Endless Space 2 is very Amplitude games. If you've played Endless Legend or Humankind you'll know what to expect. A lot of trimmings and set dressing for a game that wilts in the late-game.

Endless Space 2 is a turn-based Stellaris. It's very similar. As a result of being turnbased it has a few Civ-style accoutrements such as a visible tech tree and no limit to building slots. There are also lots of Stellaris influences such as limits to colonization behind certain techs, space anomalies, minor species, territory grouped by the solar system level and settling/relocation of pops by which species supports which habitability.

The lore and designed species are as much a bonus as they can be a drawback. In some ways they are too dry and sci-fi trope-y. They don't feel as engaging as you'd really like them to. While you can edit any of them, there's a distinct lack of customizable flavor compared to the Stellaris species portraits and government civics. Because the species are so lore inspired and voiced accordingly, it's jarring to customize many of them anyway.

This results in having a bunch of fairly high quality but pretty boring space empires. Without being attached to a broader IP like Mass Effect or Star Wars or Star Trek etc, there's no additional charm or lore to lean on. You get what you get, and what you get is generic. However, a significant strong point in this regard are the minor civilizations. Much like finding primitives or caravaneers in Stellaris, or city states in Civ, these minor civilizations have certain buffs and appearances. You can recruit them into your empire to gain their systems and pops. They are lore light but they are plentiful and vary quite a lot. They take on interesting appearances and broadly increase your empire's ability to colonize new lands. They are the strongest bit of original content in the game.

An advantage for Endless Space (probably because being turnbased makes games a shade shorter than Stellaris) is that you generally are able to research the colonization and teraforming techs faster. And there are more of them. You can settle every planet type (even if some of them aren't all that worthwhile) and you can do it early on. This is nice because settling planets is generally most worthwhile in the early game and microring newly settled planets in Stellaris can be brutal. So in comparison, you can get most of your desirable planets settled and queued a lot easier and faster in Endless Space 2 than in Stellaris. This is similar to Civ where settling new cities in late game is a more selective decision.

Endless Space 2 also relies heavily on a lot of stacked modifiers coming from things like tech bonuses and event decisions. This is an Amplitude specialty. What ends up happening is that bonuses can get so high that in the late game you're building multiple buildings in a turn. Or multiple ships. The AI can do this too but of course the AI doesn't min/max like a player can. This ends up making the late game both too simple and far too micromanage-y. You have to manage turn based battles between 30-50 ships and build more ships at a whim. It trivializes the game into something that moves too quickly and too slowly for the same reasons. You can build buildings and fleets in a blink which is silly but it also means you have more actions to take per turn.

This is at its worst when you hit the same point of ever 4x game. Just spamming next turn until you win. What's bad about Endless Space is that the end game is among the worst in the genre. Civ's end game is bad but there's a bigger cliff for Civ. The game is a lot of fun until it isn't. The addition of weather events and global warming in Civ VI addresses this a tad but Civ is super fun until it isn't. Endless Space's fun starts to decay as early as turn 30 or so. About an hour or two into your game and you'll lose most interest in continuing to putz around with Endless Space. Same thing with Endless Legend. After the excitement of exploration, which doesn't last long, the game begins to melt away. A lot of pretty trimming (the game is very pretty) but not a lot of depth. Easy ways to abuse game mechanics, even unintentionally, grate against the game's poor diplomacy systems and messy travel. The pacing begins to mush and eventually the game is more chore than it is fun.

4x games usually thrive on the explore part and sometimes do fine with the exploit bit. It's the expand and exterminate bits that can be like a chore. In Civ the exploration and expansion happens early and is mostly interesting. Exploit is the real fuel of the game, harvesting resources. Exterminate is tough given how slogging war can feel in a turnbased game with lots of units. Endless Space 2 gets huge points for the explore part. Uncovering new solar systems and anomalies and the minor civilizations is genuinely thrilling. The expansion that comes as a function of this is also quite pleasing. But war never feels very good in Endless Space and exploitation feels very boring. Very boring. Once the air of exploration is gone, the game falls to bits.

Meanwhile, in Stellaris you have an all-time great early game that hinges on the explore bit. Anomalies, colonizable planets, primitives, leviathans, relics, precursor stories. Stellaris is choc-full-of exciting early game content centered around exploration. The expansion is also relatively pleasing as is exterminate in Stellaris because war is nowhere near as slogging in Stellaris given that it's real time. Stellaris is the rarer 4x in that the most boring bit is the middle of the game. Stellaris has a tremendous end game with the end game crisis and an elite early game. The middle of the game becomes very stale causing you to simply up the speed and wait.

But Civ has a good early game and mid game. Stellaris has a great early game and a phenomenal mid game. Endless Space has a pretty good early game that doesn't last very long before the game falls to bits. There are better options out there that will scratch the same itch. Civ V and VI are better versions of Endless Space and Civ Beyond Earth is at least as good as Endless Space 2 if you want the space aesthetics. Stellaris does everything Endless Space 2 does but better.

I would look forward to an Endless Space 3 though. There's enough meat on the bone that you'll get a solid 25-30 hours out of ES2. If you can find it for cheap ($10-$15) it's worth the price. No doubt. It's pleasing. It's certainly visually very attractive. The way it introduces planets when you discover a solar system is fantastic. The music is pretty good. The other cinematography in the game is fantastic. Base Endless Space 2 actually looks better than base Stellaris, and few games accomplish such a feat. And that's Amplitude's style. A lot of style and meager substance. That sounds a harsher complaint than I mean it. Tons of games in this genre are pretty ugly and certainly light on visual spectacle. Endless Space 2 is gorgeous and somehow still manages to perform well on low spec machines. This sort of set dressing is so pleasing that it buys the game a lot more good will than maybe it otherwise deserves.

Is it fun? Yes. For awhile. It's worth your time. Just not worth as much of your time as the better games of the genre. The expectation in 4x games is many hundreds of hours of enjoyment. Endless Space 2 will give you 40 tops before you feel like you've experienced all there is to experience.

Been playing this for a while, and I think the biggest praise I can give is that it managed to hook me up despite not being into this kind of games at all.

It takes a while to get used to it, the in-game tutorial does an ok job at explaining the very basics of the game but I'd reccomend reading the manual and watching a couple of videos to actually get a grasp of it. However as daunting as this may seem the game itself is pretty intuitive, everything you need to know is laid out on the many menus the game has, you just have to read it.

Anyway the game itself is basically a galaxy conquest simulator, there's multiple ways to win and each faction has its own distinctive playstyle that favors one way or another.

I think what really ends up hooking me up is all the narrative sprinkled through the game, this isn't just clicking on things and seeing number go up or down, there's a lot of flavor text that really adds to the experience.

Last entry of comparison-session for Space 4X over a few weeks. Competitors: “Stellaris”, “Galactic Civilization 3”, “Endless Space 2”. All vanilla.

First Impression:
“ES2” did get a double session, two days, back-to-back, before I wanted to switch back to “Stellaris” and “GC3”. In the end I stuck with it and played two games to the end (each around 160 turns), first one as United Empire, second as Vodyani. “ES2” had the greatest appeal to me.
- Prior to start a campaign, atmosphere and music had me - not a huge gap to the other two games, but still), humming the melodies during my day in rl.
- Graphics and art style are comparatively confident to the others, but, again, take the lead. Here, I like all the alien factions, drawings, creature- and ship-designs the most – to the point, that I used the ship-designer (in a basic way), what both “Stellaris” and “GC3” could not convince me to (so far). I also find – in most things – accessibility better done here; when it comes to the tutorial and the UI as a whole and how the galaxy is represented in Systems. I like especially the zoom-in, when the game sorts the planets for you. It’s simply clearer, visually.
- Less clear (or as less clear as) is, unfortunately, research. Here, again, I feel overwhelmed. Everything seems quite cool, but what tech is a real gamechanger? Which one do I need for my style of playthrough? It’s a little too much and all over the place.
- But, still, there are unexplained systems. “ES2” doesn’t tell me how to deal with over-colonization in detail, for example.
- Market has somehow shoehorned feeling to them, but maybe due to my research pattern (market comes in too late…)
- Diplomacy is somehow strange. First play: the only competitor showing up really took his time. Before that I could diplomatically add the NPC-Factions in my empire, which was like diplomacy-“light”…
Ongoing-Play:
- …aaaaand, my first playthrough-review did not do justice to this system, because in my second on, I used It a lot more confident and simply better. Still: it’s annoying, when a faction is aggressive, your bar is full and you can’t do much whatsoever, even with lots of research in diplomacy. Have the feeling it depends too much on your, well “actual” actions in the galaxy, what you do with your fleet and how big it is.
- And it also turns out: I like resource-management and the market-feature. In my second game, I pushed market early on and it turned out to be my most powerful weapon! Discovered trade companies only then, too.
- When there’s a fight, I find it cool, with applicable tactics and all that – in space as well as for invading a planet. To be fair – here, I better understand and actively investigate the tech I need and do the proper research (which is easy to find, when you know, what you are looking for, thanks to the “search”-feature).
- But why the hell can’t I attack enemy-ships on a line? Only when both our fleets are in the same orbit – easily to avoid by ping-ponging my fleet (AI does the same) from system to system. That’s annoying.
- I like the presentation of the story-parts, quests, and anomaly-features the most here. While it’s still far from real RPG-decision making, it feels more relevant than in “Stellaris” or “GC3”. Curiously, at the same time, the feeling of playing a sort of Space-Empire-Adventure-Book breaks the illusion of playing a game sometimes. I’m not sure yet, how to feel about this point.
- Music, although I really like the pieces, is getting repetitive slowly…

Conclusion:
So I really stuck with "ES2".
- Second mention: I really liked: the soundtrack is great, reminds me of "Faster than light".
- I like how they did all the factions play differently
- I like the flow of all coming together, “one more round”-feeling.
- But I have to say, somewhere like mid-game (in regards of this, short playthrough, i guess) some things become repetitive, ergo not so likeable: In the end, you build always the same on every planet, terraform here and there and wait for huge projects to finish. In between you must sprinkle in fleet-building. Somehow every planet becomes alike - I think there´s lost potential here in terms of making a planet unique.
- I also stopped to pay much attention to research, especially the texts for the dozens of technologies. Mostly, I research something, I need for a quest, a colonization or maybe military, to upgrade my ships. Also, some effects (stated left) are unclear for me on the first sight - what exactly do I get? something for my whole empires, that automatically triggers? Or is it a building...? At some point, I didn’t care anymore.
- Same for Market and Diplomacy: it could just be a little better. On the market, I can just keep on spamming luxury goods to get money, until the price is broken. But well - it's enough. Feels irrelevant somehow at this point. Diplomacy - not responsive as I thought. I conquer 1, 2, 3 planets of the Cravers - but not really a shift in pressure on the displayed bar there. They insist on their perspective, that's what it feels like at least.

But after all: “ES2” certainly has the known spiral-mechanism, that sucks you in. Before I realized, I was fully committed to leave my other games and think about my next turns, developments, research, and so on. So: the game does very well, what it intends to do on a 4X-attempt.
Fair, it gets a little dull, repetitive, and knowable, the longer you play and the mightier you get. Maybe there’s one, two challenges, but at a certain tipping point, you get op, and then there’s the question “why play through the end, I’m only clicking, buying, researching and fighting anything at this point.”
But due to the different game mechanics of the factions, which – as far as I can tell – are very well done, there’s absolutely a good replay value in it. It’s the sort of game, I like to come back in like half a year and say “Oh, let’s play one chill campaign of “ES2”, I haven’t seen this faction yet.”
So, besides all the smaller points of critique – a definitive “Go for it!”-recommendation if you like Space 4X, in my opinion to prefer to “Stellaris” and “GC3”, if only as a little warmup for the others.