Endless Space 2 Review | Jingoist Joy™ Edition

hey hey people sef here humanity one day we will inevitably reach the stars and one day we will inevitably reach other intelligent sentient yet utterly alien races we will shake their many appendages engage in trade exchange ideas and even attempt diplomacy but we all know inevitably how this has to end [Music] welcome to endless space 2. endless bass 2 is a 4x game which if you're not familiar with stands for the four x's expand explore and exterminate all xenomorphs before they do the same to you probably you know most likely i've played this turn-based sci-fi strategy intensely for the better part of a month and before that in about two years and i must confess it's pretty damn good also there is a story and it is absolutely critical you understand the lore of this game in the current job market endless space historians are in extremely high demand and both starting salaries of about 300k most of the fortune 500 companies hire at least two of them in order to understand what the [ __ ] is going on the story is told to you through wiki articles the accuracy of which is questionable because i've edited several articles and they still haven't caught me in the universe of endless space one and two there is or was an incredibly advanced civilization called the endless what happened to the endless well there's less of them the end roll credits but no they went to space and they developed technology they revolutionized the galaxy by creating dust dust is used as money and endless space too which it isn't it's an autonomous cloud computing network of nano machines that get smarter as the cloud gets bigger they're capable of self-assembly self-autonomy and farming crypto tokens at rates never before seen in the known galaxy however they developed a little too hard when they figured out how to upload your soul so half of them went on to live as immortal machines running on the 5g network these were known as the virtual endless the other half known as the concrete endless considered them an abomination because it's hard to consider a sentient laptop as intelligent life even harder when you find out it's still running windows vista unable to reconcile their differences the endless decided to end each other the virtuals unleashed bioweapons on the concrete the concrete sent malware to their mailbox forcing them to run three billion instances of bonzi buddy needless to say they wiped each other out the endless came to an end but many centuries later other races figured out space travel picking apart the ashes and remains of a civilization long forgotten in the galaxy of the endless is where our story takes place so what do you do in endless space too well you pick a space-faring civilization and you try to win but what is victory victory can be anything money technology intergalactic conquest or even weaponizing the influence of e-girl streamers to absorb every sentient race in the galaxy because as we already know a sentient brain is still capable of falling victim to becoming a simp the path to victory is your own free choice the game itself is very customizable meaning there's no reason to pick any speed except fast any galaxy besides ovoid and if anyone dares pick a custom race we are all going to collectively form a non-aggression pact and hunt you down starting off you only have a single planet your home system is very modest and you need to rapidly scale your operations if you hope to compete with the rest to do so you'll need to explore expand and colonize new systems exploration is very simple you send an exploration vessel into the great unknown and watch as it dies to pirates before that happens you'll want to find as many uncolonized systems as possible on each planet there's a chance of finding curiosities these are the slow pulsing rings you see on display to explore curiosity you need to send a probe it's quite similar to the probe minigame from mass effect 2. if successful the game will let you know together with a small reward for finding it before anyone else these can be anything from strategic or luxury resources planetary anomalies or even the start of a random quest line the point of curiosities is to try and guess which star systems are worth colonizing in general any system less than three planets is garbage any system with only cold planets is garbage in fact ask enough players and you'll find that every possible star system ever formed by the laws of physics is still garbage colonize them anyway because i like the animation that plays each time you do so there's actually an animation for every type of planet which i didn't know because who the [ __ ] colonizes a gas giant as their first choice of planet it's like where are we dropping boys oh yeah on the burning gas giant how are we meant to walk on a gas giant very carefully anyway i'm losing track you choose a star system and you pick a more reasonable type of planet to be the base of your colony most factions can't settle a system immediately they need to form an outpost send colony support and convince any other players contesting the system to cease their aggressive expansionism you can do this through liberal policies such as stealing their food supplies or less liberal policies also known as an interplanetary blockade with the sole purpose of starving them to death typically this is how you greet other players otherwise you blast our ships out of orbit and you get sent a formal complaint to which you respond accordingly diplomacy is an interesting concept we do have other things to take care of these are diplomatic channels not social media again are you just lonely because unlike many games of a similar nature diplomacy is a tangible resource in fact everything is a resource if you want to condense down the endless space 2 experience you're going to be spending hours of your life trying to increase the five colors green orange yellow blue and purple respectively these are food industry dust science and influence or fizzy for short these are the combined economic outputs of your systems at the beginning you don't have very much you can't do very much so you need more a lot more you need food to grow population population contributes to the economy and gives you different bonuses depending on the race of that population but a planet's base output is pathetic so you need to build improvements to do that you need industry more industry more production but you can't have industry without research and you can't have research without science besides unique variations every faction follows the same unified tech tree supporting larger industry requires dust a lot of dust and if you're planning to go to war exponentially more dust to even make the formal declaration that you're going to erase someone off the face of the galaxy you need influence it is the most precious resource and represents your combined political power the bigger your influence the bigger your sphere of influence this game doesn't work on national borders it works on raw intergalactic peer pressure have enough influence and you'll absorb everyone without even lifting a finger besides other players there are also minor factions did you know that nigerians govern a sector of space occupied by several different humanoid species if we say yes will you feed us one of those species is the bencarens they occupy just 10 percent of nigerian space but take up nearly 80 percent of the space in nigerian prisons maybe they commit more crimes these are civilizations that are advanced yet not advanced enough to avoid a simulation these are very diverse and can be anything from sentient jellyfish reformed assassin droids looking for god or even moving chunks of coral reef remotely piloted by a sentient supercomputer the size of a planet which in itself was formed by random chance minor factions exist to be absorbed by other players why because you get a free system out of it and a unique racial trait never underestimate these because a single good trait can win you the game there's also pirates it's okay everybody finds me irresistible [Laughter] pirates exist to occupy every system you ever like and reduce the overall quality of your time and space luckily pirates are business oriented and will not trouble you as long as you pay also i like putting pirate marks on all of my friends colonies consider it an indirect way of saying maybe you should move now you've got the basics down what are you meant to do you're meant to try and you're meant to fail endless space 2 gives you freedom freedom to [ __ ] up and suffer for consequences the tech tree is subdivided into four distinct categories military economy science and empire develop your military and you get bigger guns but you don't get the ships to mount them you need to develop your empire for that then you need a military industrial complex to facilitate the production of your armada which forces you to tech economy not only for developing your systems but for supplying a constant stream of dust because bankruptcy is not an option for reference one technology unlock is the difference between abject poverty and having the largest intergalactic trade company incorporated on your home system why stop there get access to the galactic commodities market as well because it's a biological requirement for me to speculate the stock market in every game i play do all that and realize you neglected science which is a problem because every single research you ever research makes every following research more expensive to research endless space 2 is a great galactic scale balancing act every action taken is counterbalanced by the opportunity cost of every action not taken here's an example let's say you found a nice system but you can't colonize it because each type of planet requires the respective technology to touch ground on their surface you might spend a bunch of turns tacking towards that as a result you get a new system however your lack of tech leaves you oblivious to the contents you later find out that ideal mediterranean planet you picked is filled with dinosaurs the water is made of mercury and the atmosphere gives you cancer if you pumped everything into science and exploration you would have found a much better system nearby because you explored the curiosities you know there's plenty of strategic deposits without the risk of melanoma even the worst colony has great potential given a development plan systems can compensate for deficiency using luxury low birth rate spike for water with red saying no production use jedonix do people still keep using the term war criminal in your presence despite the fact you've clarified multiple times that enemy civilians are indeed active combatants bring out the hallucinogenic grapes given time any problem can be solved given money any problem can be solved instantaneously i don't know exactly how we're going to terraform a planet in a single turn but i know the next time i look there better be a [ __ ] jungle instead there's a lot of ships in this game unique to each faction they're all fully customizable limited only by the type and number of modules available primarily you're going to use them to intimidate your enemies into submission and to intimidate your friends into working a little harder on their friendship your only control over combat is the loadout formation and tactics used by your military the rest is a simulation played out by the computer where each time a ship explodes you know the cinematic at the end of diablo 2 where tyrio throws his sword of a world stone and it explodes into a billion chunks of wood yeah that's exactly how every ship explodes in this game combat is very simple there's different weapons which have different accuracies depending on the range of engagement flat cannons tread anything up close including long-range ballistic missiles but they bounce off armor lasers cut ships in half at mid-range while beam weaponry works at every range unless they have shields you can absolutely get away with filling every slot with a flat cannon choosing the default tactics card and still win every fight besides interplanetary combat you can also directly invade this works on the same principle which means i'm still going to use the default tactics card which just so happens to be preemptive orbital bombardment many civilians will die but that is a sacrifice i'm willing to make your chance of success depends entirely on whether or not you have replaced your troops with a mobile suit gundam if you conquer a system you can choose to either spare the population or take a massive hit to your public approval rating by re-educating and re-integrating the native population into the [ __ ] soil which is a good time in segway to talk about politics in endless space too you have government you have senate and you have an obligation to represent your people which is why we have a dictatorship power to the masses is power to the upper classes and any proletariat will see the wisdom of my words politics is all encompassing in endless space too any action you take endorse or sponsor will shift the political access of your entire empire as with real life the opinions of your people are difficult to manage their motivations difficult to guess there's a total of six different party ideologies you can choose to support each two a pair of polar opposites religious and scientific militarist and pacifist ecological and industrial on top of that you've got your government this controls your party representation and how much corruption you can get away with democracy has the widest free party representation it is also the most corrupt because i have no control over my elections republics and federations are generally more progressive offering less representation and more opportunities to correct the result of any rigged election dictatorship completely removes the need for underhanded tactics and ensures that all voices are heard and represented by the single party i choose every political party holding office has representatives these are not your average man these are heroes recruited from the academy but what is the academy you know how i said justice currency and dust is essentially a cloud computing nanite swarm now imagine smoking it because the academy does exactly that you're hiring nanite augmented crackheads to rule your empire these are very diverse in both race and specialization they each have their own unique and interesting backstory except scales scales is literally a giant bat that likes to eat zucchini how is she qualified in any way to be my senator i i don't know but the people the people love her and who am i to say no to that smile so what's the point of political parties i'll tell you it's called legislation and legislation controls the focus of your empire you can pass laws respective to each party you have in office the leading political party also enacts their own automatic policy scientists let you research high tech without unlocking it religion gives you the moral high ground to escalate a cold war without legal consequence industrialism uses the economy to finance the economy by expanding the economy how could ecology possibly compete well by giving the public announcement that we don't exactly know how to live on a volcano so let's do it anyway militarist rhetoric not only removes the political cost of war it actively encourages you to go to war with absolutely everyone and finally the pacifists can at any time without your consent force you into a state of peace passing law costs influence depending on the size of your empire the longer a party stays in power the more laws you have to choose from for example state enforced eugenics and mandatory sterilization of other races who aren't your own is a relatively simple law to pass with minimal political experience asking everyone to work overtime requires a level of finesse and eloquence only seen in the most machiavellian of politicians unlike many forex games endless space 2 has quests most of these are faction specific story missions with branching political options to suit your empire they're quite interesting they give you something to do and most of all they give you permanent upgrades for the rest of the game you also have multiplayer how do you play multiplayer it's quite simple you all connect to a game you play for about 50 turns you forget to make backups of your game and then everyone collectively desynchronizes welcome to endless space 2 multiplayer with all that covered you've got a general idea of how to play endless space 2. now let's get to the fun stuff the factions there are currently 12 different races to choose i'm gonna cover them all the sofons are a race of intellectuals despite this they talk in a british accent they're over developed geckos that love science and hate personal health and safety the less people know a technology the faster sofons can obtain it if you want a fairly vanilla faction with an easy science victory go play the safonity conversely sorry link i can't give credit come back when you're a little richer we have a lumaris whose entire ethos motivation and philosophy can be crystallized in one word money for the lumiras no problem is too great as long as you throw piles of money at it they also have my favorite faction leader commerce baby the lifeblood of this and any other galaxy who is probably responsible for every single trade cartel in the known galaxy and arguably runs more of an economic crime syndicate than a legitimate empire but i don't care because big titty fish mommy is going to buy the galaxy and i'm going to help her if you like making obscene amounts of cash amphibious mommy milkers or just winning the game by accident play lumares imagine rampant over industrialization and the fractured ecosystem that follows given such dire conditions what do you think is the most reasonable course of action you can a put all your resources into ecological initiatives and repair the sorry state of your planet or b digitize yourself and become a gaming laptop the vadyani chose the second option even better they made a church out of it belief is strength worship is endless and heretics are nothing but essence for the harvest unlike other races the vodyani don't colonize they travel they land and then they harvest then we have horatio come to pry on the most stunning man in the galaxy again originally a wealthy trillionaire horatio set out to fight his own star system along the way he also found extremely advanced cloning technology so he made a billion copies of the most beautiful and gorgeous person to ever exist which was of course horatio and then horatio thought to himself what better than to fill the galaxy with beauty what better than to fill the galaxy with horatio her ratio is concerned with pressing matters such as air conditioning his government accordingly is an dictatorship make horatio great again of course there are other less fortunate races than horatio but horatio is not only handsome he is also brilliant and thus he finds ways to integrate minority populations by splicing their genetics with horatio yes many of your less symmetrical friends and family may simply disappear but know that their memory will live on inside horatio horatio is a classic case of careful who you call ugly in high school because he just might use the entire galaxy as a glorified eugenics program the united empire can be summarized in a single clip i'm doing my part i'm doing my part i'm doing my part i'm doing my part too the united empire is an imperialist expansionist federation where the will of the emperor is absolute any construction any technology any luxury he so desires the empire provides for the emperor does not ask he commands and the raw influence of his voice can make the impossible into reality if you want to play not only the most industrious faction but also the one that generates the most influence just by being industrious try the united empire propaganda patriotism and the greatest of military-industrial complexes await you enlist today service guarantees citizenship so far everyone i covered at least have the option of diplomacy but what if that's just not in your nature what do you sound like when you scream the cravers are [ __ ] terrifying as a leftover bioweapon made by the virtual endless they only have one purpose consume everything any planet with cravers on it has a fixed life expectancy because the cravers will rip it strip it and tear it apart and then they move on there is no long-term plan there is no sustainability there is no choice but to consume you as well we are coming trees do you know how fast a tree moves not very fast the unfallen are a race of trees they speak with a scottish accent why do you pester the heart with your petty meats much like the scottish trees are rooted to the ground they don't do much and their only way of winning the game is to ask you politely do you know how they colonize other planets they need to slowly delicately without interruption entwine them with celestial vines and hope or pray that they didn't start next to cravers if you enjoy pressing and turn and being a vegetable you'll enjoy playing the unfallen imagine being an ostrich now imagine evolving to the point where you're used as arena bloodsports for the entertainment of an advanced decadent civilization then that civilization gets wiped out you get your freedom and form a tribalistic society of samurai ostriches then you accidentally stab your katana through a giant ship and suddenly you're a major faction vehicia were added with the supremacy dlc together with the main source of tears and salt on the endless space 2 forums beyond offs beyonds are multi-purpose capital-class ships they can support the bureaucracy plutocracy or theocracy accelerate genocide accommodate homicide extract resources in a remote situation and even terraform planets for improved habitation they can do anything that's why they're insanely expensive and you get very few of them but that's not why people got upset they get upset because the beyond is a precursor to something a little more concerning a planet killer is morally dubious leaves millions of grieving survivors and generally causes public unrest a system killer accelerates a megaton nuclear payload directly at the sun causing it to expand into a red supergiant as the core collapses and begins to fuse hydrogen in a single nanosecond all life in that solar system is going to need some spf 70 sunscreen the obliterator is a system killer which is made by upgrading a baomoth and prior to many updates and patches had no effect on public relations i found this incredibly entertaining because the missile actually has to travel to its destination it often took several turns for enemy players to see the ball of light quickly approaching their home system at this point you will notice something the chat functionality inside which you will see a stream of colorful messages calling you a number of racial slurs after which the player will mysteriously disconnect and add you as a friend on steam even after numerous nerfs vahisho stand tall for vahisho combat isn't just about winning it's about honor which they call kai because they're a race of weeaboo samurai chickens the more honorable your actions the more kai you generate the more obedient your empire and if it ever falls too low just remember aztec blood sacrifices are a great way of gaining popularity vaulters are the dlc race designed to completely invalidate the sofons because for vaulters location is no issue we've got portals for that disconnected system with no clear starlain even better the typical vaulter player will usually [ __ ] off to the four corners of a galaxy and quietly win a science victory before we can even find them also their mothership the argosy can be used as a two-way portal i very much enjoy parking outside an enemy system warping in my obliterator and cooking them instantaneously the riftborn are tetris blocks from another universe which is currently overrun with super aids in a last act of desperation the riftborn entered our universe to them it's a dystopian reality filled with all manner of squirming wriggling creatures that piss and [ __ ] everywhere from their perspective they just took a one-way ticket to hell however they don't judge they just want to survive unlike us riftborn aren't born they're made in a construction queue otherwise they work a lot like us except in reverse terrestrial planet i sleep 1000 degree lava planet with no trace of life real [ __ ] colonize immediately hey it's a race of abstract geometric polygons give them a break luckily they can also break reality by compressing or dilating the flow of time and if you've ever been to a college fraternity you'll have no problem pronouncing their names the second last dlc penumbra introduced a controversial mechanic hacking it's a nice way to grab intel sabotage enemy systems and of course accidentally turn a craver government into a pacifist dictatorship with that they also added the umbral choir the umbral choir is an immaterial intergalactic wraith with good intentions like a ghost in the machine the umbral choir spreads by hacking absolutely everything every transmission is tapped every system is compromised and we have no trace of who did it because the umbral choir doesn't want to be found how do you fight something you can't see how do you stop something that's already inside the wire and if it's already inside the wire then how do you know it isn't inside you already honestly they're extremely fun to play especially when your friends mouse over a system and ask why half of their gdp keeps disappearing into the craver pension fund finally it's a good time to talk about the last dlc awakening which adds vanakkali a fairly interesting religious faction that i personally enjoyed but also adds the academy as a separate ai controlled faction now let me tell you why that's a problem because the leader of the academy bear with me i don't know how to pronounce his name because issandir takes territory which he doesn't need away from players he can also enter your territory destroy your fleets and siege your planets but lord forbid you manage to sink one of issan dear ships which by the way are stronger than any other faction that's an act of aggression and he's going to ask you to pay reparations small side note if you're getting harassed and abused by issandir and you want him to stop you can't until you discover the location of the academy you can't even do diplomacy now let's say you forgive all that you're open-minded and you're wondering what's the point of a new academy i am once again asking for your financial support every 10 turns issandir will ask for your most generous financial contribution to the academy the highest contributions will get their preferred position within the academy after another 10 turns i am once again asking for your financial support also he's been expertly programmed to forget any positive relations you had before which may surprise you since he'll go back to neutral and start attacking you better pay up because you can't contribute to the academy until you've paid reparations if you try to take his home system he'll demand you give it back and pay reparations who the [ __ ] made this [ __ ] oh right it's not even the same studio they outsourced this i'm from buenos aires and i say kill them all yeah all the other dlc up until penumbra fantastic love it awakening is about 13 you can spend to make the game worse it's such garbage that even if i got it for free i'd still ask for a refund we could talk hours about strategy metagame and the eternal question we always return to is endless space 2 balanced no it is not there are many mods to try and fix this but ultimately part of what makes this game so interesting is the element of randomness forcing you to adapt and overcome the circumstances to the best of your ability there's many players out there who will constantly demand you remake the game citing that they don't have an optimal five planet system adjacent to them and can't possibly compete if you don't they disconnect the equivalent of this is being born on planet earth to a middle class family and immediately committing suicide to try and reroll for better rng because if i can't be born as the son of a wealthy middle eastern shike i may as well not be born endless space 2 is a wonderfully designed and beautifully made game with such a level of pace and intrigue that i actually bought a legal copy i've played it for two years and i still keep coming back it satisfies every tick box i ever wanted for a civilization game in space it's enjoyable and relaxing both in single player and in multiplayer you're probably going to desynchronize before anyone actually gets angry i like the music and i enjoy amphibious mommy milkers i give endless space 2 an extremely high score i am also issuing a public fatwa against anyone responsible for the awakening dlc this time there is no discount because my inside man had a talk with sega their formal response [ __ ] off so i recommend waiting for a sale buying on discount or using other legal methods of purchase that i am not yet aware of as always more content to come so stay tuned i'm sorry for all the delays streaming really put me back a warm thanks to the many members of a merchant's guild generously funding and bankrolling these videos you're all truly wonderful take care and have a good one so so foreign [Music] so [Music] my [Music] [Music] so so [Music] so [Music] i was thinking about seth's goddamn um his stupid monkey [ __ ] monkey hypnosis the other day

Channel: SsethTzeentach

Views: 4,598,476

Keywords:

Id: VKEawmH-l9c

Length: 33min 57sec (2037 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Blacknsilver1]

How do you lads feel about the latest DLC? Is it as bad as sseth says?

[u/DaLoverBoii]

Praise be The Merchant's Guild & Amphibian Mommy Milkers

[u/hobskhan]

Hell yes Sseth has graced the Endless once again.

[u/JunkYardMob]

Prepare for an influx of new players boys.

[u/Neiwun]

This was a great review but I disagree with only 1 thing, namely that there is no reason to pick any speed besides Fast. I played several games on Fast, with Endless difficulty, but I still prefer the Normal speed.

[u/Timmbonator03]

Oh shit, the Games popularity will rise higher than the inflation with Lumeris ingame

[u/Changlini]

Thank you sseth for this respectable, deadpan, and comedic .... thingy!

​

And yes: Gnashast really need therapy.
My favorite part of the video was all the silent emphasis on the lore text. Rarely play riftborn, so I completely forgot to read the part of the Ecological law that says a bill is still being reviewed to take out Gnashast from the protected species list lol.

[u/Duke_of_Bretonnia]

Super accurate, fantastic game, improves on everything from ES1

Wish more people knew about it and the Endless series

[u/frostanon]

"Many civilians will die but that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make."