Even though the overview said :

The battle takes place in real time over a maximum of 2 minutes, but the fight is divided into rounds on which all the rules are based.

I'm not so sure this is that much different than ES. I agree that RTS-style battles is a turn based grand strategy game isn't a good idea, but the ES system could have been a bit more interactive. A system where you can give orders to individual units (stuff like "attack", "defend", "cast spell", etc.) rather than a single order for your army, while keeping the round system/time limit from ES would be nice.

Of my 5 friends that I play multiplayer with, all of just me still watch the space battles. None of them are content with it, and this more tactical combat sounds infinitely superior even if all you do is watch simply because things could actually happen over the battle.

i personally think turn based battles would be great if they kept the card system.