ENDLESS™ Space 2

When I first played Endless Space 2 on a Steam Free Weekend a few years back, I was awed. Exceptional sound design, beautiful UI, wonderfully animated characters, faction quests with impeccable voice acting. Never before has a 4X game been presented so well, and left such a powerful first impression. However, even the most beautiful art loses its luster if you see it over and over again, and as my attention shifted to the game mechanics and actual gameplay, I grew ... appalled. So many balance issues! Entire game systems trivialized due to various loopholes! For instance (skip the rest of this paragraph to avoid spoilers), my first planetary invasion was a blood bath. I lacked the technology to drop many troops, and had to wear down the defenses of the planet over a dozen turns, while the defenders kept conscripting civilians until nary a soul was left alive. I was impressed. Finally a game that portrayed the overtaking of an entire system with the gravitas it deserved! And then I discovered that troop transports don't just transport troops, but also raise the deployment limit. As often as you want. My next invasion was over in a single turn. On so was every invasion after that. And I could name many other examples. Needless to say, the AI is unaware of these loopholes. In fact, the AI is incredibly passive even with utterly obscene production bonuses. And so I stopped playing. Beauty is only skin deep.

Dear alien race who made this game, You looked at what elements made a 4X game, put them in there and called it a day without ever really sinking your teeth into what makes a human game engaging or fun. Sincerely yours, DefaultPlayerName

Pros: -Decent visuals -Lots of races with unique features or create your own -Lots of custom-map options -Quick load/turn time -Exploration pays off Cons: -NO tactical combat. Instead, you select a pre-battle 'card' from a short list of options that will give different bonuses to your fleet's shields, damage, etc, then watch a simulation play out. You can also just skip to the result if you don't want to watch. The battles are ok, but not super-impressive and get repetitive. Is Master of Orion 2 that difficult to imitate??? -Ground combat animation simulations look like they were made in 1985. -Tech tree is the same every time (minus exploration) and kind of dull. Weapons don't feel varied enough. -Custom race design is ok but missed an opportunity for some truly wild options that could have been fun without breaking the game. -Diplomacy is spammy and annoying. Don't want to sign my treaty? Don't want to get out of my system? Too bad! I will spam you with the same message every turn until you click 'Agree' just to get me to shut up! -Some of the UI/controls feel mashed together, resulting in leaving or entering screens unintentionally. So in summary, it's an average 4X game. Buy it on sale and you'll probably get your money's worth.

There is currently no way to play local network or private games, you must have GoG Galaxy installed and running to play online whatsoever.