Chris InglisEverspace 2 is a single-player space shooter with RPG elements, developed and published by Rockfish Games. After a very successful kickstarter in 2019 that I jumped on straight away, Everspace 2 released on Steam early access on January 18, 2021. The full release was expected sometime in 2022, however was delayed until 2023 and we now have a release date of April 6. If you’ve played 2017’s Everspace, take out the roguelike element and then add an epic story and open world RPG exploration. If Everspace 2 is your first entry into the series, I’d go so far as to say this is comparable to the next evolution of 2003’s Freelancer.
Everspace 2 continues the story of Adam Roslin from the first part of the series and currently has four huge star systems that can be explored by space pilots. Players experience Adam’s emotional journey and personal development from an immortal clone space pilot to an individual character whose death has final consequences in an open-world action RPG. Essentially Everspace 2 is a looter shooter in space set in a persistent world with amazingly detailed graphics, and it is fantastic. It’s everything I wanted after playing the original game, and it received six massive content updates over two years of Early Access development. The changes from the first game to the second are exactly what I wanted as a fan of the genre, and now full release is just six weeks away.
“EVERSPACE 2 has been, by far, our biggest and most ambitious project at ROCKFISH Games and a true labour of love over the five years it’s been in development, the last two of which in Early Access,” says ROCKFISH Games CEO Michael Schade. “With our release date revealed, we can see a light at the end of the tunnel where our amazing community and players all over the world new to the series will get to experience this adventure full of exciting, white-knuckle space combat and beautiful handcrafted deep space and planetside locations to explore. We’ve invested a hefty eight-digits budget into creating the game we’ve always wanted to make, and the team is now hard at work finaling and polishing all of our launch day content to perfection. Beyond the final chapter of the EVERSPACE 2’s story, there’s still a lot to see!”
As EVERSPACE 2 approaches launch, ROCKFISH Games has piloted away from generation 8 consoles. “Our vision for EVERSPACE 2 has taken us beyond the limitations of previous generation consoles. Our team has spent a significant amount of time trying to create an experience that would satisfy our fans on Xbox One and PlayStation 4, but downscaling EVERSPACE 2 to those platforms does not hit the level of quality that we want to deliver,” said Schade. “We’ll be in touch with backers who pledged for copies on console during our Kickstarter to ensure interest is still there for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S versions of the game and offer refunds in the event they do not have access to those platforms.”
Everspace 2 is available to play now on Steam early access as well as GOG.com and will launch v1.0 on PC on April 6, 2023.
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