A few weeks back when I coveredHalcyon 6: Lightspeed Edition on Indie Game of the Week, I briefly expounded on my quixotic endeavor (thesaurus working overtime today) to find a modern interpretation of Simtex's nonpareil 4X civilization-sim Master of Magic. Master of Magic was an extraordinarily ambitious confluence of ideas to effectively create a bridge between a Sid Meier-esque macro-sized strategy sim with the more intimate exploration and skirmishes of a squad-based fantasy RPG. Taking cues from the likes of King's Bounty (the original one) and Warlords, Master of Magic was all about spoiling the player for choice without necessarily losing them in the weeds. You could still build armies and march across the world, or get so far with your research that you could create a means to automatically win the game, but the many spheres of magic provided an unprecedented number of routes to either destination. While not perfect (the AI only had two modes: "Idiot" or "Cheater"), it impressed upon me how good 4X could be if a developer were to miraculously balance a wide variety of player choice without an overly convoluted ruleset - a Goldilocks equilibrium of complexity, in other words.

Playing Amplitude Studio's Endless Legend, which I was inspired to jump into after hearing the game had gone free for the weekend (I have a full copy because of a Humble Bundle from last year, back when Humble still had those), might actually be the closest I've gotten to recreating that MoM experience in full. There's a certain amount of streamlining that's common with Indie 4X strategy games, in which there's overall fewer units and structures to make in comparison to Master of Magic as well as very little of its spell system, but Endless Legend compensates with diverse factions that each have their own unique units, unique tech, starting tech, and a specific story questline to follow. The questlines really help in particular, indirectly tutorializing that faction by giving you objectives that prioritize its strengths - a science-heavy faction will have a lot of quests involving boosted tech trees, for instance - as well as providing short-term goals beyond conquering your neighbors.

I went with the Wild Walkers for my first faction. They're essentially... really industrious hippy elves? Kind of an odd concept, but they emerged from the woods after years of quietly communing with nature to build enormous towers to the heavens to survive. Most of their questline involves building up the industry stat - it's one of many that a city can accrue, like gold or food, and used for producing new buildings and units - and founding lots of cities. It's one of the more straightforward factions, and gives you plenty of resources to play around with while you feel the game out. I'm also curious about the Vaulters - the sci-fi faction, who are more tech and science based and almost sound like Earth folk who crashlanded their colony spaceship on Endless Legend's planet of Auriga at some point - and the Drakken, who are dragons who like befriending people and keeping the peace. Really, any of the less combat-heavy factions tend to be more fun for me, because managing big armies in these games is rarely anything less than a giant hassle and money sink.

I'll admit that even after fifty turns I'm still acclimatizing to the game. While it lacks MoM's versatility beyond the whole faction business it still has a lot of rules and mechanics to pick up, some of which are more elusive than others. The tutorial is accessible enough and covers all the basics but there's a wealth of details that aren't surfaced particularly well, due in part - I suspect - to how the game is a persistent work in progress for its developers with tweaks and new features going live all the time. I had to discover online how to get ranged units to move and attack on the same turn, or the benefits of focusing new districts around city centers instead of constantly expanding outwards, or what to do when winter hits (like Westeros there are only two seasons, and winter is always bad news) and you suddenly need to shore up what resources you still have. Still, I never expected my first run to be smooth sailing, and the constant feeling of discovery - for better or worse - is one of the game's many appealing factors.

Then there's the combat. I was a little ambivalent about it at first, but once I got past the aforementioned ranged units issue and they began to survive battles more often than not I found the whole process far more palatable. Since the game already strongly resembles another Master of Magic pretender - 1C: Ino-Co's Warlock: Master of the Arcane - with its use of a hexagonal map and a similar city-building system, I was concerned it was also going to utilize its combat system, which really just boils down to which side has the biggest stack in true Civilization style. Thankfully, Endless Legend's combat is a little more sophisticated, though it has a number of options for letting battles play out automatically if you prefer to focus your attention elsewhere. It portions off a slice of the overworld map to make a battlefield between you and your opponent, retaining the contours and locations of cities, and plays out in a set number of rounds during which you can either go on the offensive or try to defensively weather the storm as best you can until the battle ends. As with Master of Magic, it has hero units and troops, both of which can be upgraded with new equipment (the hero's gear is bought and equipped instantly, while new troop gear adds to the production cost of future units with an option to retrofit any existing units) and will level up with exploration and battle experience. There's also neat tactical factors like elevation and terrain type that can make a difference, something Master of Magic didn't have, and units from nearby armies and city garrisons can join the fight as reinforcements if they were close enough on the world map. All in all, I'd say this was one of the rare Master of Magic clones that actually surpasses it in this regard.

Right now I'm having a ball expanding my territories, getting into scrapes with the local populace (the smaller "minor villages" that you can either subjugate as foes or annex as allies, the latter requiring the completion of a small side-quest), working on my tech trees, and wondering where I may have messed up and how long it will take before the scope of the damage is realized. Even if I do somehow miraculously win my first campaign, there's a whole lot of other factions that play very differently still out there to try out. Color me pleasantly surprised by this one.

Rating: 5 out of 5.

Really great write up, but this studio is owned by Sega.... not exactly "indie"

@r_matey: Oof, tell me about it. Ran into this feature title issue a lot back when I was covering UbiArt Frameworks games and the Microsoft-owned Ori and the Blind Forest too. We're still missing a good term for "sufficiently small downloadable game" in the lexicon.