![]() ![]() As the story progresses you find you have a bigger role to play in the ongoing space conflicts. There are a number of competing factions that weave through the story and you attempt to acquire the resources you need to make your escape to a remote, far off system where no one will find you. The premise is strong: you are one of the last living clone of a high ranking officer in the Colonial Fleet, but the cloning program has been made illegal, and now you’re on the run from both the Colonial Fleet and its enemies. Unfortunately, the narrative and the characters quickly became background noise, good for little more than an occasional chuckle. Like Diablo or Borderlands, the pursuit of shiny new loot was the main motivation that pushed me to keep playing and exploring. This is a massive game and a major time investment, but if you take it in chunks and work your way through each system one at a time, it can be a relaxing and satisfying experience. Frontier Developments predicts 30 hours to complete the campaign, but with the amount of XP farming you have to do just to keep up, it could be twice that. Around halfway through, the story missions start jumping up two full levels between each one, meaning you’ll need to spend a significant amount of time off the critical path farming XP in order to continue. If you try to mainline the story and only stop for side quests when they’re convenient, you’ll eventually fall behind the level of enemy ships so much you won’t be able to continue. The need to constantly improve your gear and level eventually becomes a hindrance. Sometimes tough enemies will force you to use your ships special abilities - like EMP blasts or short-range teleports - and I burned through healing and defensive consumables like candy, but your effectiveness in combat has a lot more to do with your gear and your level than your flying prowess. ![]() ![]() Most fights can be won by simply getting into range of the enemies and bursting them down as quickly as possible. ![]() Having the full range of motion does make combat a little less spectacular than other arcade shooters like Squadrons. It's a clever way to shortcut a true open world map, and it helped me to be able to break down the infinite expanse of outer space into more digestible sections. You can leave any map instantly and return to the current overworld by initiating your hyperdrive, and because the celestial bodies in each system maintain their position in scale, it creates a sense that you're always traveling through a single, continuous space, even when short load screens interrupt the flow. There's seven separate overworlds, each representing a different star system, from which you can travel between individual maps that range in size from quick shootouts around an asteroid to massive industrial complexes and outer space cities. While not technically open-world, it does a great job of creating the illusion that it is one. The explorable galaxy is filled with side missions, puzzles, races, combat challenges, and countless secrets to discover, and for the most part, you're free to go wherever you want and experience it at your own pace. If you wanted to take an open world RPG like The Witcher or Dragon Age and turn it into a space shooter, you'd end up with something close to Everspace 2. ![]()
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