2nd EVE Review

A Battle Nun, A Broken Moon, And A Ship Full Of Nightmares

2nd EVE entered Steam Early Access on April 14, 2026 from two-person developer Gamer Cloud, and it wastes no time establishing its pitch: a shattered moon is on a collision course with Earth, humanity's last hope is a fleet of colony ships bound for Proxima B, and the player takes on the role of Sister Zola, a nun, psychiatrist, and high-ranking officer whose ship, the Argos, fractures apart both physically and psychically the moment it jumps into hyperspace. Armed with a massive two-handed spear and faith-based powers, Zola fights her way through a 2.5D side-scrolling world of twisted former crewmates, rogue machines, and hostile anomalies to protect the colonists frozen in cryosleep below. At $14.99, the English review pool sits at 25 reviews, 23 positive and 2 negative, small enough for this review to read every one of them in full.

The Mood Does A Lot Of Heavy Lifting

The single most consistent praise across this pool, repeated almost regardless of any other complaint, is for the game's atmosphere. "The atmosphere does a lot of heavy lifting here: it's dark, eerie, and has that creepy space-opera feeling that makes every new area feel important," wrote one reviewer, while another described it as nailing "that eerie, isolated sci-fi horror vibe — not just visually, but through sound and pacing as well. It feels like you're exploring a place where something went very wrong, and that tension stays with you." The specific silhouette of a battle-nun protagonist drew repeated, unprompted comparisons to Warhammer 40,000's Sisters of Battle: "I had the 40k sister of battles vibes when I saw the game, and pretty much this is it, except a touch of occult in storytelling and some sort of souls like combat," and, more bluntly from one of the pool's two negative reviews, "you play as a sort of sister sororitas, but without the warhammer license." Multiple reviewers cited specific sci-fi horror touchstones like Event Horizon and Nightflyers as tonal comparisons that drew them in, and the consensus is that the setting and mood carry a genuine identity that stands out even before combat enters the picture.

Souls-Like Combat That Takes A Few Deaths To Click

Reviewers were nearly unanimous that the combat, built around Zola's spear and cooldown-gated abilities, rewards patience over button-mashing and takes real time to click. "Combat took a little time to click, but once it did, it became one of the most satisfying parts. It's not button-mashy," wrote one. Another put it more bluntly: "This leans Souls-like, so expect to learn enemy patterns the hard way, get punished for button-mashing, and quite often stare at a death screen. But is it good? Yeah! Is it addictive? Hell yeah!" One reviewer counted five retries on a single early boss fight and called it a point of pride rather than frustration. A notable, specific complaint that surfaced early in the pool, a fixed difficulty setting that couldn't be changed after starting a save, was flagged as a real problem by at least one player, but a later review confirms the developers patched in mid-game difficulty adjustment: "One of my early frustrations was the fixed difficulty, but the devs have added the ability to change difficulty settings mid-game through the menu. This is a huge improvement." That kind of responsive patching, alongside multiple reviewers noting how much the combat had improved since an earlier Steam Next Fest demo, points to active, ongoing development during this Early Access period.

A Two-Person Team Punching Above Its Weight

Several reviewers explicitly framed their praise in the context of the game's small development team, and the goodwill that generates. "It might be rough around some edges but for a team of two developers, this is a fantastic achievement," wrote one, while another noted "a tremendous amount of work has been done since the demo's release" in praising the game's musical score and narrative choices. The story itself, a mystery about what happened to the Argos and its crew, drew consistent praise as a hook worth following: "The plot is a mystery you'll want to unravel. The game offers choices that influence gameplay and add variety." For an Early Access game barely five months old at the time of this review, built by two people, that level of narrative ambition and responsiveness to player feedback stands out as a genuine strength rather than a mitigating excuse.

The Rough Edges: Performance, Voice Acting, And Repeated Enemies

The pool's two negative reviews, along with scattered caveats inside otherwise positive ones, point at real technical rough edges rather than disagreements about the core design. The more detailed negative review, which otherwise liked the spear-based combat's weighty feel, laid out a specific list of complaints: "Voice acting is... not good," graphics that "need to be run on Low settings" to hit a stable framerate, "content feels recycled, I encountered three versions of the same shambler, and they all sound the same and look the same excepting a lick of paint," and unsatisfying impact sound design. That reviewer concluded the game "needs an optimisation pass (and badly)." The second negative review was blunter still, describing the very first minute of play as enough to make them question the purchase, comparing the feel to an Unreal Engine blueprint left unpolished. Neither negative review disputed the setting or story's appeal, both centered on execution: performance, enemy variety, and moment-to-moment game feel not yet living up to the atmosphere surrounding them.

Verdict

2nd EVE is an Early Access sci-fi horror action-RPG that leads with real strengths: a genuinely distinctive setting built around a battle-nun protagonist, dense atmosphere backed by strong sound design, and Souls-like combat that a clear majority of this small review pool found addictive once its timing clicked. Its weaknesses are just as clear and concentrated: inconsistent performance, flat voice acting, and enemy variety that a couple of sharper-eyed reviewers already found repetitive barely five months into Early Access. For a two-person team, the ambition on display, mid-development difficulty patches, a mystery-driven story, and a demo-to-EA jump multiple reviewers praised as substantial, is worth real credit, and at $14.99 it's a reasonable bet for horror-leaning action fans willing to tolerate some technical rough edges while the team keeps iterating. Anyone allergic to unoptimized indie builds or repeated enemy models should wait for a few more patches before jumping in.