ENDLESS Space™ 2

Overall, an excellent game! Been playing this for a long while now and I always come back to it. Great art, visuals, lore, musical scores, sound effects and of course, the UI and how intuitive and user friendly the game is!

突然进不去游戏了？为啥？

Endless Space 2 has way to many issues. I've given it multiple chances and usually somewhere around the 100-200 turn mark I'll just throw in the towel. One of the main issues this game has is lack of relevant information. It throws quite a bit of information at you and that constantly. The problem is often it lacks context. If I want to make the right decisions I need the right pieces of information at the proper time. For example if I have to many colonies because I expand to quickly (either through colonization or militarily) I should get information about that before my colonies go into revolts. Once I have to many systems if you expect me to just give them up because I can't reach relevant technology quickly enough I'll just end up being frustrated with the game and its design. Also putting these artificial barriers for expansion in place doesn't make the game better. It just creates an additional nuisance for me to deal with. Also if I'm in the negative monetarily then I should get detailled information on why I'm in the negative. I have a basic overview how much income I have but it often doesn't provide me with context how that ends up being that way. Ship combat for example consists of trial and error. I had fleets in ES2 that supposedly have a 60/40 advantage and once the battle started my ships got completely obliterated. I often just go to the result because the battle animation is not very good. After a while I noticed patterns and that the whole chance aspect is just nonsense. Ships that are efficient in close combat often seem to rather stick to mid or lange rage while my enemy just seems to very good at long range and stays there. And my ships just ignore the programmed tactics. Then there are various aspects that are not explained at all but just represented by icons. If you don't know what the icons mean....tough luck. ES2 in some aspects is really basic like the ship design but then again it is overly bloated with a messy user interface (see research for example). Often there is no rhyme or reason on why tech is placed where it is. Why are ship layouts in the empire development section and not in the military section like the weapons? It feels so arbitrary. In addition som tech is locked behind specific research entries while others are based on level of the respective research sections. Could you maybe pick one system and stick with it instead of obfuscating it unnecessarily? Also ES2 feels very linear in a lot of aspects due to its quest and mission system. You have a certain main quest line you will go through each time. It is different for each race but still the core aspect behind is the same. And while it is the same locations will be different and I've had situations where quest locations were really close and in others the same quest suddenly had objectives on the other side of the galaxy - what the heck? The political system feels way to random to be taken seriously. I've seen situations where one factions was supposeldy leading by a country maile in favoribility. Then comes election day and I support that main faction. But somehow the AI thinks I should be religious instead of scientific. It feels like nonsense at times where the game just rolls the dice for the actual numbers. Overall I can't recommend Endless Space 2. It's not the worst ever 4x game but it just lacks in the many aspects.

When I first bought it many years ago I didn't have the patience to get into it. Now 5 years later I re downloaded it and realized how amazing the game is and the hours it takes to learn everything which I now I enjoy. I had no idea that each race had its own little backstories and victory short clips which really makes the game off the charts compared to most. Even after 180 hours and multiple victories I am still finding ways to get better which just ONE race. I still have not used any mods but it looks like with all great games it has a pretty good mod community behind it. As a space game lover this one is now ranked pretty high on my list but if they ever made a mutiplayer specialized expansion with a few changes it would be probably reignite the entire game. One of my suggestions for better online co-op/pvp play is to allow players to join games as a "hero" and help another player and add some even more in depth combat to the game. If they made mutiplayer games start with a team of say 5 players all controlling heroes with different jobs it would be pretty epic and enjoyable with alot of mechanic changes specialized for co-op/pvp/.

Pros: - polished UI that doesn't hide information but also isn't full of spreadsheets - good replayability thanks to very different factions - interesting event-driven stories and galactic lore Cons: - the AI opponents suffer from passivity - managing the planetary economy is somewhat dull and formulaic - low system limit means the mid-game is truncated and the end-game is predictable Endless Space 2 is a space 4X game that follows the well-trodden classics like Master of Orion 1/2 and Stellaris. You explore space, colonise, terraform and develop planets, conduct space diplomacy, build battle fleets, and eventually take over your rivals' empires. Compared with its competitors, ES2 is rather more focused on story-driven single-player campaigns. It comes with 8 pre-written factions (and 4 more as DLC), which avoid most of the usual space opera cliches, except for the fascistic human space empire and the obvious Klingon stand-ins who use honour as a resource. There are many flavour events and quests to undertake, depending on the faction and political party in power, which provide motivation to the gameplay. Even if you have already played through the game with one faction, changing to a different faction can provide a completely different experience. The planetary economy management is fairly standard - build buildings, grow your population, then specialise each planet to either industry, dust (money), science, or influence (diplomacy points). It lacks the population optimisation that makes Stellaris so deep. Overpopulation is a constant problem for most factions, since the carrying capacity of most planets is low and food is generally abundant. The player can only control a finite number of systems before they face large-scale revolts, which means systems with a small number of planets are practically useless unless they have some special resource. I found the late game kicks off early, as you are forced to go for a win because you can't expand anymore. Usually, this just means creating a stealth invasion fleet and making a surprise landing on the home planet of your rival empire. A lot less epic than Stellaris' end-game crises. The diplomacy system uses influence points for taking actions and claiming non-colonizable systems like neutron stars, black holes, etc., that provide small benefits. They also block the enemy from passing through your zone of control if you close your borders to them. This helps mitigate the common problem of 4X games where the AI sneaks into your core territory and plops out a colony out of nowhere. Even though the AI are pretty passive, you will usually end up in a war at some point. The space battles have the usual tensions — long vs short-range weapons, kinetic vs energy weapons, battleships vs carriers, behemoths vs zerg fleets, etc. The battles are cinematic — you pick your strategy from a list, then watch ships shoot it up. It's fun to watch for the first few battles, after which you will just automatically skip to the results. It's also not particularly easy to understand what happened and why you lost. The shipbuilding itself is very deep and rewarding. ES2 doesn't do anything particularly poorly and provides some interesting ideas in a well-polished package. If you need a more modern take on Master of Orion 2 or are bored with Stellaris, give this one a shot.

Vor dem letzten Patch konnte man noch auf "normal" entspannt gewinnen. Nach dem letzten Patch komme ich selbst mit den leichten Fraktionen auf großen Galaxien nicht mehr in die über 100. Runden. Bereits auf dem Schwierigkeitsgrad "Normal" wird man komplett niedergemacht. Piraten gewinnen jedes Gefecht und die KI hat Ressourcen und Schiffe, die echt nicht mehr normal sind. Sowas ist absolut unschön und ich werde nach über 650 Stunden Spielzeit das Spiel löschen, da es unspielbar geworden ist.

Intergalactic racism, war crimes and xenophobia are bread and butter of this game. I love it.

The games combat has variables it does not explain. Ships moves in ways different from the tactics. If you can figure it out then great, have fun but Ive wasted enough time on it.