Comparison with Endless Legends

[chriskessel]

I really enjoyed Endless Legends, so I picked up Endless Space 2. However, Endless Space 2 feels sort of abstract. Where Endless Legends had a map and you could move anywhere on it, Endless Space has much more restrictive movement. Quests were all over the map in EL, but in ES they're restricted to just the systems themselves.

The mechanics seems mostly very similar, but it just all feels sort of less open and more abstracted.

For folks that have played both, what does Endless Space 2 do that Endless Legends doesn't?

[amaruakx]

I think there are just too many aspects of ES 2 different to EL

[Done25]

You can move more freely one you unlock a certain T2 Tech in Exploration. It's just not as fast as following the star lanes. Though, not all stars are conencted by lanes... ;)

[Spacesuit Spiff]

What I noticed during the free weekend:
-You aren't constantly working on 20 quests at a time anymore
-The story quest doesn't straight up win you the game, so it's allowed to progress faster
-Strategic resources are only used in your military, and there's more incentives to actually have a military
-Minor factions aren't as important anymore
-The sega money and focus on presentation means there's a lot of abstraction between a new player and the core gameplay. I suspect the gameplay turns out to be more solid than EL once you get the hang of all the systems (21 hours in I genuinely had no idea how some of them worked still) but idk.

[HellSlayer]

I played EL and well, I actually like es2 more. It has learning curve but.. its fine. Maybe Im fed up with boring ground games so space is perfect for it.

But maybe es2 is a bit monotonous vs el.

[amaruakx]

Here's a pretty lenghy review and comparison to EL

https://explorminate.net/2017/05/18/endless-space-2-review/

[ben]

EL is a much more complete and mature game at the end of its dev cycle. There are a lot of parts in ES2, but the at the moment the sum of the game is less than those parts. AI is utterly terrible, economy balance is way way off, (much to easy to finance empire spamming strategic sales) are just a couple of issues. Basically, there is content, but what content you choose to use in your game wont have much effect on if you win, if you are basically competent you will steam roller over the AI without feeling much push back. The choices the game tries to implement are all easily overcome without challenge, such as colonisation limit forcing unhappyness, just research a few techs, problem solved. Solutions are much to easy in this game.