Rockfish Games might not be known by everybody, before their rebrand, they were formerly known as Fishlabs Entertainment. Fishlabs Entertainment spearheaded 3D mobile gaming for nearly a decade and received dozens of awards for the games they developed. However, through a series of dramatic events, the Co-Founders of Fishlabs Entertainment set out empty handed and started over as Rockfish Games in 2014.

Then in 2015, began a Kickstarter campaign to fund EVERSPACE, a linear roguelike space-shooter, this turned out to be incredibly successful. With their sights aimed at the top, Rockfish Games brought EVERSPACE to Early Access in 2016 which started their rise to popularity. Soon after fully releasing Everspace, they announced EVERSPACE 2, and on 18 January 2021 it went into Early Access.

Now roughly 2 years later, with a lot of development time, and even more changes, EVERSPACE 2 has officially left Early Access on 6 April 2023 for a full release. At its core, it’s clear to see that EVERSPACE 2 was taken in a slightly different direction for the good of the franchise as an Open-World Space Looter-Shooter. It was well worth the wait though, with the story now fully fleshed out and almost no bugs to be found in the gameplay. Rockfish Games have delivered a game that far outshines their first release, but it is missing an aspect or two from EVERSPACE that would’ve helped EVERSPACE 2 shine just a bit brighter.

EVERSPACE 2 takes place several years after the events from EVERSPACE where, you play as Adam Roslin, but with his original body deceased, you now instead pilot his military clone and last instance of who he was but with mostly fragmented memories. You’ll have to try and stay under the Colonial Fleet’s radar while making your way through the universe and hopefully out of the DMZ. While working as a fighter pilot guarding a mining crew for Grady & Brunt, you run into your first encounter with the Bloodstar Bandits, who start you off on your long path to ruin or riches but you won’t be alone on your adventure.

In EVERSPACE 2, the Space Looter-Shooter aspect plays heavily on the fact that you’ll have to gun down enemy ships, and sell or scavenge the remains to better outfit your ship for the sake of increasing your odds of survival. As you progress through the story, you’ll learn more about your original’s past and about yourself while making deals with not-so-legal characters but also befriending others you can trust. However, you don’t know who you can trust or will lead you to your downfall. Just like Adam, you’ll have to stand your ground and push forward for what you want even if it means betraying one or two people along the way.

On your voyage through the seemingly endless galaxy in EVERSPACE 2, travel does take an interesting turn. When you’re inside an area, flying around can feel rather slow unless you use the boost, though that is limited to energy and a recharge period. The alternative that speeds things up, is the Cruise Drive, while it can raise your travel speed considerably, it’ll only allow very minor changes in direction.

The Cruise Drive is incredibly helpful when you have to get from one end of the area to the far side in a hurry, however, it becomes disabled during combat. So, your only options are to use Ship Devices like Teleport to get away from a fight you might not win, or stand your ground and fight. Unless you don’t want to or can’t do either, then your only option is to leave the area using the Supralight Drive.

The Supralight Drive is similar to a warp drive that takes your ship to near lightspeed, though it’s only used to travel from one area to another, no matter how far away it might be. On your travel to the next area when using the Supralight Drive, aside from the incredible sights and amazing visuals, you’ll get the occasional “Distress Signal” or “Unknown Signal”. You can choose to instead deviate from your path and check these out, and they are similar to optional missions per se.

These can contain resources you can harvest, neutral or ally ships in need of help, and in some cases, you might come across a bandit base that typically holds a fair amount of loot, resources, and better ship components. This does make the lengthy travels from one area to another a lot more appealing and keeps the gameplay from becoming dry or monotonous.

Exploring the different areas and sectors is fine but your ship isn’t indestructible. Similar to Everspace, you’ll have bars that indicate your Shield Integrity and Hull Strength. Your shields do eventually recharge at least but Hull Strength will require you to dock at a Spaceport like the Flying Duchess for repairs, or you’ll need to use Nanobots if you’re in the heat of combat and you need some on the fly repairs. Nanobots are one of many consumable items that will help you on your journey, and they come in a variety of types ranging from damage boosters, temporary invisibility, and instant energy recharges to the more rare sector specific decoders that can reveal a higher level area to explore.

Though one of the new mechanics that was added is Ship Armour. This works like a second layer of defense but doesn’t recharge. It self-repairs with each enemy ship you destroy based on the stats provided by your ship plating. You’ll need to be quite meticulous with your choice of ship component, as an example – You can gain more total shield, but the recharge rate is slower. Components come in different rarities, and those rarities bring further bonuses as the rarity climbs. But as the name implies, the rarer components are harder to come by, and sometimes have high resource demands that make them a lot harder to craft.

No ship in EVERSPACE 2 is ever complete without a set of weapons. With two slots for guns and a further two dedicated to missiles, you’ll have a wide range of weapons to choose from. Each gun has its own particular firing method, range, energy, and shield vs. armor damage, so carefully picking and balancing your damage output is key to winning any fights you’ll need to endure. You’ll also find the occasional Elite enemy ship, they usually move a lot faster and have higher shields, armor, and hull strength, missiles can make a big difference in this regard to bring them down. Missiles are just as varied in the sense that they come in EMP, Corrosion, or just pure shield or armor damaging. There are nearly endless combinations between guns and missiles, so you won’t have any issue with finding a combination that suits your playstyle.

One of the new mechanics added is a brand-new crafting system. Provided you have the resources, you can craft ship components or disassemble them for a small portion of resources. Disassembling components can yield blueprints so you can craft specifically what you’re after, or you can get them as an uncommon drop from destroyed enemy ships. The alternative is that you’ll have to run with the improvise option in the crafting menu for guns, ship components and higher tier resources, though this can become wasteful on your hard-earned resources as you don’t know what you’ll get and disassembling doesn’t yield much in return.

Now the part everybody loves. Customization options, you can exchange the outer components of your ship if you want to add your own flare to it but you’ll need to hunt down those components from fallen enemy ships or buy them from shops. The same applies to colors unfortunately. The drop rate for these does seem unnecessarily low considering these provide no bonus and are purely just cosmetic. If you want to make the ship your own, you’ll have to grind for these drops but not all hope is lost. You’ll sometimes find a spaceport that doesn’t just sell components or resources, they sell ships too.  Each ship does have its own unique stats like, hull strength, movement speed, handling, number of slots (for guns, missiles and devices), and ultimate ability.

Each type of ship comes equipped with an ultimate ability that needs to be charged with enemy takedowns, these abilities can change the course of a battle in your favour. But if you don’t want to wait for that, you also have the use of ship devices. These serve as secondary abilities that can also make a difference, devices like teleport that shunt you forward or quantum entanglement that will redirect damage from your ship to an enemy ship in front of you, but there are also so many others to collect and upgrade.

To save the best or worst for last. The biggest game changing dynamic in EVERSPACE 2 is that you can get companions who join you throughout the story. While they usually do form part of the story, they can also give you companion upgrades, these upgrades are quite varied but they give valuable bonuses where you need them most. A few examples of these upgrades would be how much hull strength your nanobot’s consumable restore, discounts from starport shops, passive stat bonuses, tractor beam boosts and so much more.

As previously mentioned, EVERSPACE 2 does feature an absolutely amazing visual design overall. Rockfish Games went all in with their rendition of outer space and with how vast it can be, it’s not at all too much and there is a nice balance between sunlight (if you’re flying past an actual star) and dark space. Though it’s not completely dark, you’ll see other planets that look like they were meticulously placed in each spot, stars dotted here and there. The all too well known hydra are also present in EVERSPACE 2 – The hydra is a strange alien-like plant that can corrode your ship but they’ll also draw you in for a closer look with the vibrant colors and beautiful designs. It all comes together to build a breath-taking and immersive atmosphere that you can actually get lost in.

Though similar to Everspace,EVERSPACE 2 has the same type of cinematics that all look hand painted with watercolours and acrylics mixed with a bit of stop motion animation. You’d think this would cheapen a game like EVERSPACE 2 but it actually adds more depth, even more so with the voice actors playing their parts perfectly.

No game is ever complete if it’s in silence though, unless it’s intentionally silent. EVERSPACE 2 is, as the implied everywhere, best experienced with a headset. The sound engineering is second to none and all unique to their respective roles, the reason why a headset is required is because you get to experience every sound on a totally new level. This raises the immersion factor just that much higher and the overall experience. The voice actors all bring a certain sense of life to their characters and when it comes to the cinematics, even if they are stop motion like, they have such an amazing feel and ambiance.

EVERSPACE 2 had a bit of a rocky start just like its predecessor, but can still receive a standing ovation. With an incredible story, brilliant visuals and sound design, this game is very close to being a masterpiece. The only letdown is that travel in general seems slow for a game that’s supposed to be fast-paced, only time will tell if that changes or stays the same. Here’s to hoping Rockfish Games keeps up the amazing work and releases more content for EVERSPACE 2.

Jay Claassen
Editor, NoobFeed