I've been finding that ES2 seems to not be well represented in gaming sites list. E.g. ES2 has not appeared in Rock Paper Shotgun's "Best space games list" (from several months ago) and in PC Gamer's recent "Best space games list".


Personally, I find ES2 much better than Stellaris and Distant Worlds. Considering that Stellaris and Distant Worlds do "scratch a different itch", I stil find ES2 as an objectively game better. E.g. Stellaris is basically a "clicker game". Disant Worlds can become too complex to point of unmanagability. (I think I prefer Distant Worlds over Stellaris, actually).


ES2 doesn't only have better narrative focus, but better UI. And the game systems and your control of them are more efficient and straight to the point.


For example, empire management (i.e. FISDI output) can easily be mistaken to be simplistic: choose a system improvement and let it go. But the different effects the game and your controls put on it will be missed. Best example: supply lines can be cut by either a blockade or lost territory. Stellaris' (and Distant Worlds', too, I think) resources continually flows into the galactic coffers even if another empire has cut my empire in two. Only the resources of a blockaded planet is restricted from flowing into galactic coffers in Stellaris.


Another example is Diplomacy. I think a lot of reviewers have missed the brilliance of "diplomatic influence" and how to affect it with "diplomatic imbroglio" and in-game contextual requests. For example, to decrease the cost of a "close border" policy, I wait for an empire to decline my request of "remove your ships from my territory". Another example: if I want to decrease an empire's ship building ability after a war that I won, I force a war embargo on the empire by requesting for resources so impossible to satisfy that the empire will have to decline.


Do you think that the abstraction (as much as they are an abstraction, of course) of some of these games sytems have put off some of the reviewers?


I have not even described the marked differences of play styles required for the races - ES2's best selling point.