Review: Endless Legend - Enemy Slime

Review: Endless Legend

A unique blend of fantasy, strategy, and sci-fi.

PC

At first glance, Endless Legend looks a lot like a clone of Civilization 5. If you listened to our podcast a few weeks ago you probably heard me describe the game just like that. This is why you need to spend more than an hour on a game before you begin to review them. Endless Legend does take a lot of its basic mechanics from Civilization but that’s largely where the similarities end. Civilization’s core gameplay serves as a jumping off point for a title that feels unique and deep in its own right.

As you might anticipate Endless Legend has you start off by building a city and expanding your territory to accumulate more resources and grow your empire. Eventually you will come into contact with the other “players”, and have to choose how best to approach them. Will you be a war monger, rely on diplomacy, or try to become the most advanced faction of the lot? The first few rounds go on much like a regular strategy game. You explore the tiles and try to secure your foothold on the territory and plan where you are going to move. However as the game goes on some of its unique features and its sci-fi setting start to morph it into its own experience.

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Endless legends takes advantage of their setting by providing eight very different factions. As expected, each faction is suited to a specific playing style. There’s the Necrophages, a race of insectoid creatures are constantly at war with other nations and feed on the corpses of the enemies they kill, the Roving Clans, a group of mercantile nomads who have the ability to move their cities, and cannot declare war, you’ll also find the Broken Lords, a traditional aristocratic society that was doomed to live as hollow suits of armors due to investigating the secrets of immortality. Taking full advantage of its setting, Endless Legend gives you very different groups to attempt to play the game the way you want to. The game also provides you with a variety of victory conditions to support this. You can win the game by the obvious means of controlling the most surface area, or taking over the other nation’s capitals, but there are also scientific victories, diplomatic ones, and an economic victory triggered by accumulating a large quantity of Dust (the in-game currency). Aside from the player factions, there are also neutral factions in the game that are reminiscent to the barbarians in the Civilization games, though they also have a fantasy flavor, and when assimilated they will bring bonuses to your empire.

Perhaps the most radical change in the formula that Endless Legend provides is the introduction of quests. Each faction has its own quest, long term objectives that you must fulfill during the game for each faction. The quests are determined by the lore of the faction you choose, though there are other quests that you can pick up from exploring nearby ruins, or speaking with the neutral factions dotted around the world map. These quests can often conflict with your long term strategy, as that hamper, or sometimes directly contradict it. For example, in one of my earlier play troughs I met one of the other factions very early on, and established a friendly relationship that lasted through the centuries. That was until my quest involved conquering a territory owned by said factions. This adds a dimension to gameplay, as you can choose to play the game like a traditional 4X, doing what you feel is best for the long term, or throw some roleplaying into the mix. It helps that the quests can net you interesting boosts, such as extra resources or special weapons for your heroes. Balancing this is a a good remedy to the usual mid turn tedium that usually plagues this kind of game. You know, the mid game race when the map is more or less established and everyone is racing towards the end of the tech tree to begin the endgame. The quest system does a great job of giving these mid turn periods more content and more challenge.

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It helps that the presentation in Endless Legend is superb. The developers took full advantage of the sci-fi fantasy setting to make a beautiful map with exciting terrains and interesting locations. There’s plenty of little pieces of visual flair that enhance the experience, extra details can be found in places such as the hero models, or my personal favorite, the buildings raising from the ground Game of Thrones style when they are being built. Beyond that the graphic design of the map is well incorporated into the interface. This makes it easy to tell what is in each tile, without a lot of intrusive signs. Endless Legend definitely knows how to make the game feel epic. The soundtrack does a great job of capturing that feeling, and maintaining it through the game.

There are a few problems here and there though. The hero system, is not only not as interesting as in games like Civ IV, but the customization options just don’t seem to make much of a difference in gameplay. Even that sweet weapon I committed genocide for didn’t seem worth it. Perhaps more important is the tech tree. I praised it in the podcast, but after a few games I realized that not only does it not prevent you from rushing towards end game tech, it actually makes it easier. Because you only need to pick a few techs before you move on its really to end up with a strange asymmetrical faction. As much as one could say that this makes the game more tactical and gives you more chances to morph things to your style, it ultimately makes the endgame feel strange as you find yourself researching starting tech incredibly late.

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These problems aside, Endless Legend is a fantastic entry into a genre that is dominated by the words “Sid Meyer’s”. It does life some basics, but when combined with its unique aesthetic and setting you find yourself left with something that feels unique and fresh. Each faction has a great distinctive feel to them, and there would be more than enough playtime in this game just based on learning how to use each one of them. Adding in an enormous amount of choices at your disposal, the quests, and the content packed on the world map, there is enough here to keep any strategy enthusiast busy for a while. Any strategy game fan looking for a unique experience should pick that up.

This review was written on code provided by the publisher.