I found myself locking on and fighting enemies with ease as I looked to progress my little ship through various dangerous encounters in the expanses of space.

The exploration is really cool with little corners of hidden space to discover alongside the main story missions. It is worth mentioning that it's not a true open world as areas are gated off as you work through them but that is fine and it doesn't really take away from the immersion in the game world.

The loot is fun to discover, and the upgrades system is enjoyable to tinker with. The RPG elements give you a real sense of the ship as the character that you can customise and grow close to as you take your ship on a voyage of discovery and intrigue. I really enjoyed discovering new weapons to bolt on to my ship and everything on your ship is customisable from your shields to your loadout.

The game is currently in Early Access on PC but you couldn’t tell as it feels slick and a joy to play already. Rockfish Games are used to this lifecycle for its Everspace franchise and used Everspace's Early Access period to perfect that game.

The improvement from the first game is immediately apparent as you are now able to undertake missions and exploration without the constant fear of dying and having to start again as you had with Everspace 1. With these roguelike elements gone from ES2, it feels like a natural evolution from the original and works really well.

I found myself wrapped up in the storyline from minute one and this is a game that I can see myself working through over the next few months as the slick combination of storytelling and exploration mixed with space dog fights has me hooked.

I’m hoping that game saves don’t get wiped when this goes from Early Access to 1.0 so I might hold back for a while before I go hips deep into outer space Everspace 2 (who am I kidding!!??)

Right, I’m off to barrel roll through a galactic mineshaft while I unload my pulse cannon into a nearby crystal deposit.

Rich