Loved the first game. Want to love this one too but its a struggle. Here's why:
The diplomacy is flat and underwhelming. The first game, the AI would like or dislike you depending on a multitude of factors such as, who you've attacked, who you have treaties with, how close your planets are, how powerful you were compared to them, ect. This game - The AI doesn't care about ANY of that. If you want to ally with any AI, simply offer an alliance along with a lump sum of resources and they will accept.... That's it. You can't "gift" resources, and slowly build up relationships. In fact, there are no "relationships" and the AI has no memory of how much you've sent them in the past. They will simply forever not attack you once they accept your alliance. You can ally with their rival, send money to their rivals, steal all their planets, ignore them for hours, offer ZERO support and they will just keep on being your friend. Also, there are no unique pacts like there were in the first one. There are no perks from allying with a Vassari vs Advent vs Tec. Its all just the same. Flat. Boring. Underwhelming.
The new Shields > Armor > Hull > Critical hull damage is strange. Damage is mitigated by a "Durability" and "Armor" points but countered by weapons that do "Peircing"? Why couldnt it just be simple to understand such as shield and hull points with an armor value like a regular game. I do like the idea of systems such as weapons or thrusters starting to fail on a ship as it takes various hull damage. But the way damage works is just strange and impossible to calculate.
Fleet has no upkeep cost. You can have as many ships as you want with no effect on your economy aside from the initial cost to build them. Also there is no refund from scuttling ships or orbital structures... but you get a massive refund when you "deconstruct" planet structures or swap out ship items? Wildly inconsistent!
Trade is boring now too. I used to enjoy building trade networks - now you just build a trade hub and you select if you want it to generate credits, crystal, or metal. Refineries like in the first game are gone and have morphed into something totally different.
The new tech tree is massive and a bit overwhelming. Also you can customize your ships/planets/starbases with various "cards" and give it buffs, but you honestly just end up doing the same thing for all your ships/starbases across the board.
The new "exotic materials" adds a new dynamic to the game, but only at the start. Once you get a refinery to manufacture the materials it just becomes annoying, worthless, and pointless and you end up with tons of the stuff. You can't really sell it to make a profit. In fact, the whole black market thing has been changed. You need to "discover" the black market before you can trade, which makes it so you can't exchange your resources early game when its most valuable. You also cant put things up for sell on the market either nor can you buy or sell exotic materials on the black market either which seems like a massive oversight. Sure, you can sell your exotic materials.... but for less than what it cost to "manufacture" them. Overall - this could have been awesome game mechanic... but its not.
I could go on about the strange influence system, the "losing units on the map" problem, and the "helpful automated" things the game tries to do for you but I wont. Overall, I like that the game engine has been redone, the graphics, the new ship rotating guns, and some of the new game mechanics, but I just cant get past the unpolished and broken bits. What a shame!
