Everspace 2 Titans review — Big and monstrous DLC and some endgame rebalance

Everspace 2 is an excellent game through and through. As you can read in my review, I enjoyed the story, finding it to be far deeper than expected and expansive at over 30 hours of bespoke universe to explore. The music is pure fire, the combat is challenging, gear progression is solid. The only real hitch I found was technical when I reviewed it – something that’s been resolved by a recent move to Unreal Engine 5. Playing into the endgame, I did also hit a snag with the loop when I started running rifts as they tend to funnel you into a specific ship and weapon archetype. Still, what’s on offer is easily one of the best arcade space sim / looter shooter games on the market. As the team at Rockfish ship their very first paid DLC, it’s time to return to the world of clones, tense combat, and one highly-quotable smartass robot.

The expansion, entitled “Titans” tells you much of what you need to know. Dr. Maya Kapadia wants your help in researching an ancient species of leviathan that was previously believed to be long-since extinct. In fact, much of your initial research uncovers massive bone graveyards of these creatures. Ultimately, you do uncover the region of space where these creatures have taken up residence, but you aren’t the only one.

While performing your research you’ll encounter a religious faction called the Redeemers. You’ll have occasionally run into Redeemer Drones, Crusader, Disciples, and Inquisitors in the main campaign. These religious zealots have been completely brainwashed by a dark energy brought to this universe by the Ancient Wardens, and they believe that the Titans are how they will transcend to the next world.

Flying inside the creature, you’ll find that it’s segmented like an earthworm. Each of the chambers have some sort of grossness to poke, tickle, or shoot to try to figure out what’ll piss it off bad enough to either let you further in, or spit you out entirely. You’ll want to dive in as far as possible as you’ll find a precious new piece of treasure at the center — I’ll let you find it for yourself, but going in with my ultra-wide bomber was a non-starter. It made the Leviathan angry, I struggled to not bounce off of the various innards. It’s a little like the movie Fantastic Voyage as you dive deep into the beast’s gullet, but with a loot piñata at the center! Well, as long as you don’t piss it off so bad that it throws up.

Outside of the indescribably-large leviathans, there is another type of threat to tackle. While jumping between star systems you’ll suddenly encounter a strange signature in space. If you investigate, you’ll find a massive Dreadnought, currently under assault by bandits intent on seizing the massive warship for themselves. Where the leviathan is effectively a giant space whale, this ship is massive and will require multiple small missions to finally seize control.

There are plenty of new goodies to find with the Titan expansion. New catalysts, weapons, armors, components, sets, legendaries, consumables, cosmetics, and more give you another turn at the loot wheel, and now with two “farming” destinations beyond just grinding rifts, there’s a reason to get back into the grind.

These new destinations, along with some rebalancing, is my favorite part of this expansion. Not just because it’s a new place to explore, but because you CAN explore them. No longer do I feel like my only viable option is a heavily armored fighter, instead giving me a reason to build up a stable of various ships. My ultra-wide bomber ship is awful at maneuvering inside the giant leviathan, but it does a great job strafe/bombing against the Dreadnought. Similarly, there are a handful of objectives that can be accomplished quietly, making a stealth build once again viable.

Once you’ve gone through the initial fight with either of these missions you’ll start to see incursions into your campaign. Redeemer cultists, pirates, warships, and more will start harassing you, raising the overall enemy and mission diversity of the game. In this way it folds in nicely with the existing content, not just an endgame repeatable dungeon.

On paper, just adding a few more activities and these two mega-missions to the formula doesn’t sound like it’d do enough to crack the endgame repetition around loot but it sure enough does. The endgame rifts were somewhat repetitive, as is tradition with looter-shooter titles where you essentially jump into ridiculously difficult and overwhelming boss fights with tough lieutenants, entire squadrons of foes, and more red and blue lasers firing in all directions than an entire season of classic G.I. Joe. Now there are huge new threats on the horizon and finding their weak spots while fighting off hordes of zealots mixes things up in a whole new way.

The only hitch with this I can possibly think of is that this is a $15 ask for what is essentially 4-5 hours of content. That said, it is also content that laces into the existing game which is, frankly, extensive already. It finally feels like what Everspace 2’s endgame was supposed to be. Given how much I love the base game, I think it’s worth the ask, even if you could argue that it should have been in there at launch.

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