Evochron Legacy Review

I’ve been dipping my toe into the space sim genre for a few months now. If we stick with the swimming metaphor for a second, opening up Evochron Legacy is like jumping into the deep end with a set of bricks tied to your ankles and wrists.

Evochron is simply staggering in terms of mechanics, content and open-ended gameplay. The player is dropped into a galaxy filled with possibilities. Trading, escort missions, construction, bounties, dogfights, supply runs, exploration, building outposts. That’s a fairly comprehensive list at first glance but it's just a microcosm of the possibilities Evochron offers.

At the same time the game isn't one for the first-time pilot. Evochron strives for scientific accuracy and every action you take from within your craft is effected by incredibly well-modeled newtonian physics. All of this means that you go in expecting something akin to Elite: Dangerous and come out a qualified NASA test pilot.

Okay, that might be an exaggeration but the intricacies of piloting, space travel, docking and landing are so innumerate that even after a substantial time in the game I was still learning new ways to glide through the stars. Evochron is such a satisfying experience that something as simple as landing your craft on a planet is exciting and tense.

Transitions from space to planet surfaces are completely seamless. You can point your craft at the nearest planet and visit every nook and cranny it has to offer. These approaches have to be carefully piloted, though, especially when adverse weather conditions can mean you’re hurtling through ion storms and dust clouds with no real clue when you might slam face-first into a mountain.

Combat is fairly rudimentary and similar to other space sims - aim your ship in the right direction and press fire. However, the former part of that notion makes dogfights sharp, intense and intricate. Oftentimes a battle is decided by who has the best mobility, not who has the bulkiest weapon systems.

There are no rules in this game, either, offering the player complete freedom to make whatever choices (whether ill-advised or not) they want. Fly anywhere, shoot anything. Change out your ship’s components in a incredible variety of ways: weapons, engines, fuel, crew, hardpoint mounts, softpoints, wings, engines, configurations. Sadly the only lacking feature was an option to colour my spacecraft in shocking pink.

Single-player and multiplayer are linked in Evochron. Everything you do in single player affects the multiplayer universe and vice-versa. You can go online and interact with other players or sit inside a AI-filled galaxy instead. Despite the game’s steep learning curve, gameplay online isn't a warzone of flying newbie-debris - the galaxy is big enough for everyone. As the game is fairly new on the market you might find the multiplayer space slightly empty - a reflection of the small (but growing) player base.

Now, I hope you're sitting down, because I’m about to drop a bombshell on you: Evochron Legacy is only about 400MB in size. That’s right, all of this content fits into a game that less than half a gigabyte in size. How has it managed that, I may hear you asking. Well, because one of the main flaws in this game is its looks. The graphical fidelity of Evochron is akin to those we saw in the early 2000s. In places the game doesn't look that much better than the janky cutscenes we got in 90s floppy-disk titles. If graphics are a major tick for your when it comes to your space sims then Evochron may disappoint. That’s not saying that the game is bad-looking, far from it, it just doesn't prioritise looks over what’s under the bonnet.

Another point that may leave space fans downhearted is that after watching huge capital ships float past - shiny juggernauts that every ship’s captain would like to pilot - the player will find out that they can’t actually pilot them. Size isn’t everything, sure, but it can be very disappointing to see the pinnacle of spacefaring technology in a game and then be told that you’ll never be able to get it.

Evochron Legacy is a love-letter to the space sim genre and it's a well-received one. The game offers a veritable smorgasbord of options for the player to explore and is probably one of the only games on the market that offer this level of freedom. If you can look past the somewhat-dated graphics and the empty expanses of space that will greet you in the multiplayer zones, Evochron will suck away your time and keep you enthralled for many an hour.