Endless Space 2 is the best 4X game I've ever played, with exceptional design and quality within the genre. That being said, it is not a very good game overall. It's a kitchen sink of random, arbitrary features and mechanics that are only vaguely tied together under a loose guise of balance. The AI is trivial to steamroll once you have a basic grasp on the game's mechanics and the pacing of the game is agonizingly slow, filled to the brim with tedious micromanagement. I wanted to have faith in the game, nevertheless, and tried an overhaul mod to see if the game could be fixed with some heavy rebalancing, but at the end of the day I concluded it was simply unsalvageable.

I tried for a long time to play the game using the online multiplayer, both with and without the overhaul mod, but it was no use. Me and my friend always felt bad after playing it, like we wasted all of our time, and none of the strategy or tactical layer we attempted to interact with proved interesting.