"You can either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain."

This infamous quote came from the developers of Endless Space 2 after they saw me play their game twice. No matter what I do, no matter what I say I'll play as. Ultimately it boils down to me rushing to unlock Corecrackers and Obliterators to go on a system cremating crusade across the galaxy in an unending quest to dominate the cosmos. This game teaches a valuable lesson in morality, integrity and the futility of fighting your own nature. The feeling of your friends discovering and tracing back a long path of obliterated planets to your territory, truly is "peak" as some would say and the cutscene of a planet blowing up never gets less entertaining.

Through this game, I have proudly taken up my seat alongside other galactic tyrants such as Sheev. And perhaps I have even become the worst of them all. Only time will tell.

I really loved Endless Space 1 for sweeping Galactic Civilization's confusing and unneccessary clutter away. ES was a bold, beautiful, clear 4x where almost every element was clearly defined in the interface.
I don't know if, like, I changed or ES2 did. It seems to have added systems which aren't bad on their face, but are more confusing and less explained. I found myself feeling more restricted in my strategic options and listelessly clicking End Turn through the midgame waiting for a strategy to pan out.
Maybe it's the game. Maybe it's the space4x genre. Maybe it's me. I think this game is beautiful, still, even if you have to turn off a lot of the zoomy cutscenes to make it playable. But I'm more interested in what the devs are doing next than I am interested in thoroughly mining the corners of this game, for whatever reason.