Platform: PC (reviewed)Developer: Amplitude StudiosPublisher: SegaRelease: 18th May 2017Price: 39.99Disclaimer: Review Copy provided by Amplitude StudiosLast year I had the luck of discovering the almost famous 4X games from Amplitude Studios and instantly fell in love with them. Not only did Amplitude understand how to make an easy but deep representative of the 4X genre but also how to design visual appealing menus packed into a great presentation. After I played both, Legend and Space, I found myself often coming back to Endless Legend rather than its predecessor, so with the full release of Endless Space 2, their latest installment, I wondered if they can surpass themselves once more. Yes, they can, although in a very safe and unsurprising way.As nearly every 4X game Endless Space 2 doesn´t offer a real “story” or goal you should achieve, except winning obviously. Instead we take control over one of the eight available factions, each with their own neat little past and storyline, to lead them into a better life or even make them the ruler of the galaxy.

1. Endless Space 2 No Wormholes
2. Endless Space 2 Worm Holes

At Gamescom 2015, we saw the latest installment in the Endless Space series, Endless Space 2.This game is a 4x turn-based strategy game, based in, you guessed it, space. As one of a handful of. Autonomous Materials is a technology on the Science and Exploration technology tree. It unlocks two Planetary Specializations with Simple Anomaly Reduction and Evolved Soils and allows the use of Wormholes by ships with the Hawking Radiation Dowser. "Smart materials that can adapt to local.

Sounds pretty cool on paper, right? Yet, if you already played previous Amplitude games, your expectations shouldn´t be high. Like every previous games the only way to even notice an overall story are the inital race descriptions and quests, which mainly exist to guide and reward you throughout the game. Luckily, the few things you will read are not only excellent in writing but also illuminate your mind with creativity, making it an even bigger loss to not have a few more insights into this truly interesting world.To compensate the lack of change, necessary or not, in the story department Amplitude focused on one of their best aspects, the races. Something I always loved about the Endless-series is the way it handles the different factions, rather than throwing a ton of similar ones at you they focused on a small but excellent collection of races, quality over quantity. Especially Endless Space 2 shows the full potential of this concept by providing you with races, that can´t be compared to anything else.

Always wanted to buy and sell planets or systems? Have the desire to control time with your race? No matter which race you pick, no playthrough will be the same, making their approach to races not only a great way of adding content but also to add a new layer of tactic and strategy, by forcing you to adapt the different playstyles and weaknesses. A great enhancement of an already great feature.Once we choose a faction we jump right into the Endless Space, which experienced some huge improvements over its predecessor when it comes to the presentation.

The already beautiful intros, faction portraits, quest pictures, that always gave the Endless-series an unique touch, and the simplistic menus, which rather convey their message over symbols than text, are now accompanied by hugely improved graphics. Every colonized planet now features its own little microverse, with moving little lights etc, in addition to very sharp textures on planets or ships. Overall, Endless Space 2 keeps everything we love about the series and enhances them in every way possible, making it one of the best looking and stylized 4X games to date.On the other hand, not much else changed at the basics, in fact, nearly nothing.

People who are familiar with the mechanics will quickly get a hold of Endless Space 2. Yet, newcomers won´t be left behind either, due to the simple basics, revolving around the four main resources Dust, Food, Science and Production. Each one of them serving a purpose, Production speeds up your building speed, Food gives you more Population, Science let´s you research faster and Dust gives you the possiblity to buy buildings or nearly anything else.

Especially the way these four core parts are visualized is truly amazing, simple symbols combined with a characteristic colour help you remember and understand the connections between different menu parts and your resources. However, it´s not even expected from you to manage all four perfectly in order to win. Often you will just focus on 2-3 important ones for your race, since everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses, making Endless Space 2 as newcomer friendly as the predecessors. One change I found rather interesting compared to Endless Legend were the huge amounts of said resources thrown at you, where Legend presented us with tiny and easier to comprehend values, Endless Space 2 quickly gets into the hundreds and thousands, taking away a tiny bit of its accessability.Unsurprisingly Endless Space 2 also heavily relies on eXploration, in order to eXpand your empire.

After you established your first smoothly running planet it´s time to colonize other ones, favourably in your already established system. Unfortunately this won´t always be possible because the game actively forces you to discover new systems, by mostly giving you not yet colonizable planets. So, with slowly discovering your part of the galaxy and colonizing more planets, to gain more and more resources, to build more things and colonize more etc, you will quickly notice two significant changes compared to Endless Space 1. Gone are the wormholes, connecting the different galaxy branches and replaced with quite a flow changing feature, the drones. Now, the only way, to expand over the limited borders of the different micro-galaxies, is to send out little recon units, so called drones, in all hemispheres, hoping they may find another branch. Once equipped with the right research you´re then able to travel and discover the newly found planets. Compared to the rather straight forward method of Endless Space 1, it obviously slows down the game quite a bit, you may hate it but for me, that´s a welcome little addon.A vital part of 4X games, or strategy games in general, are the menus and navigation.

As previously said, Endless Space 2 continues the tradition of big and catchy menus, filled with pictures and symbols rather than text. Every menu is simplistic art, narrowed down to the very essence of each aspect, packed into pictures and little texts, making it a joy to only look at them.

Where other menus bombard you with confusing or clustered menus, Endless Space 2 successfully manages to create understandable indicators and menu trees, while conveying its core messages more over pictures and colours than texts or numbers. Only the research circle is still a mess, compared to the split up tech ages of Legend, forcing you to read every single tech, before you know what to research. It may not be surprising, considering the menus are nearly exact copies of the previous ones.Surprisingly, Amplitude sneaked in a nifty new little improvement for the political points, you could only spend on more or less useful bonuses in Legend. Instead of paying some diagram for boosts you can now introduce laws with them, based on the political tendecies of your empire. You heard right, Endless Space 2 introduces politics, giving the population a new weight, since they decide which focus your empire will have, based on your actions.

If you fight a lot, you population will be heavily influenced by the war faction, granting you new bonuses on your ships or attack power. A huge improvement, over the unfitting system Legend introduced for them, giving you the tools to establish a certain theme in your empire.Last but not least, let´s talk about eXploitation and eXtermination, a huge part of 4X games after all. Want that newly met minor or major faction under your control, without spending hours on building a relationship to them? Then, the military is your place! At the beginning it may not be an appealing option, to threaten anyone with your little starting ships but by progressing in tech, a progression in weapon and ship designs is unevitable. By researching new hulls, shields, weapons etc. You´ll quickly discover the giant customization options for your ships, offering you a great way to optimise your ships or even build special recon or transport units.Once equipped and ready to engage, maybe even combined with a hero unit, that gives you special bonuses depending on their level, you can set out to challenge nearly every living thing in the galaxy in space or ground battles.

Yet, none of those really give you the tools to actively command your armies, the space battles in particular, leaving you with great looking but lackluster “cutscenes”. So, I was quite happy to see, how the new ground battles offered far more possibilities and even better graphics, resulting in a neat new way of capturing those damn enemy planets. I was never a big fan of Endless´s combat and Endless Space 2 may not be a huge exception, luckily Amplitude seems to work on improvements in this department, leaving me with high hopes for future DLCs or games.ConclusionWithout a doubt, Endless Space 2 is a great game, probably the best of the series.

However, I expected nothing less from Amplitude and the Endless series. Instead of trying to appeal to a broader audience they decided to build on their foundation with some neat little addons and improvements, providing a more than solid base for the sure to come DLCs.Unfortunately, my love to Endless Space 2 gets clouded, thinking about the little amount of new features, added to the series over 3 games. If I would have only thematised said improvements, this wouldn´t be a 9 paragraphs long Review, rather a 2-3 long one, making me question, how long this series will be able to last with such small enhancements every new game. While it may be a great game now, the Endless series has the potential to quickly become a recycling of the same game in other settings, resulting in the whole Telltale dig for themselves.

Back in 2012, Amplitude Studios almost single-handedly resurrected the Space 4X genre from a cryogenic sleep with. While it was not a perfect game by any means, its revolutionary mechanics and fantastic storylines made it an instant hit with turn-based strategy fans. To date, ES has on Steam alone. To say it was anything other than a smash hit would be a gross mischaracterization.Endless Space ushered in a new era of 4X development.

Since its release, there have been over 40 games launched in our genre, nearly two dozen of which are Space 4X games; which brings us to. Unlike the sparsely-populated environment in which its predecessor launched, ES2 is jumping into a mosh pit of competition. We’ve seen high concept grand-strategy style 4X games like. We’ve been hit with combat-focused games like. We’ve gotten successors like.

And we’ve had solid entries in the RTS 4X genre like. Not to mention Stardock delivered its third installment of the series.In short, outer space has become very crowded and Endless Space 2 is going to be judged against a vastly different set of titles than the original Endless game was. There is little doubt that Endless Space 2 is a more robust game than Endless Space 1, but how does it compare to the rest of the market? That’s what this review will explore.

This probe shall go down in the annals of history! Wait, that didn’t sound right.eXploreExploration is one of the aspects of 4X games that many agree is the best. However, it can also be the most mundane as just clearing away fog of war isn’t good enough for modern 4X audiences anymore.

Amplitude recognized this, so they added several clever mechanics to the most banal aspects of our beloved genre.Systems are organized into constellations in ES2, which means there will be a cluster of stars close together that are connected by starlanes. Eventually, you can research free movement and wormhole technologies, allowing you to explore beyond your starting constellation. But initially, unless you start a game with a lot of other empires, you’re going to have your constellation mostly to yourself.

Players start with a single exploration ship and a colony ship. This gives you the ability to start discovering your constellation quickly by sending your ships off in different directions.

There are several different galaxy types in ES2. This is a 4-arm spiral.DISCOVERIES: The exploration ship is special, though: it’s equipped with probes. Typically, a new player will notice a flashing hexagonal symbol on a newly discovered planet – indicating the presence of an anomaly. Clicking on it launches a probe and triggers some kind of reward: strategic or luxury resource deposits, alien life forms, unique ship modules, or the start of a quest chain. This is analogous to goodie huts in a terrestrial 4X game.

Cool but not revolutionary.However, once players get to know the game better they realize that they can also launch those same probes in random directions across space. As the probes hurtle through the vast vacuum of the galaxy, they’ll uncover all sorts of things like new systems, black holes, nebulae, and who knows what else.

These provide new avenues of exploration and potential resources for your planets once your area of influence extends far enough to envelope your new discoveries. It can also be a handy way to scout your rivals! This is pretty cool and gives you something to do with your scout ship once your (often small) constellation is fully explored.The one problem with this system of exploration is that you spend a lot of time micromanaging your scout ship(s).

You have to tell it to launch the probes and in what directions. After a while, the coolness wears off, and the nifty becomes a bit of a chore.

This is exacerbated because as your technology advances you’ll be able to detect new anomalies, which will require continued oversight of your exploration ships. This is a double edged sword. On one hand – it makes exploration a part of the gameplay mid and even late-game – on the other it’s a bit of a nuisance when you have bigger more exciting issues to deal with (like other factions!). Aw man, I was just getting started.Another area I’d like to see Amplitude improve in ES2 is the galaxy generation. Sometimes the game will make each planet in a constellation have the same luxury resource or strategic resource. Also, I’ve had some constellations that weren’t very interesting or strategically challenging at all.

Once I got one that was just a straight line. That shouldn’t happen.FACTIONS. Another important avenue of exploration in a 4X game is getting to know the different factions – and that is especially true for ES2. One of the strengths of Amplitude’s designs is how different and engaging the factions are in their games. ES2 is no exception and launches with eight unique factions: the,. These are what you get when low poly art design gets turned back into high poly models.Each of these factions are introduced with a brief animated trailer when you play them.

I could nitpick a few of the videos, but why? They’re all really well done, and these cinematics are precisely more of. So, bravo to Amplitude for investing in bringing the fantastic lore and creativity of their world to life! I’ve just you could see what I mean.POPULATION MANAGEMENT: In ES2, Amplitude made a big departure from their previous games by allowing players to have “multi-faction” empires.

Endless Space 2 No Wormholes

In, when a player conquered an enemy city, the population and buildings would all be converted to the player’s faction. It kept things simple, but ruined some of the verisimilitude of the game. It begs the question, “Do I commit genocide every time I conquer a city or trade for one in diplomacy?” It breaks the immersion.In ES2, you are still limited to your own faction’s buildings/system improvements, but you absorb the native population into your empire for conquered planets and minor factions. This means that the assimilated populations’ needs become your needs; their political beliefs become your problem to deal with. In some ways, this is great.

The idea of managing a diverse, multi-species empire with their varied demands and ideologies sounds intriguing!However, this also ends up homogenizing the primary factions to some extent. As an example, the Riftborn are a race that doesn’t need food to survive. However, you still have Riftborn heroes that give food bonuses and Riftborn system improvements that increase food production because you might absorb a major or minor faction that does need food to survive.

The result is that players may have to deal with a game mechanic they were hoping to avoid. For some, this will be no problem, but for others, it tarnishes the faction differentiation.

Fans wouldn’t believe how much internal debate we’ve had on this: tech pie, pizza, or tree?TECH TREE: The tech tree and the sense of progress and advancement it creates is central to the core gameplay loop of most 4X games. That is certainly the case with ES2. The tech tree (which looks more like a pie) is an interesting hybrid between Amplitude’s prior games. The tree resembles Endless Space 1 ’s “Tech Web” as it is divided into four different research fields with more advanced techs further out from the center. However, rather than having direct lines connecting technologies, tiers of tech are unlocked within each field using a system similar to Endless Legend but more visually organized than the tech menu in that game.

As you research a certain number of technologies within a field, the next tier within that field will be unlocked.The system is an effective blend of approaches, allowing you a reasonable amount of freedom to advance within a research field. On the other hand, because the costs of technology escalate s as you advance up the tiers, it can be challenging to jump too far into any one category. Furthermore, the need to unlock research across fields to take advantage of certain strategic resources or unlock core gameplay systems (like Diplomacy, the Marketplace, or Trade Networks) limits the utility of investing exclusively in one field.While there are faction-specific tweaks to the technology tree (which is nice!), the number of unlocks required, coupled with many “essential” technologies, leads to a similar pattern of progress through the tech tree from game to game. The result is that the tech tree doesn’t feel like a core driver of your strategy.eXpandCOLONIZATION: As I already mentioned, expansion begins almost immediately in ES2. You start with a colony ship, which I think is great.

Endless Space 2 Worm Holes

You’ll find a suitable world soon enough, and BOOM, your empire is already expanding. It does take a while, in my experience, to get to a point where you can safely build a second colony ship. This is partly because of obstacles such as pirates, a weak early economy, and locked technology, but it’s also due to the fact that there are usually very few habitable planets in your constellation.

You may have to research a targeted technology before you can inhabit a third system. I feel like this was done for pacing reasons, but the result is sometimes a slow early game if you’re unlucky enough to have a lot of volcanic or barren planets in your constellation. Now THAT is what a space empire looks like!Once you settle in a new system, the colony is treated as an “outpost” for a number of turns (often 20 or more).

Depending on your faction, you can spend resources to boost the speed at which the outpost converts to a full-fledged colony. Unlike ES1, star systems can only be controlled by a single empire; however, multiple races can have an outpost in the same system. This can create a tense race between factions to accelerate their colony creation. Some of the options for boosting your outpost are even contingent on foreign outposts being present – allowing you to intercept their food shipments for example!

It’s a nice piece of design work which adds some drama to this aspect of the game.Expansion can also occur among planets within an already colonized system. However, instead of building a colony ship for each additional planet, you can just “build” a colony from the system construction queue. This is nice and much less tedious than making ship after ship. Speaking of which – the build queues and development projects are all system-wide (as it was with Endless Space 1 ), which is a nice way to reduce micro-management compared to handling each planet individually.MINOR FACTIONS: Players can also expand their empire by absorbing systems controlled by minor factions. Basically, you can spend influence to praise or bribe the faction – and over time your relationship with them will improve.

At a certain point they will ask for assistance, which, if you accept, will trigger a quest event. As with Endless Legend, when the quest is complete you’ll absorb the faction. Alternatively, if you build your relationship up enough they will outright join you.

Or you can just invade them. All in all, this may be too easy. It doesn’t really take much to get the minor factions to join you. All you have to do is have the right tech, compliment them a bunch of times, and then pay some paltry amount of resources or do a facile quest.Also you’re not limited in the number of minor factions you can absorb like you are in Endless Legend. In a way, I like that there isn’t an arbitrary limit. But then again, it can tarnish the experience a bit.

If every minor faction you meet is going to eventually love you no matter what, there’s no real tension in your diplomatic dealings. It just feels repetitive.

I’m playing the Vodyani and draining these guys, so do I want them to join?What no doubt makes the experience worse is that the minor factions in ES2 just aren’t all that interesting. They give you a small bonus to one thing or another, but that’s it. In Endless Legend by comparison, when you assimilated a minor, you got a bonus AND a whole new unique unit. There’s nothing like that in ES2. It would have been awesome if each minor faction gave you access to a unique ship module (or better yet a whole unique ship design!) or came with a free tech or let you spend a strategic resource to rush-build improvements in their systems – something like that! Instead it’s just +5 to Industry or +1 to Food.

Not too exciting.INFLUENCE: Beyond colonization and questing for minors, you can also absorb systems controlled by other factions using influence (the purple star resource). Influence is produced in your systems through various system development projects and/or population traits, with the area of influence growing based on the cumulative total influence produced in your empire. If your area of influence engulfs a foreign system you are at peace with, you can spend Influence to “peacefully” buy them off and annex them into your empire. This will usually piss off whoever just lost the system, but it’s an interesting mechanic that gives you another avenue to conquer without violence.The AI is pretty good about using the influence assimilation to its advantage as well. I’ve had to go take back my worlds by force many times after a sneaky AI bought one of my systems through this method. One concern however is that the area of influence can grow very quickly.

It’s an issue because influence also affects the boundaries of your territory. This can mean, for example, that if enemy influence engulfs one of your systems, you may no longer be able to wage war with third parties and traveling to you own systems can count as “trespassing.” It’s all a little strange, and if you don’t watch out it can throw a major wrench into your game.eXploitOne of the best parts of Endless Legend was its exploitation mechanics.

The anomalies, luxury resources, and strategic resources were so much fun to explore and utilize. I really felt that securing these items and using them at just the right time provided a lot of fun strategic moments. Endless Space 2 keeps the facade of EL ’s exploit mechanics, but I’m not sure it’s as successful in implementing them. So many resources to exploit, so little time to do it.First, let’s look at anomalies.

In ES2, you can find things like black holes and nebulae that will provide your systems with a bonus if you can get your area of influence to cover them. Black holes usually give a bonus to science; nebulae give a bonus to dust. That’s cool, but not very exciting. I don’t think any of these non-system locations give bonuses to happiness, food, influence, strategic resources, or luxury resources. It’s too bad because the “Wow!” factor of finding one quickly wears off. It becomes more like, “Oh cool, it’s about time one of those showed up.”STRATEGIC RESOURCES: These have not changed all that much from ES1 or EL.

As you climb the ladder from common resources to rare resources, your weapons and armor for ships keep getting better. The Riftborn faction can use strategic resources to speed up colonization, which is definitely cool, but other than that, it seems like strategic resources are just a pacing mechanic. You don’t even have to build a collector that can be attacked like in EL. As long as you have a colony on the planet, you gain a unit of the strategic resource each turn.That said, i’ve found that when I’m in a decent sized war, it’s possible to run out of strategic resources. Fortunately, ES2 features a robust galactic market system (provided you research the right technology), so if a player is short on a resource, they can to go to the market and buy it there.

I appreciate that because the game is forcing me to engage with its multiple mechanical systems and protracted conflicts are difficult to sustain. To me, that’s good game design I better buy up all the good stuff before somebody else does!LUXURY RESOURCES: The luxury resources seem like a miss to me.

In EL, you could spend luxury resources to give yourself a boost. For instance, you could spend the Wine resource to get +30 Approval for 10 turns in each of your cities. That was really cool and useful if you were about to engage in a long war or rapid expansion.

The game gave you a choice to make each turn on whether you wanted to spend your resources or save them for later. ES2 is different.ES2 has you spend luxury resources to upgrade your systems through unique development projects that you can assemble and use across your entire empire.

There are three upgrade tiers, the first requiring one luxury resource, the second two resources, and so on. For instance, Superspuds (yes that’s a thing) gives you a 10% reduction to cost of buying out construction items and Bluecap Mold (also a thing) gives you +4 Science per Population. You only get to make this decision once at each tier, so choose wisely!My problem with this system is that it limits your strategic choices. I like how you can customize your empire toward dust production, science, influence, or whatever using the upgrade mechanics.

That’s really cool. However, I miss the turn-by-turn decision making from EL.

In ES2, you can use Luxury resources to boost a specific species’ growth rate (through a very buried UI screen), but you can be stuck accumulating TONS of luxury items to no end if you don’t have the right species to spend them on. You can always trade them or sell them in the market – but that feels a bit anti-climactic. For me, this system feels like a step backwards in game design.TRADE: ES2 ships with a fairly robust trade system. Once unlocked with the requisite technology, you can create a trade company headquarters and corresponding subsidiary. Once built, a trade route is established running between the systems containing the HQ and its subsidiary, and provide a flow of dust and luxury resources.

What’s more, you can upgrade a trade company’s fleets to specialize in either dust or luxury resource trade (and the companies themselves can level up allowing for more subsidiaries).The system is more involved than many 4X games, and worse, the process for setting up trade routes doesn’t provide any information to the player to help them determine where routes would be more or less beneficial. Similarly, when upgrading a trade company, you don’t have any information telling you how beneficial it is to improve or not.

I like the trade system in concept, but it needs more refinement before it becomes a fully engaging part of the game.INTERNAL POLITICS: One of the major new features introduced in ES2 is an internal political faction mechanic. Every empire has different factions or political “parties” vying for power. Their names are unimaginative but informative. You have groups like the Industrialists, Pacifists, Ecologists, and so on. After a certain number of turns, each party campaigns for votes and periodically one (or more) is elected as the dominant party.

In the early game, elections can be pretty lopsided.When a party comes to power, it automatically enacts a base law for its constituents. Laws give your empire significant bonuses and abilities, usually to something on the FIDSI chart (Food, Industry, Dust, Science, and Influence, i.e. The game’s basic currencies). You can enact additional laws by spending influence, but the range of laws you can choose from is determined by the dominant political parties and how established they are. I played a lot of games as the Sophons, and when the Scientist party held sway, I had a law that would let me research techs one tier ahead of where the game was supposed to be. I loved that! But when that party lost power, suddenly my whole research queue would get rearranged.

That did add some excitement to the political process, which I appreciated.Depending on your overall government types (there are four options, including Federation, Republic, Democracy, and Dictatorship) players can influence elections by spending dust, influence or other resources. It is hard to tell to what extent the player can really change the result, as the game doesn’t present this information well. I find, though, that if it’s important to me that a particular party wins, it’s just best to spend as much as I can to influence the outcome. C’mon militarists! I can’t afford my ship upkeep anymore!The good part about the political factions is they mainly seem designed to help you do what you are already doing. For instance, when you’re researching and expanding in the early game, the ecologists or the scientists will often win elections. When you’re building up your resources and getting ready for a fight, the industrialists often come to power.

When you’re at war or building up a massive fleet of ships, the militarists tend to win elections. In my opinion, that is how it should be. The player should occasionally have to contend with a powerful faction that is antithetical to his or her current goals, but for the most part, the politics should be there to support the player’s strategic choices rather than hinder them.Overall, I feel the political system in ES 2 is pretty well designed. For one thing, it brings a lot of tension to the game. I’m wondering if my favorite laws will suddenly get tossed in the trash each time there’s an election. The lack of transparency makes the system unpredictable which adds a bit of chaos to the game that many other 4X titles lack.

That chaos creates a sense of enjoyable anxiety that deepens my experience.eXterminateThe combat systems in past Amplitude games have always received a mixed reaction from the community. Some love them, others are indifferent, and there are those (like me) who hate them. Endless Space 1 and Endless Legend both have a lot of problems, in this reviewer’s opinion, when it comes to giving the players enough challenge and enough control to feel sufficiently engaged. However, I feel Endless Space 2 takes a big step in the right direction.

Rumor has it that John Madden joined Amplitude’s combat design team.SPACE COMBAT: When combat begins, players choose a Battle Tactics “card” that dictates what type of strategy their ships will follow during the fight. Depending on the size of the fleet, your ships can be placed in up to three different flotillas. Each Battle Tactics card lists a different engagement range (long, medium, or short range) for each flotilla.The object is to choose a card that best matches the makeup of your fleet based on their effective weapon range. The tactics cards also provide a fleet-wide effect, which adds a further consideration.This new system is a massive improvement over ES1. In ES1, the cards were rather simple and tied to three rounds of combat. Each card represented a main tactic and usually had a hard-counter to it.

If either the player or AI made a poor choice picking a tactic, the corresponding tactic (card) could be very punishing – but the overall system felt random and arbitrary. My ships are bigger.This setup provides the potential for more engaging combat while still allowing for a pre-battle planning and hands-off approach to combat. Flotillas can park out of broadside range and rain missiles and torpedoes at the enemy, while others will swoop in and engage in close combat with guns blazing. Speaking of flotillas, you can have mixed ship roles within each. The more advanced the tactic, the more interesting the engagement possibilities.My personal favorite strategy is to make a fleet composed of a few very large, slow ships with long-range weapons and a bunch of smaller, fast ships with higher-damage, short range weapons.

The lumbering ships soften up the enemy while the smaller ships swoop in and finish them off. It usually plays out that the short-range ships make quick work of the enemy vessels in their line and can come over and support the large ships from the flank. That’s not the only viable strategy, of course. ES2 ’s combat system provides enough choice to keep space battles interesting and rewarding without being bogged down in minutes of ship facing and hour-long, turn-based tactical combat.

The “Overview” camera can help you improve your strategy.Finally, we need to discuss the combat viewer. It allows you to watch the battle in a cinematic mode or turn on a “scan” view that provides an overview along with an information display of the action. The combat looks great, but the camera angles in the cinematic viewer are lousy and keep you from really enjoying the gorgeous fights or understanding the big picture of how everything is unfolding. Fortunately, the scan overview mode, coupled with a workable free camera mode, lets you get a better understanding of the action. However, this is an aspect of the game that could use more refinement as time goes on.GROUND COMBAT: Ground combat is another matter. The visuals for invasion are fair to middling.

When battles get really large, it’s hard to tell individual units from each other, and the hyper-frenetic pace of ground combat makes it frustrating to watch. In the end, I just auto-resolve without watching most battles. That said, it is nice to see the inclusion of a ground combat system and it has some interesting underlying mechanics.When an invasion starts, players can chose a tactic (infiltration, blitz, or bombardment) that affects how quickly – but also how risky – the invasion will be. Using infiltration will provide your forces with additional health, but draw out the engagement length. Blitzing will result in more casualties, but can bring the invasion to close more quickly. It’s a decent set of tradeoffs that provides an enjoyable but not time consuming strategic choice.

These blobs mean nothing to me. What is going on here?One thing ground combat is missing for me is the option to just bomb a planet into oblivion. I can’t just fire my ships’ weapons or drop mass drivers on planets until the population is entirely wiped out. I’m stuck dealing with whatever is leftover after my ground units mop up the resistance. In some cases that’s just fine; in others, I’d like the option of total annihilation even if that meant I’d change a forest world into a barren planet or something.

I feel such an option would be well-balanced since it would tie up your ships for a long period of time.Another problem is accessing information related to ground combat. I included the image above because it was one of my first games.

If you notice, I only have infantry instead of a nice balance between soldiers, armor, and air support. The reason for that is I couldn’t find the UI for adjusting the makeup of my invasion forces. It’s hidden on the same UI as your fleets. If you examine the menu on the left hand side of the image below, you will see the “Manage” button buried under the Empire Manpower information. Tip: on the left are the buttons to choose new tactics cards and invasion troop types.I appreciate Amplitude’s attempt to make ground combat more stimulating and tactical. It’s a big improvement over ES 1, and it’s done as well or better than any other recent space 4X game that features invasion mechanics.

There are just a few tweaks in the visuals and access to information I’d like to see. Otherwise, great systems overall.eXperienceWhen Endless Legend came out, it was a revelation in fantasy 4X. There was no game on the market like it in visuals, faction differentiation, and lore. It set a very high bar for future fantasy games to follow, and to date, every fantasy 4X that has come after it (with the notable exception of ) has been a disappointment in comparison.So does ES 2 similarly innovate on the Space 4X genre?

The short answer is, no – ES2 does not usher in a major innovation in the genre. However, it does demonstrate a significant refinement and iteration of the space 4X formula. In this regard, it is mostly a success, but of course it isn’t perfect. The Vodyani are the most unique faction, but you’ll still see plenty that’s familiar.ES2 is a far more conventional game when compared to some of its peers (like Galactic Civilizations III, and Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars ) than EL was compared to its peers back in 2014 ( Warlock 2 and Age of Wonders 3 ). Other recent games, like Stellaris, are pushing the innovation envelope even more. Resource management, colonization, internal politics, diplomacy, and empire development are not particularly unique or innovative across the board outside of a few exceptions (like the Vodyani faction using mobile Ark ships to colonize whole systems all at once). ES2 just iterates on its predecessor and the modern Space 4X sub-genre.

It’s not bad at all, but it is a little disappointing. I was expecting more than just a better MoO:CtS.One of my problems is that the factions, despite their wonderfully unique lore and mechanics, simply do not feel different enough from each other when it comes down to gameplay. It’s not that there aren’t differences; it’s just that the differences – for the most part – aren’t as fundamental to the gameplay as they are in EL. For example, each faction has a lot of the same system improvements.

In a terrestrial game like EL, that’s fine since all factions are on the same planet and presumably limited by that planet’s ecology. For radically different space-faring species with unique biologies and origins? From here you can see how all the subj.ahem. minor factions affect your empire.Factions in ES2 are not under those same constraints.

I would have prefered that each faction had its own set of improvements with unique names and unique art – even if all the bonuses and effects stayed the same. My immersion is broken when I have to deal with many of the same early buildings, tactics, and techs whether I’m playing the Sophons, Riftborn, or Cravers, all of whom are radically different species. Compare them to differences among the, and from EL, and you can see that ES2 did not go far enough. Progress toward the various victory conditions are tracked in the Empire Summary menu.AI CHALLENGE: Amplitude’s prior games received a fair dose of criticism regarding the state of the AI at launch – although over time the AI was improved. For ES2, the AI is serviceable. It’s good at expanding its empire, building up fleets, and pestering you in diplomacy (particularly when trespassing into their space). I often find myself getting into territorial disputes during the expansion phase, with my outposts competing against AI outposts for the right to claim a star system.

And overall in terms of victory, the AI seems to do a good job building up its economy, as it’s often in the lead on achieving an economic victory (at least on hard difficulty and above!).However, there are a few places where there AI really struggles. The AI couldn’t design its way out of a cardboard box, as it struggles in creating good ships in a timely manner. Once you learn the nuances of combat, you’ll find it’s pretty easy to out-gun and out-fox the AI in combat by designing ships that perfectly counter the its designs.

I suppose this is where ES2 will shine in multiplayer. Human opponents will be far more unpredictable. Overall, I think the AI in ES2 is the strongest Amplitude has managed at launch – but of course there is always room for improvement.UI: ES2 seems to struggle consistently when it comes to conveying information to the player. While the UI is very attractive, there is a lot to keep track of in this game – but most of it isn’t presented very effectively. For instance, it takes a resource called “Manpower” to supply all your ships and invasion battalions with soldiers and pilots.

Manpower is now tracked on the main UI, which is a big improvement from Early Access. The details, however, are put off to the side on the fleet menu, and while some drilldown values are provided, it doesn’t tell the player how your manpower is allocated and in what order or when supplies are short.Similarly, ascertaining the relative popularity of each political party is difficult.

There’s a small graph that shows how popular the parties have been in the past, but it’s not easy to notice or decipher for new players. Every few turns I’ll get a popup about it, but finding out how my decisions are actively influencing the next election is a total mystery to me – despite a screen whose function is, from what I can tell, to provide exactly this information. Thanks for the vague message!One novel element of the UI is the contextual “scan” views that provide supplemental information in an almost infochart-like manner. This is a neat idea but the scan views are non-interactive, meaning they are cumbersome to use when it comes to informing in-game decisions. For example, the Trade Scan provides a visual breakdown of my current trade routes, but doesn’t provide any information to help me plan new trade routes, which is what I would want to use such an overlay for in the first place.On a positive note, the overall visuals and ambiance are terrific.

The artwork is beautiful and did an impeccable job with the music. The game is totally immersive the moment you fire it up. Amplitude isn’t nearly as big as Firaxis and Wargaming, but their product looks every bit as good if not better than and Master of Orion: Conquer the Stars. Nearly every screen has something on it that’s taken my breath away.

It is so easy to become immersed in the universe and lore of ES 2 because the visuals and writing are so good. It’s like you’re playing a game in an art museum.When it comes to bugs and crashes, there aren’t huge problems. There are, however, a few things that I find annoying. I never tried multiplayer, but my understanding is that there are some desync issues Amplitude is still working on.

As I mentioned in the Exploration section, constellations will still sometimes be generated with only one luxury resource (space potatoes seems to be the chronic offender here). Also, I’ll occasionally get bizarre constellation shapes. Those are very minor problems that will certainly be ironed out. I think this constellation would be hard to manage since it so stretched out.I only had the game crash once in all the hours I played it (on turn 312), and the optimization is pretty good at launch. Amplitude is well known for making their gorgeous games run well even on middling computers. I wouldn’t anticipate anyone having trouble except on maybe the lowest end rigs.So the most important question is, “How’s the experience?” I wouldn’t be surprised if at this point, the reader felt that ES2 was only of middling quality after all the problems I’ve pointed out.

However, I have to say that of all the Space 4X games I’ve played in the last three years, I have absolutely enjoyed my time with ES2 the most. The problems I’ve mentioned are minor and easily overlooked. The game is fun, period. The 2D art is just stunning at times.I just hold Amplitude to a higher standard because I’ve seen the kind of high quality work they are capable of producing.

I know they will continue to improve ES2 as well they should. The fans deserve it.There is plenty more I could talk about. I haven’t touched on quests, heroes, population growth, customization, and so much more. Those will have to wait for our Audible eXtension podcast.

ES2 is an incredibly deep game, and this review has probably gone on longer than it should have. If you’ve read all the way to this point, I applaud you! I’ll close by saying ES2 is a fantastic, engrossing, well-made game that is worth every dollar Amplitude asks for it. I can’t wait to play it more. I find this game to be just gorgeous to watch.TL;DR: Endless Space 2 is not a perfect game, but it does reflect a significant and positive iteration over Endless Space 1. Despite the Space 4X market being absolutely flooded with titles right now, ES2 stands out as a very capable and visually stunning title.

Fans of Amplitude will find a lot to like in ES2. Unfortunately, they’ll also find a few flaws, as well. Information can be hard to find, factions aren’t as differentiated as they could be, and diplomacy and AI really hasn’t evolved. Still, ES2 is loads of fun and will provide many hours of replayability. You are correct – we’re no longer issuing eXemplary ratings to games right at release (and thanks for the reminder update the review policy).Troy and I have both been playing the press (Gold) version of the game since we got access to it.

I’ve sunk about 15 hours in just with that version over the past week and about 25 or so with the closed beta versions.ES2 exceeded my expectations based on the state of the Early Access version (which is the only version open to the public right now). That said, the EA version had a LOT of work still to do. Great review, TroyThere’s a lot about this title that looks appealing. Obviously it looks great, and some of the systems seem interesting.

Particularly the trade and internal politics system, which I feel like is a weak spot in the 4X genre across the board.That saidthe combat. I shelved ES1 after 21 hours (half of which was likely me leaving the game on while sleeping) because of the combat.

I don’t know why but it just has no appeal to me.That said, this review has put the game from a “heck no” to a “maybe” category, so I’d say job well done.GSLike. I have no idea. I guess the gold patch was the same as the release version?

Which fixed a few more things over what the review / press version had? But maybe the release version was also patched again after the gold version? The gold version, which was different from the closed beta version. And all together something else from what the last Early Access version was. So potentially, there were up to five different versions of the game existing over the past 24 hours.

Oh and maybe also a VIP version. So that’s maybe six. I give upPlay the game;)Liked.