I am quite angry at ES2 - so many obvious mistakes in my opinion it was just painful to interact with:
1. The wireframe fleet representation looks like Battlezone the arcade game and should be declared as a crime against software UI design (talk about a waste of 3D models and DEV assets - snapping a 2D pic of the finished 3D models would have been way better and less effort) + the unit icons are too tiny to read and contrary to the bare-bones unit representation here the colors are too strong and blink out the models... they also dont change with faction color
2. Hero ships exist and are identical across all factions - way to kill faction immersion
3. Heroes are not unique (even though there is enough of them) and cannot be restricted to faction played
4. Galaxy map color scheme is washed out - for a space game this is just baffling
5. No direct control for space battles - why even waste rescues to develop it then... It is literally cinematics not part of any game play loop...
6. No direct control on land battles - which is fine most game don't have it but then it has the despicable wireframe models again
There are 2 head DEV teams (other then SiS) that have tactical battles which work great
7. Planetary invasion is a mess - they have reworked it a couple of years back: we were bombarding them with proposals on how this could be interesting and it got better a bit last time I saw it but the entire concept around reserve and reinforcements is just so tedious and boding that I am just at a loss of how none had pushed for a better concept
8. The Ship designer is literally fighting the player and trying to prevent them from interacting with their ships - this combined with the galaxy view and it seems the game doesn't want the player to look at ships in a space 4X
9. Tech "tree" is practically unreadable and is the worst possible design to organize tech progression into
It especially annoying as Endless Legend was one of my favorites and Humankind looks and plays really well - so many smart decisions in both
For ES2 I am hard pushed to say anything that was new and working well: maybe the anomaly/probe system?