Exploring the New Everspace 2 Game: A Space Trading and Combat Adventure
Space trading games are a rare breed in the current gaming market, and most recent space games tend to focus on combat or survival aspects of landing on uncharted planets. However, Everspace 2 represents a unique jump for the franchise, bringing back the space trading aspect with a matching control scheme, along with combat and a full-fledged story.
A Return to the Old Space Trading Genre
Everspace 2 is a sequel to its predecessor, which was more of an action roguelike space combat game with randomly generated missions for upgrades and cache. In contrast, Everspace 2 is closer to the niche X franchise, which offers players quite a bit of freedom in what they want to do with their time. In Everspace 2, you play as protagonist Adam Roslin, who teams up with freelancer Decks to help his injured friend Ben escape from the game's main location, the DMZ.
A Compelling Story
While the story in Everspace 2 is ultimately still an excuse for players to travel across various star systems and fight different factions, it manages to be quite an enjoyable ride with a surprising number of twists and turns. The varied mission designs make for a unique experience, and players can focus purely on the story or delve into the side content for even more excitement.
A Plethora of Side Content
Everspace 2 is a complete RPG with a loot system and various forms of progression, offering side content in all shapes and sizes. From procedurally generated random missions that pop up while players are doing something else to more focused side quests with their story arcs and massive dungeons-like locations that players can finish to get their hands on legendary equipment. The fleshed-out faction system means that the actions players take while employed by one faction might adversely or positively impact their standing with another one.
Combat with a Variety of Options
Combat in Everspace 2 takes a few cues from classic games, offering players quite a few options for tricking out their ship's weaponry. From limited missiles that deal considerable damage to rail guns that can be used to snipe from a distance and shotgun-styled flat cannons that can wreak havoc at close range, space combat can often be either long drawn out grueling affairs or quick short bursts of lasers and missiles flying everywhere before players decimate an entire squad, depending on the situation players find themselves in.
Control Your Ship with Six Degrees of Freedom
When it comes to how players actually control their ship in space, Everspace 2 offers a control scheme designed around offering six degrees of freedom. Players can strafe, move forward and back, roll, turn up, and turn down in just about any direction, which ends up feeling quite intuitive, especially when players explore derelict shipwrecks and abandoned asteroid mines on a semi-regular basis.
Despite the massive scale of some of its star systems, Everspace 2 is a much more focused game, interested in the factions and their politics in the DMZ instead of trying to model an entire galaxy. The variety of combat options, side content, and a compelling story makes Everspace 2 a game well worth exploring for any fan of space trading and combat games.