Played for a while, was having fun, kinda (really want a new good sci-fi game)...
But you never end up feeling strong. Enemies are always going to have you running away and getting back in (if you can even do that) unless you play some of the more op ships ("then play the op ship classes?"... so don't play anything else in the game? ok).
Enemy levels scale so you never really feel much of a difference when you level (except that enemies get stronger and stronger).
The enemies also maneuver like crazy, so if you bring one of them low health they suddenly go "gas gas gas" and start avoiding most of your shots easily... But when you try to do something similar (up close) they nail you like perfect little aimbots.

I am a HUGE sci-fi game fan and played games like EVE online, Elite Dangerous, Avorion, etc... A LOT
This game looks good (mostly) and sometimes plays good but overall it is quite mediocre. The combat never really feels good, and i'm already 18 hours in... And for the love of god don't ever take people who say "it gets good after 20/30/40 hours" seriously, for any game... Those people usually have fallen deep DEEP into the sunk cost fallacy

Don't even get me started on ressource gathering and "puzzle" solving. The first is a chore and the second isn't hard in any way at all... but MAN is it absolutely tedious

A lot of the ship skins look plain ugly and you need RNG to get the ones you like (on my current favorite ship i've unlocked a grand total of 1 customization option... but i've gotten a lot for other classes).

Also ships in shops are f***ing RNG. You want a specific passive? Well better hope the shops have the ones you want or keep coming back to them everytime they refresh their stock... This is not a fun mechanic, it's a dumb one. And sure people will say you can minimize RNG much later by investing in upgrades, but this isn't like you're getting huge amounts of drops limiting the impact of bad RNG... here you need to come back and check what they have in stock again and again until you get those upgrades.
This is not fun RNG implementation, it is garbage RNG to make the game feel longer and deeper.

EDIT: played a bit more and forgot to mention how the dogfights feel like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥... why? Because you need to avoid dogfights and keep doing the same boring crap of kiting enemies while boosting backwards in a corkscrew patern (by spinning on yourself as you go backwards)... why do it this way? so you don't get nailed by every single enemy ship at once with near 100% accuracy while they zip and move around at lightspeed (seriously, when some enemies are badly damaged they will maneuver like absolutely crazy as they regen).
This game is unfun and the reason so many people are singing it praises is because of how pathetically starved we all are for some good sci-fi ship combat games... Seriously, there aren't a ton so we act like starved wild dogs in front of a stale raw steak

Some corrections are in order in my review:
-There is a time shifting key to make travel on the overmap more tolerable. (It's not unlocked at first but can be unlocked, on a sector basis, under some Challenge conditions.)
-There is a Wanted system in place once you leave the first galaxy so you can't just kill everything anymore. (Unless you want to.)
-Items have few base archetypes but there is quite a lot more variation on the items that I believed.
-You eventually unlock perks and items that make the long dull moments a little less dull.

All in all if my review was an IGN 7 out of 10, after a few more hours of play, I find the game to be a more solid 8 out 10.

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This is a mixed review with a misleading Thumbs Up. 

If I had reviewed the game after a few hours, my review would have been VERY different and much more positive, since the game felt more mysterious and full of possibilities... but that's just not the case. There's a story-on-rail, sequestered and contradictory gaming elements, and very little in the way of standout mechanics or original gaming elements.

The Actual Review:
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Game is a weird mismatch of occasional twitch-based close range action combat combined with a majority of long, meandering, sometimes dull downtimes; the more laid-back auto-turret combat styles from Everspace 1 are turned into gimmicks. 

It combines a vanilla story about our hero who's quite literally the goodest of good boys, Spaaaaace!(TM), and some RPG elements that appear a little more elaborate than Everspace 1 at first glance... but really aren't. By example, once you've seen the 11 primary weapons in the first 2-3 hours of play, you've basically seen 95% of the primary weapons you'll loot in the game. Exact same deal with the ships and most of the rest of the items.

NPCs, allied and enemies, have no life in them or autonomy of any kind, so you might as well be invisible to them until you blow them up. While going on slaughters against the innocents and their buildings have no consequences. Not a problem in a vacuum, at all; easy to see it as a "plus" actually in some ways... I just mention to emphasize the lack of any real RPG behind the hood.
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End of Actual Review.

You can ignore much of the fluff and slow elements, but it doesn't seem to be meant to be ignored, and it does beg the question why this fluff exists in the first place. I'll also note, for good measure, that the travel between planets in particular is a complete and utter waste of time for everyone who had to code it to anyone who has to endure it, breaking the game flow and having absolutely no redeeming value whatsoever. The random events that happen on it are so frequent and repetitive they could just as well have been a percentage-based pop-up.

I'm particularly bitter about manually flying to another solar system and seeing it didn't exist when I reached it, or that nothing at all happened on my way there and back. No "space monsters" lurking in the darkness, or escaping the sandbox, so to speak... just a boring mostly 2D plane in a self-contained instance, after all.

I find the game OK; an IGN 7 out of 10 so to speak. It's nothing like Everspace 1. I'm not having nearly as much fun as Everspace 1, but I played about 25 hours, and I'm still in the first galaxy; I'd say if I play it through, I'll have about 75 hours of gametime playing the game and most of its content, maybe more if I can manage to Get Good(TM) . So clearly, it's not bad either. There's meat there, and it's somewhat more polished and involved than its predecessor.

I had a completely different review, and I've modified it like this:

I still cannot recommend this game, though it's not as bad as I first believed, it still suffers from a host of issues, primary in my mind is the lack of a THROTTLE. If you release the forward movement, your ship stops. Further, the ship is ungodly slow, requiring a constant use of the Cruise or Afterburner to get anywhere. (these aren't X-Wings or Terran Space Superiority fighters from X-Beyond the Frontier0. This is a space shoot-em up along the lines of Freelancer, without the stilted dialogue or the fun voice over work of Bruce Campbell in Tachyon: The Fringe. At least those games had speed matching or a throttle.

My previous review talked about wave attacks, and that still stands. It's pretty easy to get stuck inside a furball and get annihilated by swarming drones and light fighters, forcing one to kite, kill, grab a couple more, kite and kill, rinse and repeat. While combat is fun, for the most part, it's the most tiresome and tedious part of this game.

So, if this game is on sale, like when I bought it, you may find it of value. If not, there are other things that can occupy your time and feel a greater sense of accomplishment.