>>2419371
ES2 lore is mid, factions aren't as interesting as 1 either.

>>2419416
the music is great though

Sword of the Stars. Despite extremely cool weapons, ships and drives, the combat lacks QoL and doesn't often play out in interesting ways. Also the 3D environment takes forever to get used to, and late-game management is tedious.

>>2419574
I have probably 100 hours and I have never actually played a round of combat

>>2419371
>game great in every way except gameplay
What does this mean? A shit game with good art and music? I agree that ES2 fits this description, but I want to make sure we don't think this just because it has auto battler combat, but because every aspect of it is bad, from expansion to diplomacy to that shitty and annoying hacking mechanic the game has to constantly remind you to use.

>>2419574
SOTS is one of the greatest 4X games ever made and has no business being brought up in this thread. It has an excellent and deep strategic layer with both the most meaningful research system and unit design system ever conceived in a 4x game. It's also one of the only games of its kind with a proper tactical layer, which is perfectly manageable and gets more interesting the more specialized ships you field. 3D galaxy maps compliment the asymmetrical race movement mechanics well, and you can adjust the star system counts during map generation to whatever size you want to manage.