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After years of being DLC abused by Stellaris I needed a new space strategy to scratch that itch. I craved something more in-depth and story focused than Sins of the Solar Empire, yet less bogged down in diplomatic bs than Stellaris, and ES2 found me.

The game is very satisfying to build an empire and is very dynamic, with anomalies/events/starting locations/faction bonuses all leading to varied experiences throughout play-throughs. The game is still familiar enough not to be overwhelmingly different between runs, still sharing the same overarching tech trees and major factions, yet faction bonuses allow you to fully lean in to certain empire strategies easily.

It isn't a perfect game though, one of the main reasons I think this game isn't as popular as other 4x space games is the tech tree, which is an endless stream of decisions with more branching choices the more you make. With each tech having up to 4 different bonuses it can become a dizzying affair to sort the best paths early, the only real solution is to muscle through it and figure out which techs are best for your scenario, with a few choice techs always being a good idea to rush. The AI also bugs out quite often even years after release, saying they are going to war with you when they do not actually declare war or systems that can't be colonized because a quest was never patched, the game can be pretty rough around the edges sometimes.

Despite all that the game is a solid 4x space strategy that has tons to offer in terms of interactivity and replay-ability. It is absolutely worth picking up on sale because the full game off-sale is a hard sell at $95(drops down to ~$20 on sale).

Even if you buy the definitive edition do not play your first game or two with dlcs enabled, disable all of them. Awakening is a horrendous DLC at the time of writing this review and while Penumbra/Supremacy add an extra layer for players who enjoy the game it is not a well crafted experience for beginners, since you may be surprised with invisible fleets/planets or system killing weapons in your first game.

In an already fantastic 4x space game Awakening does Endless Space 2 a disservice. Half of positive reviews are people who played with the DLC once and said 'neat new content' or were hopefuls that the Re-Awakening would turn crap into gold, but all we really ended up with was gold plated crap.

Several months into the Re-Awakening patch the game is still riddled with bugs specifically introduced with this update(disable Penumbra unless you want your save to break 200 turns in). The academy isn't as nonsensical as they were before, but still are incredibly annoying or unbalanced in half a dozen different ways.

--It is harder to get them mad at you, but the reparations tick up WAY faster (I went for 20k reparations achievement only to find I was at 2mil over the course of 10 turns in midgame).
--The ONLY way to get turn-based approval is by killing a pirate lair, no other options outside of donations and has almost nothing to do with the Academy. Not a terrible drawback, but still incredibly weak.
--The approval with the above statement is completely overturned to make players hate the dlc less. Kill 5 pirate lairs over the course of the game? Enjoy taking a free system from Isyander every 8 turns for the rest of the game.
--The fleets are insane if you actually fight against the Academy mid-late. They pump out killer fleets every turn later on and heaven forbid you get invaded by their doom-stack, have fun fighting a 20k army at a rate of 500-per-turn. It isn't impossible, but the academy is stronger than any AI on endless difficulty simply because they get free ships constantly.
--They gutted the roles into a sad joke.
--------------Spear of Isyander was op and the only reason to actually gun for the roles before, but practically a joke now. If buying privateers wasn't one of the worst mechanics in the game then there would be no need for the spear role at all. You get one powerful fleet while Isyander gets dozens, the role falls off so hard mid-late it is pathetic.
--------------Vaulkeeper is alright, but if you want laws from a certain faction you will just unlock them yourself, since the time between academy terms means you only spend half the time with the laws enabled.
--------------Legate is my personal favorite due to getting minor faction boosts, but it is straight broken in many of the games I play. Also its introduction makes one of the achievements in the game completely impossible to get without rolling back to an older version(master of dust achievement).
--------------Librarian is a flavor role and nothing more, hero info means next to nothing and is a less charming version of Stellaris's Curator Order.


To anyone who rates this DLC well: what content is there that actually improves the game outside of flavor text? Nakalim that butcher any Sophon players early game and do little else? An expanding minor faction that does literally nothing but give you treats and concede to most of your demands? A broken experience from release to remaster?

This DLC is a bad joke and despite the best the community has done for it this has become a guaranteed 'disable content' outside of achievement hunting for me.

A solid co-op horde shooter that is fun solo or with a group of friends and has a ton to offer.

• Overall gameplay loop is very satisfying. Weapon unlocks come fairly fast when doing your assignments and searching for overclocks lets players feel rewarded for playing even after all weapons are unlocked. (All weapons will take <50 hours to unlock while all overclocks may take well over 100+ hours depending on how many weeklies you do)
  
• Map design and soundtrack are stellar. The way the maps are generated can still surprise you hundreds of hours in and different biomes keep the missions feeling fresh. Sound track is also fantastic, mixing up tracks to make sure you never grow bored of the same song while gunning down hordes.
  
• Enemies feel good to shoot, even at higher difficulties. They all have very exploitable weaknesses with armor that feels satisfying to chip away as you gun certain enemies down(Praetorian especially). It is all well balanced with very few enemies feeling 'unfair' to die to.
  
• The class system is fairly well balanced with no dwarf having a direct advantage over the other while all having their own strengths. That being said, any missions without a scout(or an npc companion in solo) will quickly make traversing the caves worse as you will be fighting without very good vision and struggle to mine high-up materials. It isn't impossible to finish a mission without a scout, just a real detriment to not have one as opposed to all the other classes.
  
• Mission variety is wonderful, with no mission feeling like a repeat of another type. While many missions may have a ton of shooting in them none of the tasks are 'just go down and shoot'(outside of 'elimination)' which keeps the gameplay/gunplay fresh as it is a sideshow to the actual missions themselves.

All that being said the game does have a couple drawbacks.

• The weapon variety is fairly low, with only 3 primaries/3 secondaries per class. While modifying them to act different is cool some weapons are just plain bad so sometimes it feels like you only have 2 choices, which can grate on players who don't care for the other 2 choices.
  
• The community is extremely helpful but, like a surly dwarf, doesn't take kindly to any kind of back talk. Ask for help in discussions and keep complaining to a minimum for them to welcome you warmly. At the same time the in-game community is about as kind as they come, so don't feel bad about being bad playing any difficulty below Hazard 5.
  
• It is different for each player when you will grow bored of a certain mission/mutator, but once you hit that point it drains almost all the joy out of the game. When you have an assignment you get random missions in that tree and about half of the community groans when Rockpox/Industrial Sabatage show up, making you annoyed more than excited. You can turn off rockpox, but to do so you need to put easily 50+ hours into the game to get that option, and I.S. has no such option.

Overall it is an extremely approachable game for new players that is more than worth its value(especially on sale, $10 for this is an absolute steal). More content will be added to this game in the future and for the content it currently offers it can easily give you dozens(or hundreds) of hours of enjoyment.

• Since Feb 2021 the game has had sub 100 players on steam[including peaks]. The game is fairly dead.
  
• I liked this game with friends but never alone.
  
• The game at certain points was flooded with cheaters, the creators have done their best to stem the tide but with a free game it is hard.
  
• I don't recommend the time investment I put in, but it is absolutely free to try, just not my cup of tea nor do I recommend it.

Let me just start out by saying that Paradox REALLY needs to stop releasing DLC along with a significant game update that has nothing to do with the DLC, many of the reviews(like with Nemesis) are specifically complaining about the awful update and not the content provided with this DLC. This combined with the fact that the dlc was 100% broken on release and actively bugged out the core game if you didn't even own the dlc lowered the review percentage massively. Even with all of that in its favor this DLC, in my opinion, is really mediocre. [People who recommend this DLC scroll to the bottom for TLDR*]

---The new vassalization is what I was drawn to the most, I bought this day 1 because I use vassals in any non-extermination play through, hell even the crisis perk allows for vassals and I go full into it. My main play style is to ride out the early game for economy and tech to come in mid game and sweep up half the nations into being vassals through several vassalization wars, but this dlc doesn't really facilitate that. Unless the target is in a federation/are a vassal themselves there is absolutely zero insentive to declare wars of vassalization, doing it peacefully is faster and cheaper plus doesn't end with your vassal hating your guts. This turns most of my favorite mid-late game play style into just signing treaties because doing it through war is objectively worse in the end (plus it is disgustingly easy to propose vassalization if you are stronger than them or offer pay them). The customization options itself are alright, but there isn't really much to say besides that. Sure you can get them to pay you in addition to their normal vassalization or specialize them for your purposes, but even on Grand Admiral difficulty the AI are still worse than a player in almost every aspect which makes it less appealing. On top of that there are many options that no sane person would choose that just seem there to pad out the menu (who in their right mind would offer to join a vassal in an aggressive war?) The vassal aspect of this DLC is alright but nothing more than a rework that adds little to what vassals already did or could be done with trade agreements.

---The origins have never been a real selling point for me but I consistently finding myself using the subterranean origin because it gives me neat bonuses and no max mining districts for any playstyle, making sure I always have enough minerals no matter how crap my starting planets are. Imperial Fiefdom? A bad gimmick, it seems like it was meant to capitalize on the vassal update but the massive drain to your economy/tech early-mid game means that you really cripple yourself by playing it(plus you can start 1 tile away from the xenophobic fallen empire, meaning permanent wars). Teachers of the Shroud? Not much special, but a selling point since you automatically start out as psionic without having to spend an ascension point. Slingshot to the Stars? Another gimmick origin to show off their new megastructure, that is it, nothing else. Progenitor Hive I was kind of excited for this since hive minds kinda suck after a couple years of soft nerfs, but the downsides massively outweigh the gains. If you happen to lose your progenitor ship in a fight you are screwed, tried once and never found a reason to replay em.

---All the megastructures are fairly mediocre to me, barely worth their cost in game let alone real life cash. The orbital rings are a joke, it feels like they are trying to take inspiration from what New Ships and Classes [NCS, the most popular Stellaris mod] did to star-bases without blatantly ripping them off. The rings are barely worth the upgrade costs and do very little for the planet as a whole, playing with NCS myself I rarely even build rings. The Quantum Catapult is neat, but that is where my liking for it ends. You plan an inaccurate one way trip that would only take a few jump drive jumps to get to. Sure it is neat to leap deep into enemy territory, but almost all wars involve slowly taking over systems in a spread so as not to have to backtrack and retake stuff you missed the first time around. The Hyper Relays is what I see most reviewers gush about but I barely see the appeal, they are worse/early game gateways. It also makes wars annoying as your enemy can jump between their systems just fine to run away but you have to slowly take em the hard way, meaning it is a lot easier for the AI to get around you while you try to take over their territory.

As someone who has played Stellaris 2.6k hours the main thing I desire from DLC at this point is any type of replayability, this dlc adds basically no replayability at all. This $20 DLC feels like a $5 DLC or FREE update to the game, with the main draw being the vassalization overhaul with the other content just slapped on to excuse the price tag. Nemesis and Overlords does basically nothing for me because once you play through a full game once or twice with them there is nothing special that surprises you or nothing new to discover. Synthetic Dawn/Ancient Relics were half the price of this dlc and add far more replayability and gameplay variety than this DLC while being only half the price. This isn't worth the money and where I was excited about Stellaris DLC in the past I am slowly becoming jaded with all the recent DLCs just being reworks of mechanics or species packs instead of adding fun and new ways to enjoy the base game.

The other problem with these last few expansions is that they are just overhauls of certain aspects of the game that are locked behind a paywall. Federations/Nemesis/Overlord are literally just an excuse to paywall Federations/Intel/Vassals. I have several friends who I want to get back into Stellaris after a 2 year break, but explaining that a lot of the changes to gameplay are locked behind $40 worth of DLC is an instant mood killer [if they want to play when I am not online].


If the vassalization rework was an update for $5 I'd recommend it, nothing else in this DLC is even a selling point.
*For people who recommend buying this full price Paradox is coming out with new content just for you. It is a make-up kit, rubber nose and wig sold separately, since you clowns will buy anything so long as it adds something.

Edit: Since making this review I have booted up Stellaris once. Stellaris was probably my favorite strategy game, with over 2.6k hours it is easy to see that, but this dlc has sapped all my enjoyment from the game. It isn't even the DLC itself, but the way they shoehorned vassalization into being the primary aspect of the game, even federations after the federation dlc wasn't this bad. Every enemy has a minimum of 3 other civilizations tacked on to them via being a vassal/overlord, by midgame there is no one left who is even a single empire, which makes diplomacy practically useless outside of the overlord. This use to be an incredibly dynamic and interesting strategy game that I greatly enjoyed that has now devolved into an absolute mess that crams as many differing civilizations together as possible.

I cannot add anything more than all the other comments have added.

This is a wacky/silly shooter game from the 200X's. The dialogue is funny at times, plot is contrived, and the game play is serviceable. I rarely grew bored while playing this game outside of challenges which are *mostly* fun not counting random difficulty spikes. The remake aspect is mostly visual and judging by the bonus concept art you unlock you can tell this wasn't a shameless cash grab but a genuine attempt to recreate the original's glory.

I was able to get 100% achievements and collect everything in the game besides probes [screw that crap] and while I enjoyed my time I most likely will not play it again for at least another few years.

The sad truth of the matter is that in terms of game-play the game is a product of its time, being outclassed by most games that have been released this last half decade. This game is fun but not worth the $30 unless you played the original and only experience joy through the sweet hit of nostalgia it can bring. Get it on sale for 66% off if you want a time-killer that is fun if not a bit forgettable.

This DLC is a real mixed bag but at the end of the day it is worth it for me.

• Characters: The two new characters are interesting but that is where it ends for me. The void fiend is a super cool concept but I just don't like the play-style of being forced to switch back and forth between the two forms, with late game either forcing you to play as the base form due to all the healing or stacking corrupted items to always be a short range nuker. The sniper is fun the first few times you play but the fact you have no mobility that gets easily run down+squishiness makes playing on higher difficulties a death sentence, plus the 0 crits outside of sniping make being lazy late game a bit harder, since no Opinion wisps or Daggers can crit.
  
• Enemies: Wow a lot of these guys are annoying, the blind pest is the worst enemy added to this game[wisps that bob up and down, do more damage, and fire faster]. The Void-touched enemies add collapse, which is just burn damage that stacks but in 1 tick of damage instead of many over time, not very fun to play against. The rest of the enemies added are pretty neat and mostly fun to fight, with differences that make them distinct from battling other monsters.
  
• Locations: As always Hopoo killed it in the design of the bonus locations, they are downright beautiful and fun to explore. Sulfur pools sucks ascetically but the rest are welcome additions. My only gripe is that if you go to Void Locus 4+ hours into a run and you DON'T have strides of heresy, you straight up die from how many instakill-aoe enemies spawn relative to your charging area. You can have 50x every other item in the game, you will still wipe [even with 50 dio's].
  
• Items: A few trash items were added in but most of them are great additions that allow for more variety in your play-style and replay ability, not much to say past that. Void caches also are an interesting mechanic that are mostly enjoyable to fight while giving out good rewards. 10/10
  
• Simulacrum:This mode is visually impressive the first few times you play it, but with how restrictive the area is and how brutally enemies can dog-pile you on monsoon. I know 0 people who play this mode outside of unlocking Void Fiend or using artifact of sacrifice.
  
• Eclipse: It is interesting, but for me and my group of friends we kind of hope for a difficulty between Monsoon and Rainstorm, since the jump between those two is pretty large. I get that truly insane people want a CBT game mode past monsoon, but this wasn't for us.

My main problem with this DLC is it feels like they fashioned a lot of this content around insta-kill mechanics, which are NOT fun in a rogue-like. Collapse/void enemies make it so once you get this DLC you far more likely to have your run end instantly. The saving grace is the void items and core items added with this content, while some are crap most are great additions to different play styles. It IS annoying at times, but it adds more replay ability to Risk of Rain 2 which is great in my book.

Pretty good boss rush game.

There is not much to say for this game outside of that. Failing at combat is aggravating to no end. Yes, Mr. Oar-man, please 3 stock me in your 4th phase after watching 1 jump-to-dock cutscene and 2 'lmao weakling' taunts However it is extremely satisfying watching how much you avoid/parry after 5-10 deaths, making it a joy to look back at. The story is there, some will claim it is weak while others claim it is compelling, to me it is interesting enough to hold my attention while making me curious but not spend several hours on a wiki page trying to understand it all.

It is incredibly short for a $20 game, I beat the main game in 5 hours on the highest starting difficulty, but if you can get it on sale and enjoy parry mechanics/bullet hells/boss rushes then it is a solid buy during a Summer/Winter sale.

This game is fun, beautiful, and tells a wonderful story. I definitely recommend it on sale to almost anyone that likes platformers or metroidvania fans. That being said, a lot of the negative reviews come from fans of Ori and the Blind Forest, and in my opinion they have pretty solid points on flaws in the game.

Shortly after Ori came out in 2015 Hollow Knight/Zelda released in 2017 and the devs took great inspiration [www.gamesradar.com] from it. The difference between a game like Ori Will of the Wisps[WotW] and Hollow Knight[HK] is that HK is a platformer built with its combat as a part of it where as Ori WotW is a platformer that also has combat. A good example in HW is being able to 'pogo' off enemies or dangerous terrain to bounce yourself and possibly jump or dash again, or how you can swing your sword which deflects a small enemy's attacks/projectiles. The only practical way WotW incorporates this is with deflecting projectiles sent at you, which flings you in the other direction often putting you in danger. Combine this with the fact that most enemies rarely stagger or have incredibly quick recovery windows makes it very frustrating at times. The platforming offered by Ori WotW is wonderful and easily rivals Blind Forest often, but the combat is not nearly as satisfying (except in rare circumstances like the final boss fight).

With my main gripe out of the way this game is truly a labor of love, just like the first game. From the creature ascetics to the locations the game is gorgeous and you can tell a lot of effort was put into this game's design. Small things were added that most players may never even notice, a good example being that in many locations if you jump on a small piece of brush then the background will react along with it, wiggling up and down or side to side. The soundtrack is also touching and is a proud sequel to Blind Forest in terms of what it brings in quiet moments as well as boss tracks. While it adds many NPCs to the game most of them do not feel forced in the setting [besides your 40+ meeting with a Moki] and bring a bit of levity that the original game did not have. The platforming itself feels rarely janky and it beautiful often making it a satisfying experience HOWEVER they hide the absolute best mobility skill at the end of the game that trivializes all earlier platforming so it cheapens the feeling of collecting things as you go since you can do it in your sleep if you just get that final skill.

This game sits in a weird place for me, I do recommend it to almost anyone on sale since it is so cheap relative to other AAA titles and easy to pickup for all skill levels if you alter the difficulty, but the game is held back by its combat system. If I had to recommend a beautiful platformer I would pick Ori Blind Forest or Celeste over Will of the Wisps, and if I had to pick a metroidvania game for combat I would pick Hollow Knight before Will of the Wisps as well. It is a bit of both worlds without being the best of either, worth your time but not without fault.

I have been excited to play Europa IV for probably about 7 years now. I saw my friends playing it as early as 2014/2015, from what they told me along with the videos I saw of it I knew it was probably one of the best strategy games out there, but it is not a game I would be willing to recommend to the vast majority of people. It is a pretty good strategy game all things considered, but there are 3 major things that keep me from giving it the thumbs up.

The Price
This is a given in any review about this game: the price of the game plus dlc is a joke. I added this to my wishlist around 2017 and every sale that has happened since I would check the price for the complete collection, I never once saw it drop below $115. Hell, over time it has actually gone up on sale to over $120 and I had all but given up hope of ever buying it. The only reason I got it at all was the Ukranian relief Humble Bundle deal for $20. That is a great deal, but that is the point I am trying to make: I watched the deals on this game for 5+ years and never once saw it priced reasonably, if anyone will get this recommended they will have to wait for the next war in Europe to get a fair deal.
'Just pay for the subscription, it is only $5 a month' is a sad joke to me. If I want to play a strategy game I want to be able to own it and hop back into it anytime I get the itch, not pump another 5 bucks into it for a month I might play on/off.
Side note: The last half dozen DLC for this game have been mixed or worse on reviews, paying a subscription fee for a game that is progressively getting worse is a dark road to go down.

The 'Tutorial'
This is the most complex strategy game in terms of different mechanics and depth I have probably ever seen outside of Dwarf Fortress. You might see jokes in other reviews talking about how they finished the tutorial 200+ hours in, it isn't as funny after you have watched your 4th hour of tutorial vids on youtube or lost your 6th run in a row to something you didn't even know how to proccess. Paradox has a couple of great tutorials on youtube, but that is it, they have only 2 videos a pt.1 and pt.2 without any follow up vids on the other several dozen mechanics [granted it is due to the content creator being busy].
There are probably only a few friends I know of that I would recommend this game to knowing the complexity of the mechanics in this game and they already have hundreds/thousands of hours in this game already.

Going Hollow
This game, more than any other strategy game I have played, has left me with a hollow feeling upon ending a session or run. To me it is a combination of the same or similar starts/warscore mechanics and coalitions/the end date. [next part is just my line of reasoning through my game experience] My first game I ever really got off the ground I was France. I spent a century slowly beating back England, to spend the next century fighting North American Naitives [Leviathan DLC bad meme], with another century taking down the massive colonies and economy of Portugal who owned all of South America. As the Economic Hegemon I was slowly conquering west Africa while the Military Hegemon of the Ottomans that I ignored for 3 centuries were conquering east Africa. I conquered almost all of it and was prepping for the Ottoman clash when, boom, 70+ hours of buildup for an end screen. I had never felt so cheated in a strategy game. From that point on I never wanted to play the game casually to avoid that terrible end. It boiled down to; playing the best countries I could, fighting wars in certain orders constantly, and trying to skirt the edge of large coalitions forming. Realising multiple times I put a few dozen hours into a run that would probably stall out wore me down to the point where I just stopped.
The point is that if you don't want to be cucked out of an unsatisfying ending you have to play optimally. You do the same/similar starts with your specific nation or else you won't make it to world conquest unless you are an Europa Savant. A simple example: as France you will never avoid the war against England, you will always fight the hundred year war and prep for that. The warscore/coalitions have been created to slow down the pacing of the player, which is understandable/neat mechnic but has been balanced against the players favor over time[you can see this in old guides of world conquest]. The tediousness of the warscore mechanic combined with the desire not to be forced out of the game before I am finished with it made me apathetic to the gameplay as a whole.

Europa 4 is an incredibly complex strategy game that I thought I would deeply enjoy and it sucks to not be able to recommend it.
---The price of the game with DLCs is probably the most expensive of any strategy game out there, piled on with the fact that so many recent dlc are terrible along with balance changes for them.
---The game takes dozens if not hundreds of hours to master, with most of my friends giving up on strategies if they take more than 5 hours to get the core mechanics down it isn't a good recommend. Even most of my strategy savvy friends wouldn't sit through hours of tutorial vids to get a general grasp for Europa.
---The game leaves me personally feeling unsatisfied, either trying my heart out to conquer all I can or being forced to meet an 'end game' screen just when things were getting good. Even if I mod it to allow any timeline it would still leave me with a slow plod through countries, forced to only take a certain number of provinces allowed by the warscore system without even the enjoyment of achievements to make any progress meaningful. It just grew tiresome for me.
Edit: I found a workaround for modding with achievements and a 3rd party program to make ironman games into non-ironman games to continue campaigns after 1821, but it is not allowed by the core game files or the base game. I will probably play more of this game, but the point still stands.