Review: Endless Space 2

Endless Space 2 is a strategy game based on the space. This game, I could say, is a mix between the Civilization, Master of Orion, and Sword of the Stars. The story is you are a race that has been gone beyond your planet and would like to expand your civilization to another solar system, but it is still in one galaxy only. Like three of them also, this game is a turn-based game.


COMPLEXITY
This game has a huge complexity in it. I can categorize them into 4 categories. From the perspective of:

• Management: You have to maintain 5 main things in your colony to make it can contribute much to your empire, they are food, dust (gold), science, industry (production), and influence. To make your empire can do well, your empire has to maintain 3 main things, they are dust, manpower, and influence. Food is what makes your colony can grow into a bigger colony, science is the points that can contribute to your empire's research, Industry is the labor force that makes you can build an improvement faster, influence is necessary if you want to edict law in your empire, and dust is what makes you can buy other things, like other resources or upgrade your spaceships. You have to maintain your colonies approval too so that they won't rebel against you. That is all the basic things in the gameplay in managing your empire. You can also set a specialization for your colonies, Industry focus, gold focus, etc. There are also heroes in your empire that you can manage, whether they can be a governor or commander, and you can manage their skill levels to make them can be the great heroes that you need. You have to manage your research too in your empire. There are 4 different kinds of technology, whether Economy & Trade, Empire Development, Science & Exploration, and Military. This game has so many aspects of management.

• Economy: The economy of this game is interesting. To improve your wealth, you can try to find another planet that is rich in dust particles or build some economic building when you are still in the early game. You can also try to improve your relationship with minor civilization nearby so they can give you more dust revenue. But after you have researched more advance Economy & Trade technology, you can try to create trade routes in your own empire or to other civilizations after you sign a trade agreement. You can sell resources, such as luxury or strategic resources, too to the Galactic Marketplace if you are desperately looking for dust. The price of commodities in this Galactic Marketplace is not fixed. It is fluctuating based on the quantity of the goods there and sometimes there will be a news regarding the commodities in it, whether as an example Titanium price is raising or decreasing.

Politic: The political system in this game remind me with Democracy 3 game. In Democracy 3, you are a president and your job is to fight for another presidency seat at the next election with proposing popular laws among your voters. Otherwise, you'll be lost to the opposition party. Endless Space 2 also use this political mechanic but there are some differences. In this game, you are not a member of some political parties in the game but you can choose which party do you want to support. Each party has its own unique policy that will affect your empire. There are 6 parties in total that you can choose which of them do you want to support. There are also 4 systems that you can choose for your government system, they are Federation, Republic, Dictatorship, and Democracy. Each of them has their own political actions that you can do and effects to your empire. Every 20 turns, there will be an election throughout your colonies in your empire to vote who will be the next leader of your empire for another 20 turns. This political mechanic I assume a breakthrough in a strategy game since I haven't found it yet in the game like Total War: Rome 2 (Rome was actually a republic at first and they change their consul every year as far as I know), Europa IV Universalis (I was expecting this feature actually in their Constitutional Monarchy system), and many other games. So it is interesting to see this feature in a strategy game like this.

• Military: You can design and create your spaceships in this game. There are 3 classes of ships, I can say they are small, medium, and large. You can choose what weapon and armor to put on to your spaceships. You can also set your troops composition when you are attacking a planet, set how many the infantries, armored vehicles, and airplanes. When you are attacking an enemy fleet, you can choose what strategy you want to apply to defeat your enemy. The effective strategy depends on what weapons you put on your spaceships are. If your spaceships mostly equipped by the sharpshooter weapons and the other one is close-range shooters, then it is better to choose a strategy that your sharpshooter is in the back and your close-range shooter is closing your enemy's fleet. With an effective strategy and good spaceships, you can win the battle easily.

MULTIPLAYER

This game has a multiplayer feature. But it doesn't so great. There are not many players playing in this game in multiplayer. That means it is not a perfect place for you to meet new people. But I think it is still enjoyable if you want to play this game with friends that you already knew. Because it is a turn-based game, in the multiplayer game you will be given time to do things that you want. If the time is up, your turn will be ended and another player will begin his turn. But you can also end your turn if you think you have already done what you want to do.

GRAPHIC

The game's graphic is so fabulous. It brings a futuristic vibe to the game. Every new event, there will be an explanation of the event followed by an image, similar to Civilization V but it is way nicer. Every you colonize a new planet, there will be a short movie about how's your colony's pod landing on the planet. When it comes for battle, you will see an epic scene where you and your enemy's spaceships are fighting at each other, like shooting lasers, firing rockets, sending fighter airplanes, etc. The battle scene is enjoyable to see. When you invade a planet, the battle scene is just simplified and it is not so epic as the space battle, but it is enjoyable. The graphic in this game I could consider it as eye-catching because sometimes when you have already done playing it and want to take a break for minutes, you don't want to quit the game before you look everything around first.

ADDITIONAL

Other things that you should know about this game are:

• It also has in-game quests for you to do. There are many quest categories that you can do, like Faction quest, Population quest, Academy quest, etc. The reward of these quests is varied. It could be resources, dust, or even a technology that doesn't exist in your technology tree.
• There are victory conditions in this game, similar to Civilization V. You can choose which condition you want to fulfil for winning this game. There are 6 conditions but before you start the game, you can enable/disable whichever conditions you want for the game. 
• The downside of this game is just the map sizes. You can only play in the galaxy with just about 175 stars at max. It is too small if you compare with Stellaris map sizes (I haven't played Stellaris yet though) with 1000 stars in a galaxy that it can spawn at max.

COMMENT

This game has a huge complexity. The graphic is also a fancy one. But its huge complexity & great graphic is not supported by its multiplayer feature. Also, its map is not big enough so we can't play it more freely. In the end, this game is great for you if you are looking for a single player strategy game with a huge complexity, especially in the Sci-Fi genre.