The more I play, the more I’m enjoying this game. I think about it even when I’m not playing. In many areas, it has a “less is more” design philosophy that appeals to me.
One example is ship design. I usually dislike ship design in games like this, but I really enjoy it here because it doesn’t overwhelm me with detail but also gives me interesting decisions. I was so happy when I opened up my first design and saw I just had to figure out what to put in five slots, some of which could accept only certain fittings. I didn’t have to worry about energy costs, or mass, or part size. I like making five interesting decisions rather than 20 confusing (or obvious) ones.
Plus, the game gave me feedback on my design pretty quickly, because I have plenty of pirates to practice on. Watching my battles from the overhead view (which I find much more informative than the default cinematic view), I saw the strengths and weaknesses of my decisions in battles versus pirates, and I created a new design to complement my old one, giving me some combined-arms punch. That made me enjoy the ship-design process, and now I look forward to the slightly more complex decisions that greet me every time I research a new tech.
Same with battle cards. The game doesn’t overwhelm us with too many battle cards at game start, when we pick from 3 cards. Again, using pirates as my testing ground, I experimented with different battle cards, and a couple disasters convinced me of the importance of thinking – and looking at the opponent’s loadout and my own – before choosing a card. And once again, the game gradually increases the complexity, adding more cards as I research stuff (or, interesting, when I “discovered” a battle tech by exploring an anomaly).
Same with galaxy size. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I want to dive into 1000 systems in Distant Worlds. But ES2’s smaller scope made me think early on about which direction to expand, because I had humans 3 or 4 systems away, and probes found Cravens even closer (albeit not connected by starlanes).
Ditto with factions. Better to have 8 really well-defined factions than 25 vaguely-different ones. Sure, the game could do more to increase the immersion: faction-specific art for each improvement, for example. Even so, I really enjoy the differences among the factions.
And I love the politics for similar reasons: the basic design is simple, and my decisions have a tangible effect on outcomes. I understand why my actions help certain factions (the UI tells me so!), and I only have myself to blame for my recent electoral loss to the Militarists. Yes, the game does not give us perfect info on elections, but I think that’s a plus: it means I’m not sure whether injecting 300 dust into a campaign will make a difference – just as in the real world spending money doesn’t guarantee an electoral win, and sometimes a less-qualified candidate surprises the pollsters and wins.
So far my only real complaint is diplomacy, but I’m rarely happy with diplomacy in games like these. Crusader Kings 2 is the only game that’s captured my diplomatic imagination. ES2’s hero system is a step in the right direction: give us more stuff like this!
Bah, I typed way too much. Less typing, more playing! Back to it.