Immersive Tactical Strategy
Amplitude studios, a group of former Ubisoft developers, seemingly came out of nowhere in 2012 with their release of Endless Space, a sci-fi 4x strategy game with quite a bit of charm but a bit tricky to dig into. Two years later and Amplitude has delivered upon us Endless Legend from Steam Early Access and it has quite a bit to offer for fans of 4x strategy as well as players who may be more tepid about large scale cultural simulation.
Endless Legend has everything you would expect from a 4x strategy game in the post Civ 5 era, Research, Culture, Diplomacy, Hexagons... The key differentiator for Endless Legend is its character, while the game is clearly playing off ideas established in the most recent Sid Meier’s Civilization it has chosen to put its own cast of colorful colonizers at the forefront of the game. Being set in the fantasy world of “Auriga” Endless Legend has its own unique races, 8 of them precisely with some tools to customize, each of which behave very differently from each other. From the scientifically gifted Vaulters who live in an ancient underground space ship to the freakish doll people of the Cult of the Eternal End who are limited to just 1 city, the factions in Endless Legend make every match you play a unique experience. Things can be daunting at first with a menagerie of faction traits that you may need to read through once or twice to fully grasp. Each faction also caters to one of the specific victory types but until you play through one of two matches you may not be sure how to get them, but by the end of a normal match if you’ve been playing relatively successfully the game will let you in on what victories you are approaching which also may be the first time you are even told how to get that victory type.
Each faction has unique units onto themselves, each faction has 3 base units that each fulfill a very distinct role and can then be customized, but only in regards to new equipment. Across all factions though are the Heroes, you start with one hero from your faction and over time can hire a more heroes from any of the other races. Heroes act as simultaneously a strong unit for a battle and a way to specialize your cities, as heroes have unique skill trees which can enhance both their army leading skills and city governing capabilities, which offer a rather unique way to specialize beyond your scientific research. The armies you make will then go on quests around the map, ranging from settling new cities or clearing out Ogre settlements. Quests serves as both a helpful guide to start playing and a means to reach a specific in game victory, creating realistic goals for a lot of new players.
Clutter is also cut down on in Endless Legend, allowing players to spend less time clicking around fodder units and more time focusing on strategy. Worker units are removed in favor of having your city direct all construction, and even your combat units can stack onto one square to a certain degree resulting in easier army maneuvering. That being said the terrain in the game will often require you to take long trips along mountains and ledges, but to make up for it most armies in the game move fairly long distances each turn. The combat in Endless Legend presents a pretty new mix of systems, it has some aspects of a reductive Might and Magic with the automated systems similar to Endless Space. It makes combat a bit more interesting than other 4x titles but isn’t quite tactical enough to go through more than a handful of times before just hitting auto-resolve on every fight.
The AI in the game seems fairly confident, as someone who can't profess a great knowledge of the 4x genre I found climbing up the different ai and world difficulties was a comfortable ramp-up to the higher difficulties, each one with noticeable changes to behavior. Some of the lower difficulties can be bested fairly easily once you get a a good build order down, but that could be expected to be the first thing you'd have trouble nailing down. Some players have said that the higher difficulties can be bested by confident and aggressive play, but in personal experience I found later difficulties presented a major challenge as my adversaries were now able to press their advantages and recover from my attacks. I will guiltily admit it got to the point I decided to settle on Normal difficulty to give me more reliable odds of winning.
Beyond Research and Production your cities also create Influence, the Influence system does a very good job making the diplomatic races distinct and pacing the early game but it might put off some of the more gung ho players. Every diplomatic action in the game costs Influence, from declaring war to declaring compliments, and while it doesn’t take much to get the necessary influence built up it can be a bit of a buzzkill when you’ve moved your army of dragon people up to the borders of the enemy city only to be told you need to spend a few turns having cities build up influence before you can let loose a barrage of victory-assuring mass murder or a self-compromising assault.
Endless Legend managed to grab me for hours a day after I got into it, and I felt like I was having a smooth immersive experience through every game even with some of the technical aspects that made playing tricky at times. Every faction in the game has its own story you can attach to as its benevolent leader and the game offers a confident competitive platform for them to play on.
