Game:

Endless Space 2 (2017)

Category:

Review

Duration: 14:51

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Endless Space 2's journey is just beginning. The lifecycle of a 4X strategy game starts, if you're lucky, with a promising set of foundations. After six months in Steam Early Access, Amplitude's stylish game of galactic conquest enters a competitive field with much to distinguish it. It isn't the broadest or the deepest space strategy game available right now, but it is perhaps the most pleasant to spend time with: an atmospheric afternoon-killer that blends strategic decision-making with beautiful presentation.It really is gorgeous. There's a sense of style here that'll appeal to anybody who loves the fantasy of a 4X strategy game but typically finds the presentation dry. Amplitude knows when a bit of flair is necessary to push through the sense that you're really setting down on alien worlds or trading fire with an enemy fleet, even what you're really doing is engaging with a series of complicated nested menus. A huge amount of phenomenal artwork, much of it faction-specific, accompanies quests, dynamic events, upgrade trees, and so on. Atmospheric short cutscenes accompany colonisation and each battle can be viewed with a well-implemented 3D spectator system. There's even a bit of dramatic cinematography when you zoom in on a newly-discovered star system for the first time. All of this is, thankfully, completely skippable if you want to get back to the meat of the game—but all of it is very welcome too.Endless Space 2's soundtrack is great too, as is much of its writing. Each of its eight factions is meaningfully differentiated not just in how they play, but in the attitudes and themes expressed through their background and the questlines that accompany each. There is a militaristic human faction, but it's hard to get excited about them when your alternatives include pacifistic space treants, time-bending robot refugees from a different universe, or a race made up of clones of a single extremely vain man. Each race engages in some way with a mysterious substance called Dust and a vanished race called the Endless, which ties them into the history of not just this game but its predecessors—including Endless Legend, the fantasy spinoff.The races are sufficiently different that there isn't really a 'default' way to play: at its core this is a game about managing resources, research and fleets to expand your fledgling empire beyond its initial star system to places beyond. The landscape of the generated galaxy you occupy has the potential to steer your progress, encouraging you to invest in particular tech pathways to make the most of that resource-rich but uninhabitable (for now) volcano world in your home system, or prompting you to build up a defensive force to pacify a nearby minor empire. You can begin an Endless Space 2 game with a plan—victory conditions fit the traditional pattern of conquest, economy, research and industry—but that plan tends to be shaped by the type of galaxy you find yourself in, and that's before we get to the differenc
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Source: http://www.pcgamer.com/endless-space-2-review/

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