Imagine for a moment that racists are right. There are different "peoples" and some are objectively inherently superior. Well, in ES2 this is the reality. You can see exactly what attributes each race has. And to optimise your empire you'll want to get rid of certain people. Because they have the wrong stats. Because they support the wrong political party. Or because their bonuses aren't needed. So you forcibly recruit them, send them to a system where you have created a food shortage or make them fly through enemy territory hoping they will get blown up. This game actively encourages you to commit genocide.

There have been other games where you can do this, but it's quite different. In Mass Effect 3 wiping out the Quarians is clearly presented as a bad thing. In Europa Universalis killing the "natives" (ugh) prevents uprisings but it's presented very clinical. In both cases there are drawbacks. In ES2 wiping out races is far less clinical, never presented as a tragedy and gives clear benefits.

On top of that are the religious party and the Horatio. The religious party has a law that prevents non-natives from reproducing and increases income from natives. The Horatio consume alien races to improve themselves. Both are pretty disturbing but the game seems oblivious to this.

Worst of all is how easy it would have been to prevent the "need" to do this. Just allow the player to give up a system so certain aliens can live there, maybe as a protectorate or ally or whatever. Have the Horatio acquire samples without killing. Et cetera.

Gameplay

As for the actual game itself, the interface is still terrible and most information has to be gleaned from outside sources (thankfully there is a good wiki). It's mind-boggling that in the eight years since ES1 they still haven't figured out that having a shitty tiny construction menu with almost no filters is a terrible idea when most of the game involves constructing things. The diplomacy AI is still broken as well, with the AI demanding huge tributes while you're completely trashing them in a war.

The two most recent DLCs are really bad as well. Penumbra adds a dreadful hacking minigame that unleashes a constant barrage of useless messages. Awakening adds a highly unbalanced Academy faction that lets other factions borrow one of their OP fleets for tribute. I disabled both DLCs after a couple of games, they basically reduce the score of the game by one star.

Conclusion

I really hope that Amplitude take some time to think about the message they're sending with their game. I also hope they hire even a single competent interface-designer.