Metascore
69 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 22 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 13 out of 22
  2. Negative: 3 out of 22
  1. A robust tutorial. Classless character builds. Overwhelmingly open-ended gameplay. Ship designs you'll need to wear a bib for. And a breed of PvP that'll make adrenaline junkies sign up for rehab. Sci-fi worshipers: This is your Mecca.
  2. A massively complex economic and life simulation set in the expansive universe of unlimited possibilities.
  3. 87
    The best praise I can give it is that it honestly and successfully appeals to the casual gamer. You don't have to kill 932,592,461 Lesser Bats to level since your skills train while you are logged off.
  4. A fresh breath in the MMORPG genre. In some respects it's ELITE on steroids.
  5. You could play this game for years before you really started to feel like you might have seen everything it had to offer. If you can just get past the rough beginning, the difficulty, and the steep learning curve, Eve Online is the biggest game you could possibly hope to play.
  6. As expectations are put aside and the game is explored for its own merits, it begins to provide a vast sense of potential that few games can muster. [June 2003, p.97]
  7. 80
    This game is for anyone who wants to be able to truly affect the game world around them, and be a part of the force that shapes the story of EVE.
  8. An enjoyable game. It emphasizes teamwork and really gives a lot of character tweaking to sink one's teeth into, but you really need to be patient individual to deal with the mining aspect of the game.
  9. The quintessential difference between this title and its competitors ("Earth and Beyond" and "Freelancer" come to mind) is the detail. There is so much detail and so much planned to expand on those details that you could literally be enthused on tangents for months at a time.
  10. Despite its flaws though, EVE is deeply, deeply addictive.
  11. Hardcore opportunists and lone-wolf types have a vast cosmos to win here, but more casual gamers are advised to tread cautiously... to research, manufacture and carry a big stick.
  12. 75
    It is possible to have fun in this game. The bad news is that there are some underlying structural problems that make the game horribly unfriendly to new players and will probably keep the game from being as popular as it might be.
  13. You must have patience and be excited about non-structured gameplay in order for it to be worth the price of admission. Action hungry thrill-mongers will do themselves a favor by steering clear of this one.
  14. Probably the best looking, worst playing space-based MMO I've ever spent time with. [Aug 2003, p.101]
  15. EVE offers little in the way of instant gratification, and progress in the game is slow and often unnoticeable.
  16. Both space travel and mining - two of the biggest time-consumers of play - are so boring after the first time through that they are referred to a "time to make a sandwich".
  17. A beautiful universe with a sophisticated interface, but it's essentially a desolate wilderness of constellations, space debris, and guesses. [Sept 2003, p.92]
  18. Little more than an exercise in monotony. [Sept 2003, p.77]
  19. 40
    While it's not the unplayable mess of the "World War II Online" debut, Eve is still firmly in the beta stage in all respects except monthly fees. [19 June 2003]
  20. This stunning mood is crushed by an interface that has all the charm and convenience of a TPS report. [Sept 2003, p.95]
  21. It all comes down to you and a rock, floating together in space, with all the action and serene beauty of the docking sequence from "2001." Play some Strauss and go make another sandwich. [Sept 2003, p.78]
User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 109 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 44 out of 60
  2. Negative: 12 out of 60
  1. HaruV.
    3
    Beautiful, atmospheric, and brimming with potential, but desperately unfriendly and chillingly bereft of character. Fans will talk about the lack of the usual MMORPG grind, but EVE compensates by making every task mind-numbingly slow (and, worse, mostly automatic). They will speak highly of its "open-ended structure", but this is just a euphemism for the game's complete lack of focus. One for those who enjoy reading books containing blueprint diagrams of the Starship Enterprise, methinks. Full Review »
  2. BlueFalcon
    0
    I would desribe this game as torture.
  3. This game has the most elitist and unfriendly player base by far in present MMOs. What you can do in the game is limited by what skills you have learned, which to ensure longevity of the game take days or even a month or more to learn making any progress in the game mind numbingly slow. The training time can be reduced by implants which cost a fortune and of course you lose them if your capsule gets blown up so CCP got the grinding part covered nicely. All of this could be acceptable if the game was captivating, but EVE lacks any story apart from a few mission arcs and no effort have been made to change this. The missions given to your by the regular agents are repetitive either kill, mine or fetch this or that. The UI is terrible, the only complex thing about this game is learning to use it's ugly, old & awkward interface. In addition you have no direct control over your ship in any way (No WASD or Mouse), flying in space consists of telling your ship to approach or orbit around ships or other objects the terrible pathing algorithm makes navigating near anything a nightmare. The only other manual thing is picking targets to lock and which modules to activate then the rest is taken care of by the game. The only positive thing is the visual appearance. If you played the X series and hope that this game would be an MMO remake then steer away from this unless you are a glutton for punishment. Full Review »