At its core, Endless Space 2 is a rather basic 4x strategy game. It hits almost every gameplay loop that you expect from the genre, and it does little in this department from standing out from the more interesting competitors. Real riveting start for a review that I’m suggesting, right? What this game does to differentiate itself from others is its design and atmosphere. The visuals of the game are amongst the best of any game I’ve seen in the genre. The music score is top notch, with a cool techno-trance that gets you immersed in the space atmosphere with the vibrant colors of the galaxy your trying to control, contrasted against the black void of space.
ES2 also crafts wonderful factions that are interesting and fun to follow the story of. I’ll list off a couple and you try your hardest not to sound interested, ok? Isolationist treant hippies. Short, science-based British frog people. A hierarchical church cult that lives on giant space arks. A giant space mafia. And of course, the best designed faction in my eyes, the Horatio, a civilization of a race made up of clones of a single extremely vain man. Each race plays differently enough that you can get multiple playthroughs of different content.
Combat in ES2 is also better than the majority of other 4x classes. Combining the growth of traditional 4x armies with some extra tactical layers of formations based space warfare. Sieging planets is very basic sadly, with only a tic-tac-toe based gameplay, but space combat, with its mixing of of different sized ships, along with tactically positioning them, makes the combat flow really well.
All in all, Endless Space 2 is a good 4x game that gives you engaging combat. if you look past the simple gameplay, and focus on the the atmosphere and environment, this game can easily absorb you for an afternoon.
Diamonds in the Steam 