Eve Echoes Review
Spreadsheets are fun!
Developer: CCP Games
Publisher: NetEase Games
Platforms: Android, iOS
Release Date: August, 2020
This game was reviewed on a Samsung Galaxy Note 10 Lite.
Oh I remember. I remember a day I didn’t look at my phone and see a notification telling me I’ve made the travel safely to my home space station successfully. I will preface this review by letting you know that I have never played Eve Online in my life. I don’t know anyone that has played it, I haven’t seen any gameplay videos of it, I don’t even know how to install it or what kind of monetary model it has. Now that we’ve got that out of way…..
Eve Echoes is described on its website as a spaceship sandbox MMO, but what it really is, is a spreadsheet fuel idle clicker. But my god is it good. The game is available on mobile devices either through the Google Play Store on Android, Apple App store or by downloading an APK from the official Eve Echoes website. to start this Eve Echoes review I must start by saying I do enjoy the game but am not currently flying through space anymore.
Eve Echoes is described on its website as a spaceship sandbox MMO, but what it really is, is a spreadsheet fuel idle clicker. But my god is it good.
The game is available on mobile devices either through the Google Play Store on Android, Apple App store or by downloading an APK from the official Eve Echoes website.
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I will say it is an incredibly beautiful game. Easily the most beautiful game I have seen on mobile devices, and I’ve played a lot of them. The ships are beautifully designed, the space stations are cool and my personal favorite thing to do is to fly up to planets and appreciate the insane scale, making my Condor look like an ant in a forest. If there is one point I say is the best when making an Eve Echoes review it would be the graphics. When you first begin you are thrown into a menu asking you to activate a new ‘clone’. You are asked to confirm your race picking from Amarr, Gallente, Caldari or Minmatar. Other than your starting ship and a pretty banner behind your profile I don’t believe there is any difference in what you select. You are directly thrown into action after creating your character with a starting mission to help you get acquainted with the many, many different features of the UI. I am still finding out parts I didn’t know existed, weeks after starting the game. (Looking at you Reverse Engineering)
After getting comfortable with the controls you’ll soon learn how to level up your tech level with skill points, earn ISK so you can buy pretty new ships and just try to make your way through the game. The main ways of getting some space cash are mining, PvP pirate looting other players, bounties, deliveries (Omega clone only) and Encounters.
Bounties means basically any time you blow up an enemy NPC ship you will be credited with some ISK to your account. The amount you get will vary depending on what kind of ship you destroyed. (Harder battles giving more ISK naturally).
Personally I quite enjoy the bounty system and I feel it is the most rewarding way to play the game, but that is the beauty of the game. Everyone has different preferences. Maybe you like to mine asteroids for a living and sell them off for large amounts of ISK. Maybe you like to buy blueprints on the market and build spaceships to sell again for profit. In Eve Echoes the way you make your money, and mark on the universe, is up to you.
Speaking of the market….
(Almost) Every transaction in Eve Echoes takes place from player to player, either from the market or via Contracts. That is a fact I find very cool. Maybe that ‘brand new’ awesome upgrade has already destroyed 500 pirates. Maybe it has been close to the brink of destruction only to barely scrape into a space station with half the panels missing and be repaired. I only with there was some sort of history log attached to each ship to see where it had been.
In Eve Echoes the way you make your money, and mark on the universe, is up to you.
I can’t write an Eve Echoes review without discussing the sounds. The sound design is, well okay. It has the light explosions, the laser beams and the ‘woosh’ you’d come to expect from a space game. I only wish someone would stop screaming that my warp drive was active every time I wanted to peace out. There is a mini heart attack that everyone feels when you are peacefully mining away at a little asteroid in the game. Quick decision making and preparation is vital to saving your ship, and it’s valuable contents. You could always travel with a friend as a bodyguard, or hit up your guild and see if anyone can help you mine in a lower security system but best practice is to just set yourself up in the right direction and warp out of there immediately if you see a ship turn up that isn’t a mining barge.
It’s a Lonely universe out there…
Due to the nature of the MMO genre it is no surprise that Eve Echoes is best played with friends. I managed to convince someone almost as nerdy as me to ‘fly around with me and kill stuff together’. If you also struggle finding friends in real life who don’t share a passion for space travel and spreadsheet creation then there is also a guild-like feature known as ‘Corporations’. They are, in a nutshell a group of players coming together in a group to tackle PvP battles together, mine together and protect those flimsy mining vessels from pirates and just plain hang out. Do yourself a favor and either try to find a nice group of players on the subreddit to join up with to enhance your Eve Echoes experience.
The gameplay loop of grinding away to make the big stacks, upgrade your ships and build more stuff sure can be addicting but unfortunately feels a little shallow. A lot of the battles are very repetitive where you either warp into the middle of an easy anomaly and tank and kill everything or go to a more challenging anomaly and fly in from a distance and kite the AI into easily won 1v1 battles. It gets very repetitive unfortunately. They do seem to be churning out events and updates fairly regularly but at the moment I am kind of struggling to find something to hold my attention.
SCORE: 8/10
Eve Echoes is a solid Sandbox MMO for mobile devices. It delivers an addicting gameplay loop surrounded by beautiful graphics but can get quite repetitive. While the game is free to play and a lot of fun can be had playing the game without paying, the Omega clones are certainly at a great advantage over free players.
So there it is. My Eve Echoes review. Do you agree with my thoughts on the game? Do you have some input and tips for player? Leave a comment below and join the discussion.
If you liked this why not check out my review of Rimworld? Why, you ask? because why not? What else are you doing?