The TLDR: It's a bit better. Research is not the horrible mess that it was in the first release or the first major patch. However it's still some distance from ideal (and by the sounds of it the only way it will get to the ideal is with heavy use of modding, something that is promised for ES2), research has gone from "Terribad" to "Decent". However ship design is -ridiculously- simplistic compared to ES1, combat is so bad it actually requires community mods just to make it not entirely broken. Yes, it's in that bad shape, that's as of time of writing as of this edit.

Amplitude, you dun fscked up.

Okay.

So. Read the TLDR? Understand? Good. Because that's the most important part in a nutshell. Endless Space 2, if you wanted a very quick summation could be termed "Endless Legend + Endless Space + A few new features", no, I'm not joking, that's pretty much it. Smash the two games together, take some of the best of Endless Legends systems, marry them to the theme of Endless Space, take Endless Space's combat and make it worse (if that was somehow possible) and then call it a night.


Endless Legend practically tore a hole in the 4x Genre by redefining several core tenets of how the empire building phases worked, it introduced truly asymetric empires, it introduced the concept of regions and forced you to think carefully about city placement (a feature Civ VI has taken to heart), it made minor factions something more than just names and numbers, it gave them -life-, you actually put thought into the empire you were building, and which little empirefriends you were going to bring along.

Endless Space might not have pushed any real boundaries, but it did what it did with style, and with clean systems and a UI that's been praised up and down the MSM, and by people like myself. It didn't make things overcomplex, but there was a wealth of information when you went looking for it, galaxy view was a joy to work with, and the game itself just worked -well-. It was a good, solidly executed space 4X.

Dungeon of the endless was a gem. If you've not had the chance to play it - do so. Tower defence meets a sort of singleplayer MOBA arrangement meets CTF meets all kinds of strangeness, it was unique, it did so much -right- that it was easily one of my top picks to recommend to friends looking for something new and fresh. It still is. It's glorious.

SO WHY THEN AMPLITUDE HAVE YOU DECIDED TO DO WHAT I CAN KINDLY TERM AS A "BEYOND EARTH"


There's not anything terribly wrong with a lot of what Endless Space 2 -does-, but it patently refuses to do anything terribly new. There's ONE feature that stood out to me that was a "not gimmick", and that was the new political system which means you deal with factions who in turn determine which laws you can set within your empire, these laws in turn determine which bonuses you can impart empire wide.

Since everything you do, from the system exploitations you make to the ships you build to the diplomacy you partake in has an effect on the relative power of various factions, this has genuinely interesting repercussions, it means your empire is going to reflect your "personal playstyle" and it means you'll want to build your populace, and indeed your choice of race around that. Cravers are not going to do well as pacifists for example. Indeed, with the new options and developments concernining the internal diplomacy and tensions between the factions, now there's real meat to the gameplay in that sense. That's -good-.

The Amplified View is still a horrible gimmick, two patches in and it's still a gimmick in search of a problem to fix. It solves no gameplay element that really -helps- the player, and it just adds extra effort for the player to find information that could otherwise be presented in screens elsewhere with minimal effort. I fail to see the benefit.

The real issue is it ALSO detracts from the trademark excellence that Amplitude have managed to achieve both in UI and UX design, the new UI is a long way from ideal, with elements of the game needlessly obfuscated (System Upgrades is a good example) and other elements (Such as ship details during animated combat) being put into Amplified view JUST BECAUSE, rather than the neat icon view in ES1. These are all flat out regressions from just about every Amplitude title and feel like showboating than genuine improvement in UI design.

In short, this is Amplitude being as I put it - French, needlessly fiddly for the sake of it. Games operate at their best when they are clean, simple and easy to approach. A hidden view you have to switch between to get info that's better presented in various menus already to hand is not clean and simple, it's just being pretentious. Do better.

Scanning for curiosities is still busywork, and still badly handled, because you're still endlessly pinging little shiny buttons on planets. This could be much more elegantly handled with a "Scan system" option for exploration ships or having the ships burn a probe when they enter the system and autoscan for curiosities if the system hasn't already been discovered. The current system is well, horrible, and time consuming in the worst of ways.


NO. IT'S STILL ABYSMAL, IT STILL IS CATEGORICALLY WORSE THAN ES1.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrH3XiMR3KA


Parts of it are getting there, the game as a whole has improved from the initial release which was frankly shooting for the miseries of the 4-6/10 mark, but this is still not a great effort from Amplitude, and even compared to ES1+Disharmony, this is still a weak entry. It shouldn't be, this is a company famed for doing great, original things and yet ES2 is the least original game they've come out with, it isn't even a good sequel to ES1 which would have been sufficient, it's just a game with solutions for problems that don't exist and ideas that have already been solved better elsewhere.

The appearance is drop dead gorgeous, that much is true, but it lacks a lot of the subtlety and a lot of the flavour that ES1 -had- and that's a crying shame. They DESPERATELY need to take a serious look at combat and ship micro, and make a final decision as to how they want to direct it, along with either fully building out or ditching certain remaining elements of the game altogether.

Amplitude - Stop using Endless Legend as putty to put in the gaps in Endless Space 2, you're doing ES2, and Endless Legend's fanbase an injustice. If you refuse to do that, then frankly you deserve poor press reviews (and I'll be one of those who finalises such a review) and this IP needs to be shot down, so you can learn from this and return to form with a new, fresh game. It seems to be your strong suit.

Verdict : Get it on sale, but not on full price.

[H1]Now the final game is here, what's the result?[/H1] [b]The TLDR: It's a bit better. Research is not the horrible mess that it was in the first release or the first major patch. However it's still some distance from ideal (and by the sounds of it the only way it will get to the ideal is with heavy use of modding, something that is promised for ES2), research has gone from "Terribad" to "Decent". However ship design is -ridiculously- simplistic compared to ES1, combat is so bad it actually requires community mods just to make it not entirely broken. Yes, it's in that bad shape, that's as of time of writing as of this edit. Amplitude, you dun fscked up.[/b] Okay. So. Read the TLDR? Understand? Good. Because that's the most important part in a nutshell. Endless Space 2, if you wanted a very quick summation could be termed "Endless Legend + Endless Space + A few new features", no, I'm not joking, that's pretty much it. Smash the two games together, take some of the best of Endless Legends systems, marry them to the theme of Endless Space, take Endless Space's combat and make it worse (if that was somehow possible) and then call it a night. [H1]Amplitude. You're better than this. The last three games PROVED you are better than this. So stop trying to be showy and get back to the basics.[/H1] Endless Legend practically tore a hole in the 4x Genre by redefining several core tenets of how the empire building phases worked, it introduced truly asymetric empires, it introduced the concept of regions and forced you to think carefully about city placement (a feature Civ VI has taken to heart), it made minor factions something more than just names and numbers, it gave them -life-, you actually put thought into the empire you were building, and which little empirefriends you were going to bring along. Endless Space might not have pushed any real boundaries, but it did what it did with style, and with clean systems and a UI that's been praised up and down the MSM, and by people like myself. It didn't make things overcomplex, but there was a wealth of information when you went looking for it, galaxy view was a joy to work with, and the game itself just worked -well-. It was a good, solidly executed space 4X. Dungeon of the endless was a gem. If you've not had the chance to play it - do so. Tower defence meets a sort of singleplayer MOBA arrangement meets CTF meets all kinds of strangeness, it was unique, it did so much -right- that it was easily one of my top picks to recommend to friends looking for something new and fresh. It still is. It's glorious. SO WHY THEN AMPLITUDE HAVE YOU DECIDED TO DO WHAT I CAN KINDLY TERM AS A "BEYOND EARTH" [H1]Hooooobes... breeeeathe, no ragetiger... erm, Hobbes? What's with the cattle prod? Hobbes? Hobbes? Oh hell, the Tiger's gone feral. LOCK THE CAGE! DO IT! DO IT NOW! SOUND THE ALARM![/H1] There's not anything terribly wrong with a lot of what Endless Space 2 -does-, but it patently refuses to do anything terribly new. There's ONE feature that stood out to me that was a "not gimmick", and that was the new political system which means you deal with factions who in turn determine which laws you can set within your empire, these laws in turn determine which bonuses you can impart empire wide. Since everything you do, from the system exploitations you make to the ships you build to the diplomacy you partake in has an effect on the relative power of various factions, this has genuinely interesting repercussions, it means your empire is going to reflect your "personal playstyle" and it means you'll want to build your populace, and indeed your choice of race around that. Cravers are not going to do well as pacifists for example. Indeed, with the new options and developments concernining the internal diplomacy and tensions between the factions, now there's real meat to the gameplay in that sense. That's -good-. The Amplified View is still a horrible gimmick, two patches in and it's still a gimmick in search of a problem to fix. It solves no gameplay element that really -helps- the player, and it just adds extra effort for the player to find information that could otherwise be presented in screens elsewhere with minimal effort. I fail to see the benefit. The real issue is it ALSO detracts from the trademark excellence that Amplitude have managed to achieve both in UI and UX design, the new UI is a long way from ideal, with elements of the game needlessly obfuscated (System Upgrades is a good example) and other elements (Such as ship details during animated combat) being put into Amplified view JUST BECAUSE, rather than the neat icon view in ES1. These are all flat out regressions from just about every Amplitude title and feel like showboating than genuine improvement in UI design. In short, this is Amplitude being as I put it - [i]French[/i], needlessly fiddly for the sake of it. Games operate at their best when they are clean, simple and easy to approach. A hidden view you have to switch between to get info that's better presented in various menus already to hand is not clean and simple, it's just being pretentious. Do better. Scanning for curiosities is still busywork, and still badly handled, because you're still endlessly pinging little shiny buttons on planets. This could be much more elegantly handled with a "Scan system" option for exploration ships or having the ships burn a probe when they enter the system and autoscan for curiosities if the system hasn't already been discovered. The current system is well, horrible, and time consuming in the worst of ways. [H1]Has the combat improved at all?[/H1] NO. IT'S STILL ABYSMAL, IT STILL IS CATEGORICALLY WORSE THAN ES1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CrH3XiMR3KA [H1]Final Thoughts[/H1] Parts of it are getting there, the game as a whole has improved from the initial release which was frankly shooting for the miseries of the 4-6/10 mark, but this is still not a great effort from Amplitude, and even compared to ES1+Disharmony, this is still a weak entry. It shouldn't be, this is a company famed for doing great, original things and yet ES2 is the least original game they've come out with, it isn't even a [i]good sequel to ES1[/i] which would have been sufficient, it's just a game with solutions for problems that don't exist and ideas that have already been solved better elsewhere. The appearance is drop dead gorgeous, that much is true, but it lacks a lot of the subtlety and a lot of the flavour that ES1 -had- and that's a crying shame. They DESPERATELY need to take a serious look at combat and ship micro, and make a final decision as to how they want to direct it, along with either fully building out or ditching certain remaining elements of the game altogether. Amplitude - Stop using Endless Legend as putty to put in the gaps in Endless Space 2, you're doing ES2, and Endless Legend's fanbase an injustice. If you refuse to do that, then frankly you deserve poor press reviews (and I'll be one of those who finalises such a review) and this IP needs to be shot down, so you can learn from this and return to form with a new, fresh game. It seems to be your strong suit. Verdict : [b]Get it on sale, but not on full price.[/b]