Everspace 2 — It's pretty good

[King Crispy]

Third game has been announced. It received funding from the German government.

[Bertram_Tung]

I put about 50 hours into the game back in 2023. I enjoyed it when played it, but I wasn't satisfied. I'm pretty sure I stopped playing because of how much I hate puzzles... a visceral hatred of puzzles. Ain't nobody got time for that. However, I will say that unlike a lot of game Devs, the Everspace Devs often responded to feedback on Steam forums - which was nice. Wading through the abuse and idiots was (or is) probably rough, though.

Perhaps I have rose-tinted nostalgia for "Freelancer", and none of the space adventure games I've played have scratched that itch. "No Man's Sky" is pretty awesome, but I also like a good story, with humans (not multiplayer). "Rebel Galaxy" was interesting, too, but felt more of an arcade shooter. I recently picked up "Spacebourne 2" and "Underspace" during the big Winter sale on Steam, but haven't had a chance to play either.

If you want a good open space sim in a world that feels alive, allows you freedom & trading, has exploration and piracy, and that's better than Freelancer your only choice is Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos (2001). Massively underrated. But you'll need to spend a little bit of effort getting it to work on modern systems. And you'll need a few post release updates created by the developer, like Mouse control and other QOL tweaks. Oh and a community patch that fixes some very annoying bugs toward the end of the campaign. It also uses newtonian physics which I am assuming you're okay with since you want to avoid "arcadey" games.

[rusty_shackleford]

Never cared much for trading in these games because it's inevitably easy to exploit, hard to think of a way to not make it so while also not being boring.

[Tangerine]

Third game has been announced. It received funding from the German government.

If you're getting boatloads of money from the government, you aren't indie.

[campersinc]

Never cared much for trading in these games because it's inevitably easy to exploit, hard to think of a way to not make it so while also not being boring.

Often I see trading as an afterthought in many games - whereas to make it fun, it could have more focus:
- Outfitting your ship for each kind of cargo.
- Haggling and setting trade contracts.
- Selecting escorts and/or ship party composition for defense.
- Selecting crewmen based upon what kind of cargo needs to be loaded, secured, and downloaded.
- Planning routes based upon risk and profit.

If you want a good open space sim in a world that feels alive, allows you freedom & trading, has exploration and piracy, and that's better than Freelancer your only choice is Independence War 2: Edge of Chaos (2001). Massively underrated. But you'll need to spend a little bit of effort getting it to work on modern systems. And you'll need a few post release updates created by the developer, like Mouse control and other QOL tweaks. Oh and a community patch that fixes some very annoying bugs toward the end of the campaign. It also uses newtonian physics which I am assuming you're okay with since you want to avoid "arcadey" games.

Sounds interesting, but I think there's a limit to suspension of disbelief when it comes to playing older games. After so many years of tech improvements, it's very difficult to get into older games, even ones I used to play for dozens of hours. I recently played the Mass Effect (Legendary Edition), and it was showing its age. This is partly why I don't go back and play games like Freelancer, cause I know if I boot it up, it's just going to disappoint.

[Bertram_Tung]

after 280 hours I think I am basically done with Everspace 2. I think I just have like 1 or 2 sidequest remaining which opened up after all of the final DLC story was completed, just to grind for a unique high level ship. Not really interested in that, though. Not much of an Endgame guy.

Enjoyed it thoroughly. I will miss it.

[nullSector]

Dropped this game some hours in, it wasn't bad but just didn't have an interesting enough hook. I didn't really like the design of the ships, too cartoony I guess. Started to feel tedious even though only a couple of hours had passed, maybe the combat just wasn't to my taste.