Endless Legend: A Modern 4x Revival
22 Aug 2015
I decided to start of game of Endless Legend around 2pm. I picked The Roving Clans, as it is one of the few races that I haven’t played yet. The game starts off pretty smooth, I run through the basic of setting up my civilization and start trying to win the game with a wonder victory. A couple of turns later I’m not close to the final wonder and the NPC’s are getting close to the quest victory. I’m already in alliance with two of the factions so then it’s time to switch gears and go completely diplomatic. It then becomes a race between one of the factions on a quest victory and myself. I’m at the 90% marker for diplomatic victory and the Drakken is at 5 out of 6 for his quest victory. It was close but the Drakken pull ahead and win the game with a quest victory. Defeated I look at the clock and realize it’s almost 3am.
This isn’t the first time this has happened. Games like Civilization are long term games where a single turn can last up to 5 min long. While The more popular Civilization games have helped get the general population into 4x games, people who like 4x games are always hungering for more in-depth and complicated games. This is where Amplitude Games comes into play.
Back in 2012 Amplitude Games released their first 4x game, Endless Space. It was a return to form for the 4x genre. While most games where simplifying to ride the Civilization train, Endless Space was going back to its roots of hard tactical decisions and empire management. It had a “more advanced” fighting engine than most 4x games where you would play a form of rock paper scissors to fight enemy ships. The fans loved the game and it won numerous awards for what it was able to bring back to the 4x genre. Many hardcore fans got a taste of blood and wanted more. It was then Amplitude Games couldn’t get away with another xpack for Endless Space, they had to make another 4x game and give the fans what they really wanted.
Endless Legend was the second 4x game from Amplitude Games. It was what a lot of fans wanted from a ground based 4x game. Now with the expansion, Guardians, the game feels like a crazy epic tale that a really cool old dude tells their grandchildren. Everything feels right, the music, the art, and the gameplay is o so perfect. This will be the game to give the hardcore 4x fans one more turn syndrome.
So what did Amplitude Games do differently for Endless Legend? Well for starters, the combat is no longer rock, paper, scissors. This time around combat is now a tactics game, where you plan out your moves for the individual units and then issue the command to attack. This is similar to final fantasy tactics but you execute all your orders at once. While not released at the time of writing, the combat of Endless Legend is that of Pit People from Behemoth. The combat gave Endless Legend something to set it apart from all other 4x games at the time. It was no longer about how many units you had, but how well you used the units in your army.
In addition to combat, you now have 8 different factions to chose from. Before in Endless Space you had the option to basically choose how your ships looked and some static bonuses. With Endless Legend not only do your units change appearance, your buildings also change how they appear as well and depending on what faction you choose you may also get some faction specific buildings. But wait thats not all you also get dynamic bonuses on how your faction plays besides the boring you get this bonus tech stuff. For instance the Broken Lords do not use food, instead they use the currency of the game, dust, to expand their cities. If you don’t like the presets you can also create your own custom faction by being able to pick and choose between positive and negative effects. While I feel that customization could be a bit more in-depth with including unit customization rather than defaulting to the custom faction “affinity”. The affinity is just how the custom faction models will look.
With the gameplay being similar to most 4x games, it will still have most of the complexity that a 4x game. The only problem I have with the gameplay of Endless Legend it that it has some of the more in-depth complexity missing from other 4x games. The game does not have a tax system but rather a static amount of gold that you gain from each city. You can however put your citizens in each city into one of the FIDIS (Food Industry Dust Influence Science) slots. This allows for more management for each city and allows for you to fix some problems that the city could have. For example if one of my cities is running negative on dust I can then put most of the citizens in the dust panel and then fix the error. Being able to manage each individual city to create the perfect empire is a huge plus for the game.
To wrap things up, the game is a return to form for 4x games. It mixes the simplicity of the civilization games with the complexity of the 4x games of old. You will be micromanaging each city to create the perfect empire. You can write novels of your gameplay experiences as each play through will seem like an epic adventure even if you lose. The 4x fan in me wanted more customization and more complexity. At the same time its hard to complain as the combat system and the aesthetic of the game are spot on. Overall if you are a fan of 4x games you owe it to yourself to buy this game, and if you are new or have played civ and looking for a harder challenge go out and get Endless Legend.
Buy Endless Legend on Steam.