While the factions themselves are well-realised, I found heroes-evolving special characters that can be assigned to planets or fleets-less impactful. Not all of Endless Space 2's systems are created equal, however. Those frustrating early hours have the potential to put players off, although perseverance is definitely rewarded. However it achieves this through the extensive use of shorthand and symbols, and while there are info-dump tutorial pop-ups to help you out, my first hundred turns or so were spent making mistakes simply because I couldn't tell what the UI was trying to tell me. Amplitude's design sensibility has resulted in an interface that is slick, good-looking, and, when you're familiar with the game, quick to use and parse. I found Endless Space 2 a little harder to get into than its rivals as a consequence of a UI that might be too efficient for its own good. These are qualities that emerge with time, however.

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. 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 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. 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.Įndless Space 2's soundtrack is great too, as is much of its writing. There's even a bit of dramatic cinematography when you zoom in on a newly-discovered star system for the first time.

Atmospheric short cutscenes accompany colonisation and each battle can be viewed with a well-implemented 3D spectator system. A huge amount of phenomenal artwork, much of it faction-specific, accompanies quests, dynamic events, upgrade trees, and so on. 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. 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.

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