Endless Space 2

Endless Space 2 is a 4X turn-based strategy game from AMPLITUDE Studios in which you colonize star systems, research tech trees, manage population happiness across multiple faction-specific resource types, and eventually crush or diplomatically outmaneuver rival empires. Each of the playable factions, from the parasitic Unfallen who spread vines across hyperspace lanes to the corporate Lumeris who treat influence like currency, plays mechanically differently enough that your second run feels like a genuinely new game. That faction design is the strongest argument for picking this up. The early and mid game loop is tightly constructed. You are constantly triaging: do you rush colonization techs to grab fertile systems before the AI does, or invest in industry multipliers to snowball production? Population growth ties into a "FIDSI" output system, meaning food, industry, dust (the currency), science, and influence all flow from the same tile-management decisions. Getting a handle on that acronym is your first real hurdle, and the in-game tutorials do a reasonable job walking you through it, even if they lean heavily on tooltip chains. A new player willing to spend a few hours in the early-game screens before declaring war will find the onboarding far less hostile than, say, a Paradox grand-strategy title. The systems compound rather than collapse on you all at once. Combat is the one area where the depth meter drops noticeably. Fleet battles are mostly automated, resolved through a card-based "battle phase" system where you assign broad tactical stances per round. It looks cinematic and the ship customization beforehand does matter, but if you are expecting manual tactical control over individual ships you will be disappointed. The AI handles mid-game expansion competently and does apply diplomatic pressure, though on lower difficulties it rarely punishes economic overextension. Crank the difficulty up and the resource squeeze becomes genuinely stressful in a good way. Late-game AI scaling, however, leans more on stat bonuses than smarter behavior, which is a recurring complaint across the genre. The mod ecosystem on Steam Workshop is active and meaningfully extends replayability. Total conversion mods add new factions, balance patches fill gaps between official updates, and UI mods clean up the information density on wider screen setups. For a game that released in 2017, the community has kept it remarkably well maintained. The visual presentation still holds up, the faction lore is genuinely interesting if you read the quest texts, and the hero unit system adds a light RPG layer to fleet and system governors that gives long campaigns a narrative texture the raw numbers alone do not provide. Who should buy this? Anyone who likes Civilization but wants space, asymmetric factions, and considerably more economic complexity. Anyone who bounced off older 4X titles because the factions all felt like palette swaps. Anyone who wants a game that rewards a proper build order and does not forgive ignoring your population approval meters. It is not the deepest 4X space game ever made, and veteran players of titles like Distant Worlds will notice the abstracted combat and some shallow diplomacy options. But the polish, faction variety, and accessible-yet-layered economy make it one of the more dependable entries in the genre. Start on Normal, pick the Sophons for your first run (straightforward science-focused faction), and expect to lose about four sessions just learning the rhythm before things click into place. Diego, Scout Team