Everspace 2 Preview

Everspace 2 is a huge open-world spaceship exploration game with an emphasis on trading, exploring and mining. It is being developed by Rockfish Games and is due for release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC later this year.

Recently, I was lucky enough to be able to play a preview of Everspace 2, the build version was an early version and so only contained a very few amount of missions and mission types and the whole open world was not available in the build I was playing. When the game does release later this year in early access there will be more mission variety, more activities to do in the open-world and a bigger map.

Everspace 2 has you starting off by following your crewmates as you attempt to mine some resources to sell at a trader to make some money. This intro sequence was heavily scripted and ended in a huge set piece ship battle including about 50 different ships fighting for you or the bandits. This sequence was very fun and acted as not only a tutorial but also a look into what is to come when Everspace 2 does eventually launch later this year.

Other games in this genre that have come out over the past few years are more simulator-esque and provide less emphasis on exploring from the start. Everspace 2 isn’t a simulator and gets you into action from the word go, whereas in Elite Dangerous for example, you would spend the first few hours getting to grips with flying your ship and learning what you need to do in the world. Everspace 2 is pretty much a pick-up-and-play title, you won’t have to spend much time learning how your ship works, as the controls are very intuitive and easy to learn. This helps the game as instead of players getting confused in the first few hours, you can get straight to the core of it and start exploring the single star system that is available right now.

Everspace 2 does have a few ships to choose from in this build of the game. The game will also feature full VR support and will have a big selection of ships that have been designed with VR in mind. Everspace 2 also brings back what made the first game so unique and different from other games; loot systems and role-playing elements of the game, whilst there wasn’t a huge amount of this in the build I played, the devs have promised that these features will be making a comeback when release rolls around.

Graphically, Everspace 2 looks stunning, and runs fantastically well, although I was playing a preview build, I was amazed at how well this game was running on my RTX 2070
Super card, I was able to play at a solid 4K60 throughout my time. From the stars to the space stations, this game really does look gorgeous at any angle, dog fights were especially stunning with ships shooting each other and having all the little bits of asteroids in your vision whilst you’re trying to dodge enemies and shoot your guns to destroy them. This game really does look the part and as early access goes on, this game can only look better.