Where StarDrive 2 is least successful is when it comes to ground combat, which is a very simple turn-based combat game in which two armies line up on opposite sides of a grid and start marching at each other. While you can equip your troops with different weapons and items that give them special abilities, the ground combat mostly feels like a slow-motion math problem where firepower and weight of numbers take their toll. Outside of combat, StarDrive 2 is also a very familiar type of 4X, and this is where the results are decidedly mixed. The first game introduced a lot of the enjoyable goofy characters (like the Pollops, a race of sentient hippie plants) who are back for another round, and there are even more neat narrative touches and random events to spice things up. Menacing and mysterious aliens ships conduct raids on your territory, your generals might give you special quests, and you might encounter strange anomalies in space that will reward you if you investigate them. Minute-to-minute, StarDrive 2 can be a fun, if simple, strategy game. Take a wider view, however, and that simplicity proves very limiting – and at times a bit puzzling. There is no real concept of territory in StarDrive 2, despite some coloring on the starmap. You'll get a warning when you cross into another race's territory, but other races will colonize absolutely every rock they can lay their hands on, including planets in your home system. There are no diplomatic options to keep them from doing it, so you always end up with potentially hostile fleets cruising around your own space unless you lock everything down first.
More like inevitably hostile, because all roads eventually lead to war in StarDrive 2, even without the help of randomly and at times suicidally aggressive AI faction behavior. That's a shame, because the diplomacy system has some great ideas that don’t get a chance to pay off. Each trade you do with another faction consumes "tolerance," so you can't just farm your best friends for technologies. Every race is a bit xenophobic, so you have to really think about what you want to ask them for in each negotiation.
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