Everreach: Project Eden is not a terrible game. There's certainly some fun to be had. Combat is strategic, and the music elevates the gameplay. Fans of Mass Effect and third-person shooters set on an otherworldly planet should find things to enjoy. Sadly, the game needs a coat of polish. If it's ever on sale, it might be worth checking out. But for $25, there are other games on Steam that may be more worth your time.

In the case of Everreach: Project Eden, some mechanical issues with AI or balance can be patched, which other problems are more in the realm of aesthetics and direction and are probably doomed to never go away. There’s nothing wrong with a game having a clear inspiration — most every game does — but failing to innovate on that model can result in what we have here, a product that feels like an unconvincing imitation.

Seeing that Project Eden is designed to be a story-driven game, I could have overlooked these issues and took the game as it was meant to be. Instead, what I feel it was meant to be was a game that could have been more fleshed out with more weapons, abilities, and an extra round polish. Because for such a small team to develop a complete vision of a sci-fi world, it seems that all was needed was some more time.

Everreach: Project Eden somehow manages to avoid being as annoying to play as its constituent parts would indicate, and there will be some out there who can get a decent evening or two’s entertainment from it. The game at least flows along quickly and the writing just about holds interest through the six or so hours it takes to see everything on offer. But this papering over fails to deal with the major underlying cracks, and it remains one that is impossible to actively recommend.

Floaty imprecise controls, a lack of depth, random spikes in difficulty due to bad design, random frustration, a mini-game for the sake of a mini-game, and a protagonist with the all the charisma of a shiny blue block.

This game fails at almost everything it sets out to do. With janky animations, embarrassing story, awful combat mechanics, and horrible enemy layouts and AI, there's just not much positive to say about it.

Fans of Eurojank (critic guilty as charged) can generally stomach low production values and lack of polish, but Everreach: Project Eden is just plain (and incomplete) junk. It fails as a Mass Effect-esque RPG, and fails far more as a shooter. One has to wonder why the developer still charges so high for something as badly-made as this, especially since it has obviously abandoned it.