Back in May 2020, I got to try out EVERSPACE 2 with an Early Access Prototype which offered around 4-6 hours of gameplay and I absolutely loved my time with the Prototype. I had big hopes for the future of the game, and I guess, I was right. Fast-forward eight months to today and here I am writing this Early Access Preview after spending over 20 hours in the Early Access build of EVERSPACE 2. ROCKFISH Games is about to release EVERSPACE 2 in Early Access on Steam and this is our preview of this build in which we explore vast star systems while taking down tons of outlaws this is our preview of this build in which we explore vast star systems while taking down tons of annoying outlaws flying in them.
EVERSPACE 2 is essentially a space shooter but it also mixes RPG mechanics into the gameplay heavily. You and every enemy in the game has a level and the combat is only fair when these levels are matched just like any other RPG title. After a brief introductory mission, you are left in the open space of the very first CETO star system of the game where you free to either follow the main story of the game or explore the available locations to you. Exploration is highly rewarding, and sometimes you find some really cool weapons and other ship components that you can use. Each story mission comes with a level along with all side missions and jobs that you take from this point onwards. You must match this level requirement in order to complete the missions and jobs easily. The game offers plenty of content apart from the main story mission that can keep you busy for hours.
As you explore new planets and areas, you will get to meet new human settlements that will deal with you as well. These places will have multiple jobs for you and completing these jobs and helping out the local factions will improve your reputation with these factions which is beneficial for you in the long-run. These side missions and jobs are also an excellent source of extra credits and sometimes some cool parts that come to great use. Since the game follows an RPG playing style, you have to manage your inventory as well. You can equip two main weapons and two heavy weapons. Your main weapons require energy while your heavy weapons come with their own ammo. You can restock on your homebase or any other local trade posts that you have found so far in the universe.
There are plenty of weapons that you find and use in the game. Each weapon comes with two basic damage-models. One is the Kinetic damage while the other is Energy damage. Both of them are required for taking out enemies quickly because just like yourself, enemies come with shields and protective armor-plating as well before you can damage their hull. You will need to mix and match these weapons to ensure that you are using the right weapon against the right enemy. Some enemies have higher shields while some come with intensely thick armor plates. Your weapons will take care of them easily. Apart from your weapons, you can also later upgrade your Boosters, Shields, Engines, and plenty of other ship components. If upgrading is not working out for you, you can even purchase new ships from the local trade posts.
These trade posts also provide you with plenty of other options as well such as replacing your armor plates with better ones. While you can switch nearly everything with different parts outside in the space, for some reason your armor plates can only be replaced while you are at a trading post. You can also trade in any ore or other useful supplies that you find or loot while you are exploring the star systems. While you are exploring the planets and star systems, you will come across plenty of points-of-interest such as shipwrecks, destroyed bases, or just random locked storage containers floating around in space. You can open them to find some cool items and loot. Sometimes these will be locked behind simple puzzles and you will need to solve the puzzles before you can access these locked containers or storage boxes. While you are exploring the dark corners of the universe, sometimes a destroyed escape pod or a shipwreck might trigger a side quest as well which is really good in terms of keeping you engaged and encouraging thorough exploration of areas.
Coming to the actual gameplay, while general flying of the spaceship is pretty fun, I do however miss some advanced maneuvers in the game such as rolling left and right or a quick backflip to turn your direction and more. These advanced movements would certainly come in combat which is so far my least favorite aspect of the game. Combat still requires plenty of tweaking here and there and so do the enemies in the game. Fighting a group of more than 3 enemies at the same time becomes tedious and no matter what you try, your enemies will always land a hit even if you are trying to dodge or avoid their attacks. During the initial hours of the game, until you get some really good parts in the game, the game is a little difficult to survive in.
Most of the enemies are not big of a problem but the first time I started to feel the weakness in the combat system of the game, I nearly stopped playing the game after nearly 4 hours of trying the same mission with different weapons. I was Level 5 with my enemies Level 4 and I had to clear an abandoned station to get some stuff for a quest however no matter what I tried, I would always get my ship blown into bits. Your starting ship is really weak in terms of armor and shields so you will die a lot if you are not careful at the start of the game. Luckily, the game sometimes offers more than one way to complete a mission, and this time around, I had another way to complete the main story mission so I used the alternate method this time around.
Back when I played the early prototype of EVERSPACE 2, combat was pretty much the same and I died a lot back then as well. However, after some time, I was able to best even the toughest of the enemies in the game and any number of enemies that the game would send my way. This is not the case now and you have to grind a little and level up. I won’t call it grinding like in most titles but leveling up and going in preparation for combat is always beneficial in the game. I have now figured out that it is always helpful to have at least one level above your enemies and the game becomes pretty manageable. However, I am looking forward to how ROCKFISH Games further improves combat and further balance out enemies to make dogfights more fun in the game.
While most Early Access titles have a lot of technical issues and glitches, I was surprised how stable the early access release of EVERSPACE 2 is. Throughout my 20 hour+ gameplay, I do not remember a single time where the game crashed on me or I was unable to complete a certain quest because the game glitched out. There were no visual hiccups either however I did encounter a few visual dips but those were probably because of the fact that I was using a fairly old GPU during my testing phase. Surprisingly, the game stayed fairly in the higher 50s on Ultra even on an AMD R9 290 which was released nearly 7 years ago.
Switching back to a modern AMD Radeon 5700 XT removed those slight frame drops as well. During my preview, the max resolution I tested was 2K and the build was extremely stable even on high activity locations and during combat scenarios where a lot of fighters were fighting on the screen. The game holds extremely well in both low traffic and high-traffic areas. I also tried the game both with a mouse and keyboard and an Xbox One controller. The game fully supports both the PS4 and Xbox One controller so if you prefer playing with a controller, you are set on that front. There’s plug-and-play support so even if you plug-in a controller while already playing the game, it will instantly switch to the controller scheme.
One thing that I did notice in the game was that there is no option for custom-binding controllers at this point. While the default control scheme is pretty good and can be managed fairly well after some time, it would have been certainly better if I could have moved a few keys here and there to suit my own playstyle. Since the game is still in Early Access, I am hopeful that the full release will have a custom key binding option along with other detailed control options to play around with. Apart from the custom controllers, there are a few other small things as well that I would like to see in the full game.
Having a local map would certainly help in the game. Navigating is not easy out in the space and sometimes you just start to lose your bearings while flying around. A local map displaying all Points-of-interest, enemy locations, and other bits in your current area will certainly help in order to get our bearings straight. I understand that the game wants us to find items on our own in the space however once we have located them, having them marked on the map would certainly help us so that we can visit them later if we have to sometime later in the game. The game has markers on the screen but sometimes it becomes too overwhelming on the screen to have so many icons on the screen to keep track of. Having a map will certainly help.
Another thing I noticed while playing the new build is that the camera appeared to be a little too close to the ship which made looking around a little hectic. While it was okay for most parts, navigating in tight spaces was a problem because of this close camera angle. Even on the ‘far’ setting, the camera is not really far from the ship, and this is evident especially when you have to back up a little, and you end up hitting everything, and your ship starts rolling causing you to lose your sense of direction completely. I found the angle to be just right in the prototype build but in this Early Access build, I found it a little zoomed into the ship. It could be just me but a little backed out camera option would certainly come in handy for a lot of scenarios in the game. After spending quite a decent amount of time with the Early Access build, these points are something that stayed in my mind throughout the time, and thought I would write them here if anyone else notices them too and would like to have them implemented in the full release of the game.
EVERSPACE 2 is shaping up to be an excellent title. Despite the Early Access tag, the game is in excellent shape even now. I am now even more curious for future updates for the game and see how ROCKFISH GAMES makes it even better. There are still a lot of promised features that still have to arrive in the game which means that the full release is going to be a massive space shooter with hours and hours of content added into it. With Elite Dangerous: Odyssey delayed for a later release and Star Citizen having no proper future plans, if you are craving a decent space-shooter, I will heavily recommend that you jump into the game. Ignore that Early Access tag because the game has tons of content even now and in excellent shape which is only going to get bigger and better.
