Featuring a special guest appearance by the Steam Deck!
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/76961/everspace-2-galactic-edition-switch-2-review
Everspace 2 shadow dropped onto the Switch 2 out of nowhere a couple weeks back. This was a game I had backed on kickstarter in 2019 and had played across both PC and Xbox. I had long lamented that there wasn’t a Switch port, as the Switch version of the original Everspace had quickly become my preferred platform for that game when it arrived in 2018. So regardless of this review being a little late, I couldn’t resist putting this new version of Everspace 2 through its paces, as well as comparing it against what had been my handheld solution for the game up to this point, the Steam Deck.
Unlike the original Everspace, which was structured as a procedural roguelike, Everspace 2 presents a more straightforward RPG structure. You explore a large map which slowly opens up as you work your way through the main story. Along the way you’ll pick up sidequests, earn experience points, buy and unlock upgrades, and customize your ship. Its a pretty aggressive playstyle shift from the original, and put me off initially. It loses some of the addictive replayability of the original but in turn brings with it some of its own advantages. Narrative is a much stronger focus this time around. Regions are more handcrafted leading to overall better level design. And the more authored progression makes Everspace 2 much more approachable for those not already deeply invested in space combat sims.
Most of the underlying mechanics for your ship carry over from the first game. You have various slots onto which you can equip primary and secondary weapons, gadgets, and other equipment. Weapons have separate damage ratings for shields versus hulls, making it important that you regularly toggle between them to fit different enemy types. New gear can be acquired through drops from destroyed enemies, scavenged from the environment, or purchased at shops. Everspace 2 does a great job of trickling better gear into your inventory making it feel like you’re constantly getting just a little better. Building up your ship and engaging with enemies big and small remains a strength of Everspace 2 just as it was in the original Everspace.
The one area in which I do feel Everspace 2 struggles in its transition from procedural roguelike to full RPG is in its segmented world design. The world is far from seamless, rather it is a collection of zones bridged by a large overworld map, which is presented as a sort of scaled down version of the system which you explore via hyperspace. This overworld has to be loaded into and then back out of anytime you want to go anywhere. This means that for a lot of quick sidequests you’ll pick up the quest, load out of that region and into the overworld, fly to the objective region, load into it, do whatever it is you need to do, load back out, fly back, and load into quest giver’s region to turn the completed quest in. There are a lot of loading screens and while they aren’t unreasonably long on Switch 2, they aren’t quick either. It's a game design problem that is present in every version of the game, and smart prioritization can minimize it, but especially on lower powered hardware like the Switch 2 (or to be fair the Steam Deck) it can get a little annoying.
But speaking of the Steam Deck, I was curious to see how the Switch 2 would hold up to my existing handheld Everspace 2 experience. I should be clear that Everspace 2 is not technically Steam Deck verified, but it does have default Steam Deck graphical settings that run well. So I’ll be referencing those as my point of comparison. The Switch 2 runs Everspace 2 at thirty frames-per-second. Docked it runs at an underlying resolution of 900p, and handheld runs at about 720p. Both of these are then of course upscaled. By comparison, by default the Steam Deck runs Everspace 2 at 30 frames-per-second and only 360p. It is a very noticeably sharper image on Switch 2, but unfortunately the comparison isn’t as straightforward as that. Part of the optimization for Switch 2 seems to have been some aggressive level of detail culling. LOD pop in is an issue for Everspace 2 on most platforms but on Switch 2, you occasionally get very garbled models uncomfortably close to the camera. In fact the first ship you see in the opening cutscene has a visible hole in the mesh that doesn’t appear when running the game on Steam Deck.
Other issues on Switch 2 are a bit stranger. One overall inconsequential cut but one that does bother me specifically, is the removal of the cockpit view option. My preferred camera perspective for this style of game is in the cockpit, using the actual cockpit instruments as my HUD. While a first person mode persists, the option to have a visible cockpit has been removed, seemingly for performance reasons. I’m surprised that the cost of rendering the cockpit versus your actual ship would have that significant a difference for performance.
But the biggest issue, and one that I do find affects my enjoyment of the game. Is noticeable input lag. I spent a long time fiddling with the stick sensitivity and input smoothing as I struggled to aim while playing the Switch 2 version. When I swapped back to the Steam deck I was shocked by how much more responsive it feels. Of my issues with the Switch 2 port this feels like the one most legitimately in need of a fix. The game's aggressive aim assist alleviates the issue somewhat but not enough to eliminate the issue entirely.
Everspace 2 in isolation is a bold reimagining of Everspace as a series. And in most ways it delivers on that vision. World exploration is a little clunky but combat and progression remain as fun as ever. It is a more authored experience and that benefits the story and world it presents. On the other hand, outside of image quality, the Switch 2 is a surprisingly noticeable compromise as compared to the game running on Steam Deck. Yes I get a higher resolution but that only makes the level of detail changes more blatantly obvious. I’d be curious if a lower resolution sixty frames-per-second mode could alleviate some input lag. You can certainly still fight your way through on this version, but you may find that quickly tracking small targets becomes needlessly frustrating very fast. There are other more mild issues to be addressed as well but the controls need to be a priority.
Topic: Everspace 2 - Galactic Edition (Switch 2) Review (Read 18 times)
