After spending more than two years in Early Access, Everspace 2 is finally out and ready to take players on a memorable journey across the final frontier. Developer Rockfish ditched the roguelike elements of the original 2017 game, and decided to make the sequel into a story-driven – and loot-driven – action-RPG with crafting, mining, puzzle-solving, and everything else you would expect from a game in this genre. To call Everspace 2 ‘Diablo in space’ wouldn’t be entirely accurate, but it wouldn’t be too far off either.
All in all, the new formula works really well, allowing Everspace 2 to surpass its predecessor in pretty much every way. However, there’s one thing that bugs me about it, and that’s the actual exploration. Among other things, Everspace 2 is marketed as a “spaceship shooter with worthwhile exploration” and a “handcrafted open world filled with secrets, puzzles, and perils.”
Based on that description, you might assume this game was designed to be a spiritual successor to Freelancer, a criminally underrated and forgotten space sim from the early 2000s that happened to turn 20 not that long ago. Indeed, I’ve seen quite a few people reference the venerable space sim when talking about Everspace 2, but as someone who has poured an absurd amount of time into Freelancer over the years, I find that the only thing the two games have in common is the combat, which is quite a bit more arcadey here. As far as everything else is concerned, there are very few similarities between the two, especially when it comes to exploration.
Exploration in Everspace 2 is disappointing and doesn't even live up to the developers' own lukewarm “worthwhile” description. Cluster 34, the world of Everspace 2, consists of several star systems, each of which is split into a number of sectors. New sectors are unlocked as you progress through the story, and while you can travel more or less freely between discovered sectors, the experience isn’t exactly seamless. You know how in Elder Scrolls games you get that little loading screen whenever you go from an exterior instance into an interior one like a building or a dungeon? That’s exactly what it feels like to move between sectors in Everspace 2.
Whenever you attempt to simply fly to a different region you’ll eventually be stopped by the game and notified that you’re approaching the edge of the instance. Try to keep going anyway, and you’ll soon be teleported back somewhere inside the sector. To actually travel from one sector to the next you’ll need to engage your jump drive, at which point you can zip freely through space after a short loading screen. However, you can’t just stop anytime you please, and instead have to select a viable location to travel to. Once you reach your destination, you can disengage the jump drive and enter the new area after witnessing another short loading screen.
On one hand, I understand the need for all the smoke and mirrors. Breaking things down into smaller instances is easier for the developers and more performance-friendly for the players than allowing a massive open world to load all at once. And, to its credit, Everspace 2 does run smoothly and doesn’t suffer from any significant technical issues, at least not on my end. At the same time though, not being able to fly normally in any direction for more than a few minutes without being alerted that you’re approaching an invisible wall breaks the sense of immersion in space game in a major way. Maybe it’s asking too much to have an entire system be its own self-contained open-world, but surely that should be possible at a sector level considering other space sims managed to do it decades ago.
This way of structuring the world wouldn’t have been so bad if there was actual worthwhile exploration to look forward to, but that’s usually not the case. Aside from the larger regions that are generally reserved for questing, you’ll run into many smaller instances where you can complete optional objectives for additional loot and credits. On occasion, you can delve into these -- let's just call them dungeons, to discover side-missions that involve exploring interesting locations and/or solving puzzles, but most of the time they don’t.
Everspace 2 dungeons tend to be small and feature one of only a small handful of objectives. Visually, many of these optional locations do look nice, as does the game as a whole, but exploring them feels more like a grind than an adventure. To make matters worse, you can’t go more than a couple of minutes without running into hostile ships spawning near your location. I get that this is supposed to be an action-packed game, but it’s okay to sometimes let the player wander around aimlessly without having to constantly worry about enemies showing up out of nowhere. This artificial sense of urgency just seems unnecessary.
It's a bit strange that the developers poured so much time and effort into building this beautiful universe only to then make it awkward to explore. After only a few hours of playing, I’m already skipping most of the optional areas (and I'm the kind of person who usually spends way more time on side-quests than the main story). But here it’s hard to get excited about mining yet another iron deposit or trying to find a way inside a derelict shipwreck while constantly dodging outlaws and drones.
The beauty of a game like Freelancer is that you’re just some adventurer trying to make ends meet while stumbling across previously undiscovered cosmic anomalies, exotic weapons, and alien artifacts in a world that feels very much alive from the moment you set foot in it. Here, you’re the protagonist, much of the story revolves around you, almost everything you do is part of a mission objective, and exploration is more about gathering loot and resources than discovering interesting things and places.
At the end of the day, Everspace 2 is still a very enjoyable game that’s likely to only get better with time. If you enjoy space shooters focused on combat, loot, and world-building, you won’t be disappointed by what this game has to offer, but if you’re looking for a true spiritual successor to Freelancer or an immersive space sim that lets you explore the wonders of outer space at your own leisure, I’m afraid Everspace 2 only manages to partially scratch that very specific itch.
And you know what? All that talk of Freelancer has really got me in the mood to go back, play it, and wax lyrical about it. Stay tuned...