What qualifies a game as a Souls-like? For me, it’s brutal, but fair combat (when you learn the enemy dance steps), bonfire equivalents, stamina gauges and arguably, an ominous plot. 2nd EVE is not really much of those things, and instead, I’ll dumb it down and call it a side-scrolling hack and slash with a sci-fi vibe. Let me give this some structure and explanify my theory by breaking down the elements, and then close this up with some other observations I’ve made whilst playing exclusively on the Steam Deck.
I’m gonna do that thing that your mother told you not to do and go back to front. Gamer Cloud’s Early Access title is far from ominous. The Steam store page is pretty weighty as a standalone, with a decent intro and lots of logs to locate and dialogue with AI; it’s hard to get lost with the narrative. However, I did find it quite boring and far from engaging. Plot-wise, you play a nun named Sister Superior Zola who has to rescue a crew that’s either mutated or being killed by bots.
Armed with a rather large spear, she plods through a colony ship and takes out a variety of enemies that wave their arms or shoot lasers at you. Occasionally, there are survivors on board who are happy to have a chinwag with you, but predominantly, your companion is the AI called Argos. I think. Everything is voice-acted, and though the dialogue is good, the delivery is flat. Alas, it’s AI-generated and doesn’t quite feel right. Having recently finished The Dark Rites of Arkham, where there wasn’t a single line of spoken word, the devs didn’t need to fill the airwaves with this, as a lot of gamers can read. It’s not terrible, it just sounds so flat and lifeless.
Combat is essentially the meat and potatoes of 2nd EVE, and initially it’s slow and simple, though as an apparent Souls-like, you gradually unlock new moves which change things up for the better. There’s a light and heavy attack – the latter can be charged, we have a parry, counter and also a dash. What I liked about 2nd EVE is not forcing the player to play in a particular way. I’ve always preferred to defend, or at least evade, but could never get the timing right with parrying. It’s more accessible here to begin with, then as your skills improve, you can also increase your chances of parry and even add extra damage. However, the dash was my go-to.
Enemy movement is somewhat slow, so it’s possible to predict their movements to either parry or evade. With the latter, you can dash through them and hit from behind, or later improvements cause paralysis or temporary damage once you unlock the ability. My preferred strategy was a bit of a rinse and repeat of doing a charged attack, using a special ability to paralyse them, then for a 4-hit combat that typically wiped out most enemies. Except for the light attack, everything has a cooldown, so you don’t spam it, though they offer generous opportunities. Touching upon the special ability, there are multiple skills to unlock, though you can only assign one at a time – the same for your fundamental skills such as attack, evade, counter and so on.
2nd EVE doesn’t have a stamina gauge, preferring to use the cooldowns instead, though it does have a bonfire equivalent split into two. The first is simply a no-frills save point, whereas the second is your chance to learn a skill that resembles a full-size 3D printer. Enemy kills and pickups award XP that can be used to unlock new skills (remember you assign one skill at a time per ‘thing’, i.e. light attack, heavy attack, evade and so on). Besides the skills, you can also improve your stats, such as health, how much health you recover per heal and more. It’s far from a complex system, so easy to level up what you want, though after picking a strategy, as I opted for, I seldom invested in new skills, as I did not need to do them.
Combat soon feels very rinse and repeat, and despite having a map available on command, it gets somewhat monotonous stomping through each, rather large, level at a time. Areas look the same, and most enemies can be handled with the same approach. From a side-scrolling perspective, a simple strategy is evading past an enemy and attacking from behind and repeating; however, when more than one enemy is present, it’s easy to get overpowered, forcing an endgame/load from your last save point. For a long period of time, I managed to handle myself without any deaths or real challenges, though later progress, particularly with boss-like challenges, you can get swarmed by multiple enemies that are a little tougher than the average bear. IT was these moments that proved frustrating, and though I invested a good amount of time into areas at a time, it can get tedious. Especially when you have to repeat areas.
First impressions of 2nd EVE reminded me of an older sci-fi Souls-like called Hellpoint (which I think is still on this site or currently needs to be switched back from a draft). I preferred the story in that one, and that it was more of a Souls-like than this, though I played 2nd EVE more. Maybe that was because I wasn’t dying every five seconds, or perhaps it was because I was enjoying it more, I don’t know. Either way, this is an Early Access that offers the first three areas, with a total of ten areas when complete. Naturally, a demo would be good if it becomes available, though I will say the video on the store page is a good reflection of what to expect, as there’s no unnecessary cinematics and just gameplay, plus a good representation of how much running you’ll be doing in this game.
