Everspace review - A grinding space shooter

Everspace is a space shooter that came out for Xbox One, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS in 2017. Graphics are gorgeous and action is constant. I just love space games! I still remember playing the Star Wars X-wing and Tie Fighter games... There's something in the beauty of space that calms me down and then... Pew pew pew! Boom! Calm again...

This one is more arcadey then a sim. Yes, there's resource collecting and trading, but definitely there's much more guns blazing, missiles exploding, running away and dying. The story is very straightforward. You are a clone with amnesia and have to jump from sector to sector to get flashbacks of your original's memory. An AI is there to help you and fill you in on what's going on with the universe: basically, humans were at war with a reptile alien race called Okkar, then the war ended but they still don't like each other.

The story is delivered with some voice acting and moving sketches that show up between sectors. But honestly, this is a shooter. While a little story to get some logic in what's happening is nice, in this kind of game it doesn't matter too much. There's some primary weapons like pulse lasers, gatling guns, fusion cannons, beam lasers and flak cannons, some secondary weapons like light missiles, heavy missiles, shield breaker missiles, other bigger and explodier missiles, different modules and consumables like drones that will fight for you or recharge your shield, mines that you can drop behind you, anti-missile point defenses, a “time extender” that will slow everything down for a few seconds, among other things. As you can see, the variety of weapons and defenses is enough for you to make a death fest on your screen, and you can play it in a first person or third person perspective.

But the Okkar are the main reason for you to play. After warping into each new area you only have a limited time to explore, collect resources, fight some outlaws and loot, until the super-powerful Okkar ships appear and kick your ass and you have to run for your life. And when I say run, I mean space jump... After that jump, you are greeted with a star map that let's you choose which way to go. You can choose several paths, but in the end they all go to the same big portal that leads you to the next sector.

Fuel is of extreme importance in Everspace, much more so than the ore, plasma, crystals and scrap that allows you to upgrade your weapons and craft new consumables or ammo. If your tank is empty and you try to jump, you’ll be warned that it can severely damage your ship. It’s sometimes worth the risk if the Okkar are already there. You might actually have the chance of repairing your ship in the next area, or die because your sensors are badly damaged and your life support system is failing rapidly and you don't have enough nano bots to repair them. But you don't really die in this game...

As a matter of fact, I love dying, because right before you restart, you are allowed to spend your hard earned credits in some upgrades for your ship, or even a new ship! Besides the one you already have, there's a light, stealth-ready fighter, and a heavy but shieldless gunship. This is done via an inter-death tech tree of sorts. On top of extra weapons slots or space for more consumables, there are extra hull points, better credit drop rates, higher critical hit chance upgrades, fuel efficiency and all different kinds of incremental stat boosts.

But now you start to see some of the quirks of **Everspace **... There are certain perks that need multiple investments of cash, each one more expensive than the previous one, just to get the next level of that perk. You will eventually manage to get the upgrade, but feels kinda like a rip off of your hard earned cash. Even when I managed to get some good money, after spending it here, I still felt like I payed a lot for so little, for something not particularly exciting or useful.

There's very little downtime between fights and you can't simply ignore the fighting and try to only salvage bits of old freighters or make a living by running errands from one space station to another. Everspace is kinda like an action movie set in space. As already mentioned, your ship's system can get damaged, altering the way you play and forcing you to fly differently. When your primary weapons get damaged, they fire slowly, forcing you to use missiles, and that encourages you to attract enemies towards another human faction called G&B, a neutral corporation by default, but that can quickly become hostile if you attack or steal from them. When your life support is damaged, your oxygen starts to go down, meaning you need to repair it very soon. As hinted before, you need nano bots to repair your ship's systems, and also to repair your ship's hull. They are not easy to come by, so repairing is often a balancing act to try to keep your ship together, without falling apart.

There are some traders that appear occasionally and some sub-quests that will get you some credits. This things add a little bit of variety to **Everspace **, but ultimately the moments that better define this game are the dogfights, leading to sim-like moments when your missiles won’t fire and your air is running out and damn it here come the Okkar and I haven’t got enough fuel and I haven’t collected enough nanobots to repair before the jump and I’m in the middle of an electrical spacestorm and I’m probably going to die but let’s go anyway! ...and you made it out alive.

And yet, this is only a better than average game... The controls feel a little mushy. Your firing reticule is independent of your ship’s facing direction, so your ship might be pointing in one direction and you might be pointing at another. The sensitivity of this reticule is also uncomfortably high. But thankfully all of this can be corrected in options > controls, but even so it stills feels kinda odd. Maybe it's because this game was designed from the ground up to be a VR experience, with the ability to look around being really important, and that focus might have affected the way non-headset users will have to play. The independent reticule feels floaty and weird, but the fixed reticule means it’s a bit harder to follow everything, since you can’t look around. Also, as you certainly already realized, there's a lot of grinding in this game. You will die a lot, spend your credits upgrading your ship and feeling little difference, and each time you die, you start from the beginning in sector one without your items. Sure you can collect your items from your destroyed ship if you reach that area again, but even that is an upgrade that you have to pay for so it shows in your HUD.

Everspace is at its best when one or two bits of your ship are damaged and you have to improvise slightly during fights and prioritize finding the nearest repair station or a pile of nanobots. When the pressure is on and the game shows its sim-like incidents, it overcomes its dogfighting simplicity and slightly awkward flight controls. I like space dogfights but also the quiet moments when I can appreciate the beauty of space. I mean, just look at those screenshots! Gorgeous! But it's difficult to appreciate these moments when the main focus of the game is in constant fighting and quickly getting to the next area or sector. Despite all this, Everspace is a good game and I like it and appreciate it for what it is. It's not expensive either. It's currently at € 27,99 on Steam, with the Encounters expansion at € 9,99. Although, if you plan to buy both, just buy the Ultimate Edition, that besides all this also includes some extras and it's cheaper than buying the game and the expansion separately, at only € 35,97. I enjoyed this game and I believe you will too.

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