Endless Legend Review (PC)

Amplitude Studios took the turn-based strategy world by storm two years ago, with Endless Space, and now they’re doing it again with Endless Legend, a 4X game in the vein of Civilization, with a healthy infusion of fantasy sealing the deal for fans of the genre.

The best thing about it is that the studio managed to fill the game world with detail and life, making the entire experience much more than a glorified spreadsheet simulator, and, most importantly, offering a fresh take on the genre, an experience that’s distinct enough from other similar offerings to get you hooked from the first couple of turns.

Story

It’s always good when a game comes from a well-defined place and seems to transition to another, and your interactions with it are merely a journey on that path, immersing you in the events taking place in its universe.

Endless Legend is the kind of game that offers you a rich cultural experience (as much as games are able to) and makes you feel as if you’re a spectator in the lives of a distant people, which is admirable, when so many games tack on a story as an afterthought, in order to offer the gameplay a bit of shallow cohesion.

The game is set in the same universe as Endless Space, on a single planet, and follows a similar paradigm, with the ancient and extinct race known as The Endless still leaving their mark on everyone through the existence of dust, a powerful substance that serves as currency and fuel for the more mystical abilities of each of the factions.

The factions themselves are quite diverse, and perhaps the best thing about them is that they’re not just the same reskinned faction with one or two unique units, but your choice of faction instead influences a lot of the way you play the game in.

The strategic map is full of rich detail

Gameplay

Endless Legend offers the same grand-scale strategy game experience where you’re fighting in the ultimate war for survival and supremacy, where you build an empire, meet rivals, explore the map and ultimately strive to achieve victory either through diplomatic, military, economic or scientific means.

All races struggle for the same final goal, self-preservation and saving the planet Auriga from the impending apocalypse, but each of them sees salvation in a different way.

The Broken Lords are a race of ancient nobles that have lost their corporeal form and are now forced to rely entirely on dust and on absorbing the life force of others in order to survive, trapped inside their suits of armor, using dust instead of food to grow their population.

The Roving Clans are skillful traders that can uproot their cities and move them to better locations in time of need, and are inclined toward economic growth and trade, even reaping the rewards of trades among other cultures, thus they can’t declare war on other factions, in order to preserve their neutral outlook.

This means that they have to rely on mercenaries hired from the marketplace and on discovering the knowledge that allows them to command those troops as if they were neutral in order to take out nearby opponents, and only then move in with their settlers, in order to occupy new lands.

The Cultists of the Eternal End are led by the remnants of the Endless, strange machine-beings of incredible power. They rule from a single holy city, from which they constantly scheme, their ultimate goal being eradicating every trace of the Endless’ existence.

They are unwavering in their resolve and convert the lesser races they come in contact with to their cause, directing them from the seat of power and ever-spreading their influence across Auriga.

The rest of the bunch have a similar thematic that influences gameplay to some degree, from the descendants of a space-faring human race crash-landed on the planet to the elves, which for the first time in a fantasy setting are industrious and feral instead of emotionally balanced hippies.

You start out with a hero, a settler and a couple of military units, as you would expect when undergoing a crusade to purge the world of whatever you deem evil, and then go on to gradually build up your economy, army and technology, in a race to dominate the planet.

The resource system is the exact same one in Endless Space, with food being used for population growth, industry for building stuff, dust as currency, and science points for discovering new things.

In addition to this, various luxury resources can also be used to give you timed boosts to certain areas, and your cities also generate influence, which is used to fuel empire-wide macromanagement decisions which net you more dust, lower the cost of units of buildings and other such useful bonuses that can facilitate the enactment of your master plan.

The influence points are also used in diplomatic relations, each treaty, shallow compliment or declaration of war having a certain cost, which can be slightly reduced if you issue a warning or sweet-talk your way into it.

Be warned, however, that although coming at a lower cost, declaring war a couple of turns after warning or mocking an opponent won’t have the same surprising effect as a sudden declaration. When playing against the AI, this won’t come into question very much, as the computer-controlled opponents are quite rudimentary for the time being, lacking this kind of dynamic behavior.

Another very important resource is the happiness of your followers, which directly influences the productivity of each of your cities, and then once more, as an empire-wide average, bestows yet another round of bonuses or penalties.

The main thing putting a dent in your people’s chipper existence is expansion, which is unfortunate really, since that’s the only way to greatness.

Whether expanding one of your cities to a nearby hex in order to get access to additional resources or establishing a new settlement in another province, you’ll have to be mindful of the populace’s level of satisfaction, or risk seeing production, science and wealth plummet, as the dissatisfied inhabitants of your cities are pushed to the verge of rebellion.

Each province will have one or more minor faction settlements that act pretty much the way Barbarian encampments in Civilization do.

As long as they’re hostile, they’ll periodically produce units that start roaming the map and attacking your troops and cities, but you can pacify them by either defeating them in battle, offering them a bribe or doing a quest for them.

Quests are a pretty big part of the game, as there is a sort of over-arching narrative that you can explore while vying for supremacy, with each of the factions having its own story to enjoy, in addition to a handful of secondary quests, that each award various rewards consisting of dust or resources.

Battles take place right on the strategic map

Another very interesting aspect of the game is combat itself, which is different from pretty much everything that has been done so far in turn-based strategy titles, as battles take place on the actual map, with unit stacks unfolding and then being deployed on the terrain and given orders.

This introduces a whole new layer of complexity to skirmishes, as any units within the area of engagement act as reinforcements to each respective army. The system itself has seen a lot of improvement since the rock-paper-scissors days of the automated combat of Endless Space, but you still lack full control over your units.

In addition to this, heroes once again play a significant role in the dynamic of the game, by bestowing various bonuses to either cities or armies, and judicious use of a proper governor or general can severely alter the course of a battle of the scientific or industrial output of a big, well-developed settlement.

The tech tree is the main source of balance between factions, as the more agriculturally challenged ones will not get as many food-producing buildings, and so on and so forth, and you’ll notice that some of the technologies are missing from the trees of some cultures in order to not give them an unfair advantage.

The tech upgrades are largely the same for all available factions, and are divided into eras, which are unlocked whenever you research a number of technologies from the previous age, triggering the discovery of new strategic and luxury resources as well as improving the base level of military units.

There are many parameters that you can control, from the size and shape of the map to the distribution and prevalence of resources, as well as the number of opposing factions and length of the game, which, combined with the different factions and the ability to create your own (complete with flavor text) confer Endless Legend a ton of replayability.

All in all, the game seems to have struck a balance between enough complexity to provide a meaningful challenge to strategy game enthusiasts while at the same time not proving to be overwhelming or completely inaccessible to newcomers.

You won’t learn all its secrets from the first few games, and you’ll constantly improve with each playthrough, figuring out your past mistakes and paving the way to future victory.

Play Video

Sound and visuals

Endless Legend is one of the best-looking turn-based strategy games out there, blending a detailed map with stylized representations of various gameplay-relevant items, in an overall style that is both dense with eye-candy and informative.

The science-fiction meets fantasy setting enables the game to offer a diverse palette of environments and factions, with unique unit and city models, as well as a wealth of secondary races, each and every one of them contributing to the overall impression of an extremely polished product.

The game is very polished in every aspect, and especially so when it comes to the mingling of visual goodies and information, like when zooming out and losing some of the finer detail in order to get a more abstract, ancient map-type of look at your empire, highlighting only the points of interest and county borders.

Endless Legend has a ton of visual flourishes that also add cues to the tactical or economic value of a certain area, offering a distinct kind of harmony between planning your next move and enjoying the rich fantasy setting.

The music is also fantastic, and in spite of the fact that it doesn’t feature enough variety, you’ll never get bored of it, it’s soothing and engaging at the same time and complements the relaxed but tense gameplay perfectly.

The Good

The Bad

Conclusion