It's a sequel that outdoes the first in almost every way, and with future expansions I think they will continue to use the lessons they've learned from the rest of their catalogue to make it even more into a masterpiece. Easily the most beautiful 4X game I've ever played, and my favorite part of the first game, the minor factions, are even more in-depth and interesting here.
I have only one serious complaint after speedrunning two playthroughs, and that's the battle size limit. I disagree with the developers' philosophy behind only allowing two stacks to fight at a time, which they have previously stated on forums that they wanted to avoid doomstacking and prevent battles from taking too long. Maybe this will appeal to some people, but one of the reasons I play 4X is for epic battles. I didn't really like AoW4's 3-stack limit either, and this feels even more constricting. I hope one day a mod can fix this for me, because I would love to see 30v30 or even bigger fights, which are definitely possible with how quickly you can build units in this game.
Otherwise though, I have nothing to complain about with the 4X mechanics. The UI is helpful and what the tutorial messages don't teach you, you can generally find online at this point. For people who liked the stories of the first game, this one is much more in-depth with its characters and each race now has branching story paths, which is really cool. The combat itself, while smaller in scale, is much more tactical than the first game with how unit abilities were implemented. I just wish there was a way I could look at zoomed-in art of the minor factions, or check out my unit models like in the first game's unit designer. This game is gorgeous and I want to let my eyes feast on every part of it!
I have a few smaller, specific points of feedback as well:
1. I would like to be able to preview my faction's units before loading into a game, like in the first game. Just a nice QoL thing.
2. When founding a city from a camp, to my knowledge there's no way to see what the yields are before you click the button. You can see the yields when you first place the camp in neutral territory, but it's really weird not being able to see a preview before deciding to turn the camp into a city or attach it to a different city.
Anyway, looking forward to playing more and seeing what the future brings for this one.
