I played this game from start to finish and I was frankly unsure about putting a thumb down on recommend. Before being sure this game is not worth it, please read further, just in case.

Thing is, yes, the game is budget, the gameplay is stiff, the motorcycle gameplay is terrible, animations are not nice and the game overall feel cheap or "old"... so I know most people would just shut it down. Most people don't want to spend hard earned, hard to come by money on something that is not worth all of it... It is for theses consumers I felt obligated to put a negative review. I don't want people to go in thinking this is the best game around, it just isn't... but...

But if you are still there reading, I got to add a few things.

This game was made by a very small team and we can see they truly tried, they tried to deliver something cool. The subject chosen is great, the story start intriguing and the final reveal is frankly good honestly. It went further than what I expected. Heroine is simple, even maybe clichee but likable. The music is actually pretty good. The voice actors are trying hard and giving an honest performance (I liked the doctor audio logs the best). Many of the designs of vehicule or space habitat are nice. They put a codez in which expand the world in interestings ways a la Mass Effect. The game is far from being a triple A but it still look kinda cool in itself. It has a "little something" that make you keep playing it despite all its flaws.

So yeah, truth is, the game was short enough to make it worth my time. It was worth it for the story and all the others good things I said. It was worth it for that team that tried to make something cool and if had more means to achieve it, would have made something really good.

So if you can get this game cheap, try it. Give it a chance. I hope the team manage to do more in the future.

Most of the times, I do believe that games deserves to get tried before judged. So I played through the entire game on hardest difficulty and completed all the achievements in the game. To make sure I had enough information to give a fair review of this product.

When I logged into the game for the first time; the game looked clean, polished and the menu was easy to navigate through. the music was also pretty good. I started a new game and I got this introduction cinematic that caught my attention. I liked the idea of being a part of a security group helping out a colony in a new world.

Then we got an ingame cinematic before the game started. I was not very impressed with it. Wasn't a big fan of the dialogue and the animations seemed pretty bad. But I would let it slide for now and just play the game.

I'm not going to spoil anything in this review, so I'll fast foreward 10 hours when I finished the game and list everything that concerned me about this game:

*The Graphics were just bad, didnt matter how good PC I had or how high I put the settings. It did not look great at all.
*FPS/Lags - The performance of this game were not good ranging from 39-15 FPS for me with highest settings and a good PC. The biggest problems were the checkpoint loading. Everytime I went into a checkpoint, the game would stop up. Freeze and you would have windows running the "game is not responding" ritual for 10-20 seconds. Before the game would continue to run again
*The aim in this game is proably one of the worst aims I've ever played with. First of all, they got max sensitivity by default and you can't change it without quitting the game and do it in the main menu. It also had forced mouse smoothing which was a major pain in the butt.
*The controls of the character were borderline frustrating. You would crash on your way through doors and have to fine adjust it untill you got in since the camera angle made it very awkward. There were alot of invisible walls and the maps were very linear design. It was very obvious where you would find "hidden" boxes of loot/materials.
*For some reason the mouse scroll did not work at all in the menu, even the controll menu where you had to scroll to get to next section of the keys.
*The Checkpoint system was bad and often didnt make sense. Sometimes you'd get to checkpoint without much happening while other times you would have completed x-steps in your mission and still not get a checkpoint forcing you to redo alot of steps if you died.
*The Hoverbike did not feel very great. It was almost impossible to controll in low speed and on "high" speed it didnt really feel like it went that fast.
*One thing that bugs me quite often in games and that is animations. This game did not have fluid animations and it felt like the animations were either rushed or the guy making them forgot a few keypoints. Most of the animations were bad.
*The Idle animation did not look good at all in cutscenes.
*There would be certain levels where decals would be flickering
*The Voice in this game was mediocre at best. I know they wanted the main character to sound cute, but it also made her sound like a really stupid woman too at certain dialogues.
*Also seemed like certain keys would interupt voice dialogues
*One of the most frustration parts of this game were one of the last missions where you had to escape. The problem were the explosions being the same color as the ground and surroundings making it more luck bases than skill based to survive.
*I never got to see the cinematic and the whole reveal at the end since the game kept crashing over and over again. And the cinematic just wouldn't start playing.


Overall, I feel like the game had its main focus on a female character trying to look cute and sexy. Highlighting the ass while walking, crouching and aiming. And I should wish the developers would put as much effort into the entire game as they did with the main characters ass.

At this stage I cannot recommend this game to anyone

Everreach: Project Eden is very clearly inspired by the Mass Effect series and had quite some ambitious goals for an indie title, unfortunately the end result is - to be blunt - a janky mess with some fundamental design issues.

While I originally tried the game at launch, I quickly shelved it due to myriad of issues and opted to wait out for some patches. I returned to the game with the 1.03 patch and finished a fairly thorough playthrough of the game in roughly 4 hours. Even with the patch there were quite a few bugs but most of my gripes with the game are not related to those.

So what went wrong?
- Story feels like a side story where nothing interesting happens for ~3.5 hours and then suddenly in the last 30 minutes they try to cram out exposition but whole thing just falls flat. The premise certainly had the ingredients to be interesting, but the poor pacing makes you wade through bland story for the majority of the game and just when things start to get interesting, the game ends.
- Combat still feels floaty, lacks variety, shooting is inaccurate and KB/M controls in general feel imprecise.
- Once you discover that for some reason there seems to be no detection if your gun has a line of sight to the enemy and instead the hitscan detection is based on your crosshair - the combat becomes trivialized. You can simply hide behind walls/rocks/various obstacles and shoot THROUGH them as long as your crosshair is on top of the enemy on the screen.
- Checkpoint system in the game is awful and there are many long sections that could use more checkpoints, some of which reminded me of that infamous "Look at all that JUICE" moment from Gears of War that is often brought up as an example of how to not design your checkpoints.
- Camera is often awful during the gameplay and the cutscenes.
- Game occasionally disables your ability to sprint or even to move mid gameplay just so it can cram out some exposition, this immediately breaks immersion and becomes irritating rather than making the player interested or invested in the story.
- The hoverbike sections... These sections may be some of the worst vehicle sections in an action game in the past decade or two, as you control a hoverbike with a manoeuvrability of a brick while fighting a camera that makes Cloverfield look like the pinnacle of a stable camera work - it doesn't help that these sections are often long and do not have enough checkpoints.

I think at this point it is pretty clear I didn't enjoy my time with Everreach: Project Eden and with the 25$/€ price tag, the game is absolutely impossible to recommend even if you have a good tolerance for jank. For anyone wanting to give the game a go regardless, I'd wait for a 50 or 75% off discount as I do not believe many of the issues with the game are something that can or will be fixed in future patches.

Everreach: Project Eden (EPE) is a sci fi third-person action title with RPG elements. Players impersonate Nora Harwood, a military officer working for the Everreach Corporation, sent to planet Eden to investigate unexplained incidents and loss of communication with the colonial outposts. What initially seems a standard mission very soon turns out to be much more as Nora, along with others, will find herself fighting for survival against increasingly dangerous events.

This game clearly inspires to more popular third person action series, such as Mass Effect to name one, but being an Indie game of course it doesn't reach the same levels of depth, content or mechanics, and that is perfectly fine. Everreach offers diverse gameplay, with combat, exploration of linear but large levels, main and side quests, looting, dialogues with choices, character upgrading and vehicle sections: gameplay variety is one of the main strong suits of the game. While none of its mechanics are very deep or elaborate, the ensemble works just fine and doesn't become stale. Other than that graphics are decent enough even if quite too bright, while voice acting and soundtrack are above average for an Indie title. The story is decent enough to keep players interested and features several pieces of collectible lore.

On the other side, EPE has also several flaws to note: first of all, character and vehicle controls are stiff and rather clunky, same goes for animations, while during cut-scenes the camera wobbles around in a weird manner. Secondly, weapon variety is very limited, featuring only two weapons plus an additional one for the vehicle, the same goes for enemies, varying in size and shapes but basically being only variations of either floating drones or walking human enemies without diverse skills, exception made for few, rare static turrets. Third, combat is not very challenging, because while enemies hurt a lot, they can also be hit while staying behind covers in certain situations, and they are not very smart most of the time, even not reacting to being shot at times: the game could definitely use a Hard mode.

Overall, Everreach is a decent but rough Indie sci-fi action title that proposes some interesting gameplay mechanics and situations; it's not a great game but it's also not terrible by any means, and definitely could be enjoyed by sci-fi third person action games fans. It took me 6 hours to complete all side quests, explore levels thoroughly, open all the loot crates I found and finish the game, there is some replay-ability as you may want to make different choices in another playthrough, or a different skill tree build, but nothing major. Priced at 20€ by default, I would suggest waiting for a sale before buying this game to all except the most hardcore fans of this genre.

Decent

Liked this review, and want to see more of the same quality? Check out Tamaster's Review Archive to see all my Reviews in a single, convenient location.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1929491617


🔵 Pros
+ Varied gameplay mechanics and situations, composing a mix that ultimately works well.
+ Good graphics, soundtrack and decent voice-acted dialogues.
+ Large skill tree with several build possibilities and active skills to unlock.
+ Choices made in dialogues have major consequences on characters and story later on.
+ Meaningful exploration with lots of secret loot caches to find and lore fragments to read.

🔴 Cons
- Clunky character and vehicle movement, annoying wobbly camera during cut-scenes.
- Poor enemy AI in general, rarely pulling off good tactics and unresponsive.
- Only three weapons total: Pistol, Rifle and vehicle Energy Cannon.
- Normal is the highest difficulty available, not enough for expert players.
- Invisible walls in many levels and places instead of natural barriers or "solid" obstacles.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1929987449


🎮 Gameplay Analysis
The gameplay of Everreach divides into Exploration, Character Management, Dialogues and Combat.

Exploration is performed either on foot or using vehicles, though only in vehicle-specific sections. Nora will be faster with her weapons holstered, and running is considerably quicker but also drains stamina. Exploring levels accurately is very important, as resource crates are scattered everywhere often away from the main path, and the resources found in them such as materials or ammo, prove fundamental to upgrade your character. Several crates will need to be opened by clearing logic-based or reflex-based mini-games of various difficulty, some can be attempted many times, while others just once, and can be even very tough, but rewarding, as these special ones give more materials. Exploring also can lead to side quests and lore fragments to understand better what has transpired on Eden.

Character Management consists mainly in upgrading Nora's abilities via an extensive skill tree, and the attribute interface. Looting crates, killing enemies and completing quests gives experience, and every level-up Nora gets skill points to spend in Strength, Agility or Intellect, each slightly improving base stats such as Health or Shields, while unlocking relative abilities in the skill trees. There isn't enough experience in the whole game to get every skill, so choosing your own build is encouraged, unlocking diverse active skills such as deployable barriers or weapon buffs.

Dialogues are mostly straight but sometimes feature choices or additional branches, to know more about a character's backstory. Most NPCs cannot be interacted with and only "important" ones will have any dialogue at all to interact with. Across the story, several dialogues will have major impact on how some characters will act, and what events will unfold, though there are few.

Combat plays out in third person, and features mechanics such as headshots and armor to give a bit more depth to it, but also a rather limited selection of enemies and weapons. The fact enemies can be shot while behind a solid cover, because of how the camera is programmed, is a bit cheesy and in the hands of expert players can waste even the most formidable enemy squadron. If enemies performed flanking maneuvers, or had grenades or other cover-breaking weapons, it would be much better, but that just doesn't happen. Using active abilities can give you the upper hand in combat, as stacking passive and active ones together definitely improves Nora's defense and offense a lot. Enemies hurt a lot and being out of cover against multiple ones means getting blasted in seconds.

🔩 Technical Analysis
PC Specs: RTX2080Ti, Ryzen 3900X, 32GB RAM, NVME SSD
The game generally performs well, without frame-drops, stuttering or other issues to mention. The only case when performance has a big drop is while saving a checkpoint or loading new areas, in these cases even with a NVME drive, loading times take several seconds where the game completely freezes and seems stuck, but then comes back to life. There is some noticeable pop-in of some objects in the distance especially in vehicle sections where movement is faster. Generally the performance is acceptable and it should take a low-mid spec recent build to run this game comfortably.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1929987889

Everreach is a decent Indie action game that proposes some good gameplay ideas and has overall acceptable quality, but is also quite short and has noticeable lack of polishing. It's not a bad game by any means, and sci-fi fans could definitely enjoy it if they can overlook the roughness.

This product was reviewed using a free key provided by the Developers

So to start off I would like to mention that this game looks AMAZING and I was really excited to play the game, however after completing the game in about 4 hours, I found that there were a bit more negatives than positives to be honest. I personally think if the developers were to put in a little more effort and optimize the game, it would be awesome to play.

So firstly, the story is good, but somewhat predictable. The game also feels like it was supposed to be part of a longer game, however there's no game afterwards.

There are a few main issues:

• Your character cannot jump at all, which makes it horrible if you are stuck. (You will need to restart the mission)
  
  
• Have to stop walking to take out your gun or place it in its holster.
  
  
• If you need to reload you also need to stand still.
  
  
• You cannot shoot from a large distance so you have to play close combat.
  
  
• Any form of rock or door or anything that is a bit higher in front of you, will stop you dead in your tracks. With the lack of a jump function, this happens quite a lot.
  
  
• Performance / optimization issues. I had max 50fps. Even in video I get 30fps. Some missions I only got 20fps. Really bad playing with so little fps and I have quite a decent PC.
  
  
• The camera is really bad. Like honestly in some areas you can't even move the camera, especially on the bike. Like why even? I tried playing with the controller, however the keyboard and mouse had better movement especially with the camera.
  
  
• Loads of glitchy areas. Some areas you get off your bike and then you are completely stuck so you need to restart from the last checkpoint (which in my instance was at the beginning of the mission)
  
  
• Some of the puzzle boxes were so difficult that you had to run the 30 second box game dozens of times just to unlock. Some of the areas had no space to pass with your block and then you have to start from scratch. The other thing that bothered me was the fact that you cant move the block a little bit. It is excessive movements, but it's a puzzle that requires minimal movements. The other puzzle boxes are single attempt puzzle boxes. Some of them are quite easy, however there are 1 or 2 which cannot be solved in the 20 seconds or so.
  
  
• In certain areas, where you kill all the enemies, it automatically takes you to the next part, so you were unable to search all the bodies for loot.
  
  
• The crates/chests are mostly hidden and put in areas far from each other, therefore it becomes more like a walking simulator than anything else. Only some of the areas have "action" where you need to shoot enemies and other areas have these lights you need to avoid. If you touch it you immediately die and spawn in the beginning. I feel that this game is either in extreme mode or boring mode. There isn't anything in between.

I would honestly not recommend getting this game due to the fact that it's really not optimized and there's not a lot of content. The game is therefore really expensive. I got it in a Fanatical bundle, so I did not lose any sleep over paying for a game like this. I was honestly excited to play this game, but in the end I was really disappointed.

Feels like a 4-hour prelude to a larger game that was never made. Reason I say that is that a hub base is established, but never used. There are dialog choices, but only a few actually matter. There just aren't that many places to go with the narrative if you're limited to 4 hours to tell the story. The presentation is stunning, with detailed visuals and great music. The voice-acting is serviceable, if a bit too earnest at times. The story has a good twist at the end, but is fairly predictable until then.

Judging from the forums, there are two main issues:
- Performance / optimization. I had no issues holding 60fps at 3440x1440 with a 5700XT and all settings maxed BUT Ambient Occlusion turned off. And I played the game through Steam's Proton compatibility layer for Linux users.
- Control scheme. I played with a keyboard & mouse. Once I stopped treating the jet-bike as a bike and instead treated it like a boat / jet ski, the controls felt a lot better / more predictable. Even fun. The bike was definitely floaty & imprecise, but not that hard to handle in the end.

Worth picking up at a discount because while the game is good, there isn't much content here. Everreach: Project Eden is just a snippet of lore & story that promises bigger things, but if you're like me you'll reach the end and be like, "That's it?" Ultimately disappointing.

Total size on my hard-drive: 18GB

This game was inspired by Mass Effect for sure, but there is no content. If this game would have old graphics and deliver at least 50% content what Mass Effect 1 did, I would be ready to pay double price for it, but this game feels very very empty. The story of the game ends where it should start. Moreover it's not optimized for gameplay, I assume that there were development difficulties.

I noticed there are more and more unfinished games on the market, this game is clearly one of those and it needs to be in early access stage. This game has potential to be a good game, but it's far away from it. If you really like sci-fi games and you run out of options, you could try to play it, but don't expect much from it, I would even say don't expect anything. Just because I liked the main character, just because they used real voices and added cutscenes I would still recommend Everreach, but be warned it's a taste thing. If developers love this game, they would patch it and offer us a free DLCs, if this game stays as it is, I don't expect positive reviews.

Here are my personal issues with Everreach:
- If you won't change your graphics options, your gpu will run at 100% and I am talking about 2080 TI here, make sure you change these first if you play it.
- Story is cheap and unfinished, you will have more questions than answers when you finish this game.
- This game delivers unnecessary huge maps and you will also have a bike, which you can't use to explore these maps.
- If you holster your weapon you can run faster, but every time you holster it, your character stops to move and you need to wait for animation to end, this will become more annoying with time, same relates to switching the weapons.
- Weapon design is cool, but there is no weapon variety, you have only rifle and pistol, also you will have bike's laser gun, which needs you to move to reload it's energy.
- Most every game, where character has a shield, it is not health dependable, in this game you need to wait until your health bar is reloaded, only then your shield will recharge.
- The bike acts same as character, it has no shield on it's own, by hitting obstacles you will lose health and shield, also any hit will stop you from moving. Camera on the bike is terrible, there is also no free look.
- Avoiding "red circles" at the beginning of the game was fun, but all next encounters were pointless.
- Combat in this game is really basic. There is small amount of enemies, which deal a lot of damage, but it is not hard to fight them, some of them won't even care about you so much. I think it would be more interesting to reduce their health points and increase the entire amount of enemies all over the map.
- Visiting colony outpost is boring, you can't interact with NPCs and do side quests for them. There is only one, which is also part of main mission.
- These is no cover system in this game, well kinda there is one, where you can get behind anything and shoot, but it look's weird, like you are shooting through obstacle.
- Skill tree should have been removed, it won't make a difference if you play with them or without them, you can also unlock skills, at the end of the game I could unlock 2 of possible 4 skills, and you won't even use them, because cooldown for these takes ages. That's why skills are pointless.
- There are containers all over the place, some can be opened immediately, and some expect you to finish mini-games, I was not fan of those mini-games, was hoping to see something more original.

[Review is based on initial release.]
Not a god awful game, but not particularly good either.
I'll give them this, the environments look beautiful and the character models actually look great too.
The game kind of feels like a below budget Mass Effect.

In the 40 minutes of play I did, there were a couple of issues I had:
*My number one huge no-no is forced mouse smoothing; I hate this thing, especially in a shooter game. That tiny delay in mouse movement drives me insane.
*Changing the mouse sensitivity is weird. It felt like there were two different sensitivities; one for when your gun is holdstered and another when you ADS. But there's only one sensitivity bar given so finding that sweet spot is difficult.
*Certain actions such as crouch can't be remapped, so it's locked to the C key which I personally dislike. Remapping keys to your mouse also isn't allowed.
*Cutscenes cannot be skipped if you've watched them already. And because the camera is constantly moving during, it actually made me motion sick and gave me somewhat of a headache. Things I have never experienced in a game before.

Should also be noted:
*Voice acting is decent. Nothing great, but it's definitely tolerable.
*Exploring your surroundings can be somewhat rewarding, but because I kept getting stuck on the tiniest edges, I felt in the end it wasn't really worth it.
*If you have a controller plugged in, the game will use those prompts instead of your keyboard.

I wanted to like this game, but at this moment I just can't recommend it. If there was a neutral rating I'd definitely put it under there, but sadly I'll just have to choose No as a recommendation for now.

I love sci-fi type games and despite the overall “mixed” review on the Steam store page for this title, I decided to give it a go. First and foremost, I’d like to will give the devs two thumbs-up for their tremendous effort on this project. I am not a programmer or game designer but I can only imagine the challenges of making a game on a very tight budget and hoping against all odds the project will not only excel but also be instrumental in making a name for the business. So, on the off-chance anyone from Elder Games reads this simple review, I wish the studio all the success in their future titles and next projects.

With that said, however, I am not inclined to give Everreach: Project Eden my top rating but also do not feel the game was so terrible that I should give it a horrible review. The best way to explain this dichotomy of feelings is with the words – frustrated and disappointed. I wanted to love this game with all the little quirks that other reviews have mentioned (e.g. aiming and gun play and janky player controls) but the killing point for me was what I will call an anomaly that I could not figure out how to get around. So, here’s what I mean specifically… the game world is designed beautifully and the player controls were a bit frustrating to me but not a deal killer. The disappointment came when I hit what I’ll call the third chapter anomaly. Nora’s stats when I entered the “hot zone” just simply disappeared. Strength, Stamina, Intelligence all were negative 1 (-1). Armor and health points were near the starting values. The end of the chapter requires the Nora to leave the outpost and return to Eden. The attack drone was so powerful, character with almost no health or armor and janky control, I was unable to get through this segment. I diligently tried to figure out what happened to Nora’s health / armor but could not ever get it back without starting the whole game over – which I did not want to do.

Since Steam only gives reviewers two choices, I am sad that based on my experience with this title, I cannot recommend this game in its present state. Again, I think the devs are onto some good things but Everreach: Project Eden just was a bit too frustrating and ultimately disappointing for me.

This game is being described as like Mass Effect, which is about like saying that the worst, cheesiest, lowest-budget sci fi movie you've ever watched is "like Mass Effect."

I played for 55 minutes and couldn't take it anymore. It has some of the worst floaty combat I've ever seen. The visuals look pretty decent when you're standing still (and can't see very far ahead) but once you move the motion blur is so bad it made me a little nauseous (and I've never had that sensation from any other game, ever).

Did you dislike the animations in ME: Andromeda? Play this game for 10 minutes and you'll long for the days when animation was Andromeda-good.

Remember how, ahem, less-than-professional the voice acting used to be in games, say, back in the late 90's? Yeah, this is that level. Don't let the fact that DC Douglas is in this fool you--in the time I played, he narrated the intro and that was the only reasonable voice acting I encountered.

I got this on sale on release day. It was not worth the time I spent on it. Avoid this one.