Difficult and unrewarding.
I have 26 hours into Everspace without attaining more than the most basic level of understanding in the story. The game is a confusing mishmash of exploration with little reward (I flew for four game minutes to find an out-of-the-way wrecked freighter that gave me... 2 scrap?), combat with little success (In the third parsec of sector two I got jumped by TEN Okkar and Outlaw fighters with accompanying drones?), and crafting with little result (I upgraded all my weapons only to be blown apart when the warning not to fly into a black hole came AFTER I had already crossed the event horizon, due to not having a clue what it was?)
I'm fine with dying while playing a game, and I like the persistent perks, but the way this game works is annoying for the sake of being annoying. You develop a loadout that you like, which allows you to make it a little bit further into the game-- then you die and start with basic junk and your body (if you even have the perk to recover anything) is FOUR SECTORS OR MORE AWAY FROM YOU!
That is about 45 minutes to an hour of gameplay just to get MAYBE one or two of the weapons you had upgraded-- which you will have replaced long before you get that far.
The repair and fuel systems are a disaster. Hull repairs are done with nanobots, and you will NEVER find enough of these to be meaningful to your "run". (A run is one iteration through the game.) Sometimes enemies will damage components of your ship, When that happens, you will limp on, hating the game and yourself for playing it, until you're finally shot down. You'll never have the specific resources to actually repair something when that happens, so the best thing you can do is to auger into an asteroid immediately.
Fuel is scarce for no reason, leaving you stuck in parsecs until capital ships arrive-- and you will NEVER defeat one of those.
There's a story, but it only advances when you make it deeper, which means you forget previous installments by the time you get to a new one.
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