I’ll admit it—I came into EVERSPACE 2: Galactic Edition straight off a Star Fox binge, and that’s not exactly the gentlest transition. Nintendo’s Star Fox is quick, arcade-y, and over in a flash—barrel roll, blast, done. So, when I booted up Rockfish Games‘ sprawling space shooter, expecting something similarly bite-sized, I was in for a bit of a shock. This is not a snack. This is a full-course meal, and it took me a few hours to adjust my palate accordingly.

EVERSPACE 2: Galactic Edition was released for Nintendo Switch 2 on August 12, 2026. It was first released for Steam (PC) on April 6, 2023, followed by PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S on August 15, 2023. It is a single-player, third-person space combat game with a heavy dose of action-RPG DNA baked in—think looter-shooter sensibilities transplanted into a cockpit, with exploration, mining, crafting, and a genuine story campaign wrapped around the dogfighting.

Searching for One’s Identity

EVERSPACE 2 puts you in the shoes of Adam Roslin, a clone pilot waking up with fragmented memories in the war-torn Cluster 34—a region of space carved up by rival factions, corporate interests, and the scars of old conflicts. Without spoiling too much, Adam’s journey is as much about piecing together who he was as it is about surviving who he’s become. The game leans into themes of identity, memory, and what it means to be a copy of a person rather than the person themselves.

It’s a surprisingly introspective backbone for a game that also wants you to blow up pirate frigates for loot. There’s a running thread about found family too—the crew you accumulate along the way each carries their own baggage, and the writing gives them enough room to breathe that they don’t feel like quest-dispensers. It won’t rewrite what sci-fi storytelling can do, but it’s earnest, well-paced, and occasionally lands harder than you’d expect from a game about space trucking.

As for the Galactic Edition specifically, this bundle rolls the base game together with the Titans and Wrath of the Ancients expansions plus the Supporter Pack cosmetics, and altogether you’re looking at well over 50 hours if you want to see everything Cluster 34 has to offer. I won’t lie—the opening hours are a slow burn. The tutorial systems, the early ship, and the modest weapon loadout all feel a bit muted next to the arcade rush I’d just come from. But stick with it, because once the RPG systems start opening up and the ship roster expands, the game properly takes off, and by the midpoint I was fully hooked.

A Full-Blown RPG in Space with Ships

Gameplay-wise, EVERSPACE 2 sits somewhere between a space sim and a loot-driven RPG, and it manages that balance better than I expected. Combat is fast and weighty, with shields, hull, and energy management all demanding attention mid-fight, and different ship classes—interceptors, gunships, and bombers—genuinely change how you approach a skirmish rather than just reskinning the same playstyle.

The inventory and gear systems are where the RPG lineage really shows. Weapons, shield generators, devices, and consumables all drop with varying rarities and modifiers, and there’s a real temptation to constantly tinker with your loadout before every mission. Crafting and mining feed directly into this loop too—flying out to strip an asteroid field for resources so you can upgrade a favorite railgun feels satisfying in a way that a lot of looter-shooters fumble.

Exploration is arguably the game’s secret weapon. The star systems are handcrafted rather than procedurally generated, and it shows—hidden caches, environmental puzzles, and derelict stations reward genuine curiosity rather than just ticking off map icons. Switch 2’s portable form factor actually suits this kind of unhurried poking-around surprisingly well; this became a game I’d happily dip into for twenty minutes at a time just to clear out one more pocket of a system. 

Visuals That Come At a Cost

Visually, this is a good-looking port. The art direction leans into painterly nebulae, chunky industrial ship design, and genuinely gorgeous planetary vistas, and Switch 2’s hardware renders it all with more fidelity than I expected going in. The sound design holds up its end too—weapon fire has real punch, engine hums fill the cockpit nicely, and Gero Goerlich’s score does a lot of heavy lifting during the quieter exploration stretches.

Performance is the one real asterisk here. The Switch 2 version locks to 30 fps but keeps a sharp 1080p resolution in handheld and a crisp upscaled 4K resolution in its docked mode. Rockfish has clearly trimmed back particle density and some background effects to keep things stable—a sensible cutback given the hardware and one that mostly doesn’t hurt the game’s identity. Where does it bite the most? The combat! Despite a rock-solid frame time, aiming at 30 fps in this shooter is incredibly hard when drones are shooting at you in all directions. I feel like 40 fps mode could have been possible for this port, but considering the weaker CPU of the Switch 2, I could be wrong here.

Real Talk

EVERSPACE 2: Galactic Edition is a genuinely substantial package on Switch 2—a slow-starting but ultimately rewarding space RPG with a story worth caring about, loot systems worth chasing, and exploration worth savouring, especially in handheld mode. The 30 fps cap and softened effects are an understandable compromise for the hardware, but they do blunt the combat’s edge more than I’d like. If you’re coming in expecting Star Fox’s arcade snap, recalibrate your expectations—this is a marathon, not a sprint, and it mostly sticks the landing.

FINAL SCORE: 80/100