It's another kind of beast altogether.
Stellaris sees the big picture, with amazing variety in races, bigger galaxies, more tools to interact with other races, from Fallen Empires to Primitives etc... but every game is similar in a way.
The gameplay doesn't change too much unlike ES2. Every race exploits the same things in the same order or value and phenotypes don't help either as they are purely cosmetic.
ES 2 is also very heavy story driven, in fact every race has it's own event chain, it feels more personal than Stellaris though and you feel more like governing your race since it's them that decide what kind of party they want in the government, which policies to enact ASOASF.
Also every race plays differently and that to me is its strongest asset.
-The Sophons, the most "normal" of the initial 4, are the brainiacs of the game. They get bonus a science for every field they're the first to research, have the fastest ships and can see the end of the starlanes.
-The Cravers are like Locust. They literally devour their planets and then move on, they are always at war and their ruling party is the Militarists.
-The Vodyani are "space vampires" that do not live on planets but inside giant Arks (biggest ships in the game so far) in orbit, and they don't consume food but the essence of people on the planets they rule. Their ruling party is Religious.
-The last race of the EA is the Lumeris. They are the traders of the game and the only ones that can buy planets instead of colonizing them. They can also sell them as well. They're rulling party is the Pacifists.
Having said that, I love both games.
Edited by Vahouth, 06 October 2016 - 09:45 PM.