Endless Space 2 - 20/20 hours

After playing six hours on the slowest speed, I can say with confidence that it's better. You have more time to think, more time to come to appreciate the nuances of your planets, and more time to position your fleets. But now I'm curious as to whether one of the speed settings in-between would have been better.

"Normal" speed is probably the best. That's probably what everything is optimized towards. In all likelihood, had I just played Normal speed from the beginning, I would just now be finishing up my first game and would be making some general observations about the game as a whole. But I was worried that it wouldn't be enough, that I'd miss something if I didn't try and rush through.

It was a pointless worry, because even with my fast-speed victory and more in-depth Endless-speed game, I still feel like I'm only beginning to learn the ins and outs of Endless Space 2. This is definitely a game I could play for 100 hours, in a world where I still had that option.

That being said, I think it is probably the second-best of the three Endless games. It's a definite improvement on the original Endless Space, but the things it borrowed from Endless Legend worked better in Endless Legend. The faux fantasy setting just felt like a more appropriate home for heroes and quests, and the asymmetrical factions were more distinct and risk-taking.

Still, after 20 hours Endless Space 2 feels solid. I can't speak to long-term flaws like faction balance or the relative fun of the different win conditions, but the moment-to-moment fundamentals of building, economy, and politics are satisfyingly complex without be too terribly overwhelming. It does have the same problem of the other Endless games where build order is important, but you more or less want to build everything in every system, but I've yet to see a 4X game that solves that problem elegantly (except, perhaps, Pandora: First Contact, but that game had other problems).

The list of games I want to revisit after the blog is over is growing longer and longer, but from my brief glimpse, I think Endless Space 2 might deserve a spot somewhere near the bottom.