LOOTING STARS

EVERSPACE 2 might be the Diablo in space we've always wanted

- Ian Evenden

The fact that 2003’s Freelancer never got a sequel is one of the greatest travesties in PC gaming. Digital Anvil’s third-person space shooter plonked you into a galaxy with a linear storyline but enough freedom to trade and fight as it suited you. PC Gamer gave it 90%, calling it an “expertly crafted space adventure” and “one of the best examples of this genre we’ve ever seen”. Remember that.

Everspace 2 is not Freelancer. If anything, it’s better. It’s the same sort of third-person open worldish interplanetary adventure, Diablo in spaaaaaaace, an RPG in which you play a conglomeration of engines and lasers as much as its pilot, and a sequel to 2017’s Everspace. It’s different from its predecessor in one crucial way: the roguelike elements are gone. In Everspace, death was inevitable, baked into the game so that credits earned during a run could be used to buy perks and improve your character for the next one. Not so in Everspace 2, where death merely brings up the reload checkpoint screen and a chance to try again.

The original Everspace game loop was apparently not as popular as it could have been, so German developer Rockfish has reverted to type. The studio’s fish-favoring founders were also behind Fishlabs, which made the Galaxy on Fire