Better than Stellaris? What is the difference?

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Checking if I should buy it, but idk Stellaris seems superior?

[ZumZoom]

From what little I played of Civ5, I would say that ES2 is closer to that with the mechanics.
First off ES2 is turn based. Exploration is pretty good, though it's hard to compete with the amounts of text-based anomalies and quests that Stellaris has. Expansion rush is much more limited early and mid game in comparison. I never really did get into ship designing in Stellaris, in ES2 it's pretty fun. So I prefer combat in ES2, which also has some choices when combat begins, unlike Stellaris that doesn't give any control to the player at all. ES2 has some voice acting in diplomacy, though it's pretty limited.
Then there is game length - Stellaris for me becomes a micromanagement hell in mid to engame and that makes one play last for about 30 hours, while ES2 usually is only 15-20 hours, and micro isn't as bad.
Though Stellaris has many more races and ways to customize to me it feels that there are no more than a handful of ways to play. In ES2 most of the factions are unique and have their own playstile with gameplay changes.
I really loved the first couple of plays of Stellaris for the amount of cool sci-fi content in anomalies, archeology and other stuff. But after that I needed at least half a year to not be bored by repeated content.

Personally, I prefer ES2. It more replayable and gameplay feels more focused.
Also, the music in ES2 is a AMAZING.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Stellaris is a real-time empire manager first and a 4X second.
ES2 is a turn-based classic 4X first.

Stellaris is more random, ES2 is more streamlined.

[Keith Preston]

You can have a good time with both games , wich one is superior in terms of statisfication depends on your personal preferences. If you can't get both just pick whatever its hard to threw this since both games are good.

[Alex]

1. Endless Space is sometimes called the "poor man's" Stellaris, but this is not only due to it being developed by a smaller company. The main issue is that Paradox are insanely greedy. They release a skeleton of a base game, then sell the rest through a brazillion DLCs. Stellaris is a particularly bad case, having snowballed into absurd proportions.

2. Stellaris is at least two orders of magnitude more complicated.

3. Funny enough, Endless Space has a better engine. It runs much better, since Stellaris is utterly overburdened by all the crap they've added over the years. You have to commit mass xenocides, regularly, just to ease up the burden on the engine.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Or have a top tier cpu

[Alex]

Originally posted by Elitewrecker PT:

Or have a top tier cpu

This won't help much, since the Stellaris engine will use mainly only one core. On top of that, the engine wasn't designed to process so much stuff, which means that even a good CPU will be wasted on it.

[Elitewrecker PT]

I did a run after moving from an i5-3570 to a 13900KF with the usual settings I used (1000 systems, max marauders and fallen empires, like 20 AIs) and for the first time ever I didn't even use fastest speed (I used to play like 90% of the game on fastest). Even just fast was plenty fast to keep up with stuff happening and I barely noticed any slowdown when reaching 2400

[DNLH]

I have both, every now and then I reinstall Stellaris, even complete a playthrough, just to discover that I did not have fun all the way through, I just enjoyed it early on and then just wanted to keep going on to complete it. Maybe it's because I have no DLCs for Stellaris, but it was never the thing in ES2, I don't play it regularly, but I always have fun giving it another playthrough and it always feels like it was good time.

In short, both games I reinstall every now and then, but when I play Stellaris it's for one playthrough often ending up with 'meh, that was a thing', while with ES2 it's always for two-three playthroughs instead.

[Elitewrecker PT]

Which can be done in the same or less time that a Stellaris playthrough takes.

[DNLH]

Not really on Endless speed.

[Alex]

Originally posted by DNLH:

I have both, every now and then I reinstall Stellaris, even complete a playthrough, just to discover that I did not have fun all the way through, I just enjoyed it early on and then just wanted to keep going on to complete it. Maybe it's because I have no DLCs for Stellaris, but it was never the thing in ES2, I don't play it regularly, but I always have fun giving it another playthrough and it always feels like it was good time.

That's because you need at least a third of the DLCs for an enjoyable playthrough. The base game is little more than a teaser. ES2, on the other hand, is perfectly fine without the DLCs. Especially without that particular DLC.

[DNLH]

Originally posted by Alex:

That's because you need at least a third of the DLCs for an enjoyable playthrough. The base game is little more than a teaser. ES2, on the other hand, is perfectly fine without the DLCs. Especially without that particular DLC.

That's one of the upper hands ES2 has over Stellaris for me. I bought DLCs for ES2 because I wanted more of the base game. I'm wary of buying any DLCs for Stellaris in case it doesn't really change anything and I just end up wasting money.

That being said, I don't really want to prove one is better over the other in any objective way, I just did have an extremely lopsided experience with both games. But I can see something completely opposite happening, or simply just enjoying both.

[Alex]

Originally posted by DNLH:

That's one of the upper hands ES2 has over Stellaris for me. I bought DLCs for ES2 because I wanted more of the base game. I'm wary of buying any DLCs for Stellaris in case it doesn't really change anything and I just end up wasting money.

The main issue is that they're changing too much. The game is still a work in progress. Each DLC not only adds, but also changes stuff. Worse, still, even the base game will be affected by the changes, and the boundary between "you not having a DLC" and "the AI not allowed using its mechanics is not always perfect.

Originally posted by DNLH:

That being said, I don't really want to prove one is better over the other in any objective way, I just did have an extremely lopsided experience with both games. But I can see something completely opposite happening, or simply just enjoying both.

No, vanilla ES2 is definitely better then vanilla Stellaris. The massive amount of DLC in Stellaris will easily overtake ES2, though. On the other hand, there might be too many DLCs, choosing them is a science in itself.

[ArcaniteM]

It looks nicer, more simple to understand, faster games, more fun

[Yu Daid]

You can't really compare the two games. ES2 is more of a classic 4X game (Civilization or Master of Orion, comes to mind). I have over 1k hours on ES2 and it is a lot of fun.
Stellaris is more of a grand strategy/empire simulator game, you will need more time to get into the game and if you have a low frustation level, i would advise against it. It is a lot of fun as well!
Contrary to what the comments above say, Stellaris is perfectly playable without any DLC, at least for the starters. The one DLC that everyone deems arbitraty because it adds so much to the game is UTOPIA. Distant Stars and Ancient Relics are small DLC that add more fluff to the game. Personally i would recommend Stellaris with the 3 DLC i mentioned, you can buy it for a good price on sale.
If you like classic 4X Games definetly get ES2 with all the DLC.