Everspace 2 Review

ign.com:

Explosive, colorful, and punchy, Everspace 2 combines the looter-shooter RPG treadmill with arcade space dogfights to build an interesting combo that has surprising diversity in how you can play it. While it looks like a space sim on the outside, and it has nods to the stuff you do in that genre like fight pirates, mine asteroids, and build reputation, Everspace 2 shouldn't be mistaken for one. To its benefit and its detriment, this is a through-and-through lootin’ and shootin’ beast that's much more interested in entertaining you with flashy fights and reconfiguring your fighter in a mind-boggling number of ways rather than simulating – or stimulating you with – anything else.

That right there should probably tell a lot of you whether you want to play it at all. The other bit is that this is technically a sequel, but… not really. The first Everspace is a roguelite where every mission is procedurally generated, while this one is a more traditional action RPG about taking on a main story quest and side missions, solving open-world puzzles, and blowing through randomly generated contracts for the 50 or so hours it takes to finish the main story. Or 100 hours to play all of it. Then a few dozen more optimizing your builds to bash away at the randomly generated endgame bits, if you like those.

That's all to say Everspace 2 is pretty different from the original, though it is a direct sequel in terms of story: You're one of those clone pilots you played as in the first one's roguelite framework, but there's no more coming back from the dead. You might be happy about that if you loved the story in the first one, and you might be a bit confused at times if you skipped it, but there's a cache of really thorough – if largely