Now Playing: Endless Legend

After thoroughly enjoying Endless Space 2, I decided to give Endless Legend a spin. Like ES2, it’s a turn based 4X strategy game. But unlike ES2, the stetting is fantasy on a land based, hex grid map. In that sense, it has more in common with the Civilization series.

But despite the change of setting and map type, EL shares much in common with ES2. In fact, many of the positive and negative aspects I discussed in my review of ES2, apply to EL too. Like ES2, the presentation is fantastic. Visuals and audio are of excellent quality. The UI is very good, though not entirely perfect – but could be, with a few tweaks here and there.

Like ES2, EL has an extensive selection of unique factions to choose between, each with their own style of play – although like ES2, how different does vary somewhat from one to the next. And like ES2, the unit selection of each faction is somewhat limited.

The game does have a large selection of unique unit types, but these are spread very thin across the multiple playable major factions, and the non-playable minor factions. Although it is possible to recruit up to three additional unit types by assimilating these minor factions, your military unit choice remains disappointingly sparse.

The game does introduce ‘guardian’ units as you progress through the impressive technology tree, but by the time you’re able to construct these powerful, elemental based units, you’ll probably be close to achieving victory anyway.

Like ES2, the combat system is probably the weakest aspect of EL – but even more so. Army limits restrict how many units can enter a fight, but fights are also determined by a set number of turns. This isn’t such an issue during the early game, when armies and battles are relatively small, but in the late game when multiple armies clash, battles become a tedious, multiple turn grind of endless reinforcements.

On the small scale, the battles are quite fun. On a large scale, they’re f**king boring and best auto-resolved. ‘Grind’ really is the best way to describe them, particularly when both sides have upgraded weapons and armour. To make matters worse, the battle maps – which are a zoomed-in version of the main playable map – are very small and restrictive.

Once again, it’s not such an issue during the early game with smaller armies and less units, but during the late game, battles become almost unmanageable because there’s no space for units to move. You’re stuck watching these powerful, late game units slowly chip away at each other over multiple turns.

Though the combat system of ES2 isn’t perfect, it’s far more enjoyable and engaging than in EL, even if you’re not directly controlling the action. Because ES2 was released after EL, it’s clear that a lot of lessons learned in EL fed directly into ES2. Which is why, if it wasn’t already clear, I consider ES2 to be the better game – because there’s nothing that EL really does, that ES2 didn’t do better.

That’s not to say EL is a bad game. Despite its flaws, it’s still a very accomplished 4X title. The problem for me, isn’t just that I think ES2 is the better overall game, but that I prefer the setting of ES2. I just like that space stuff more than this fantasy stuff. But you might be different and prefer the setting and map style of EL to ES2. Honestly, you can’t really go wrong either way.

Like ES2, there’s an extensive range of custom options to set up your campaigns however you want. The art style and design of the map, factions and units is also excellent. The game (with all the expansions) also incorporates an enjoyable naval expansion and combat aspect, which is normally something I never really enjoy in my strategy games, but I liked it here.

Each faction has their own unique quest and ‘story’ to follow (if you wish) which lends to the replay value. Like ES2, EL has ‘hero’ characters to serve in your armies or as governors of your cities. In ES2, I always felt heroes were far more useful as governors and that’s also true in EL. The boosts they provide to production or city defence can prove invaluable.

Like ES2 the difficulty ranges from ‘Newbie’ to ‘Endless’. I began on the Normal setting, but found it to be a complete (and rather dull) cakewalk. Bumping up to ‘Serious’ gave me a far more enjoyable challenge, although it’s clear the AI is given some serious boosts in order to compete. That said, the AI is pretty good – as long as you’re willing to bump it above Normal, in which it barely seems to do anything.

City expansion and population management differ a little from ES2 but the principle remains the same. More population = more resources. Food = faster growth. Science = faster research. Industry = faster construction. Regardless of which game you play first – EL or ES2 – you’ll feel right at home jumping into the other.

Performance is pretty solid, but I did notice some frame rate issues during one of my larger map campaigns. I’ve had a couple of crashes during my 30 hours of play, but I haven’t noticed any other bugs.

Overall, Endless Legend is a solid and enjoyable 4X game. Though I prefer the setting of Endless Space 2 – which is why I’ll probably put far more time into that title – EL is a welcome alternative and certainly worth checking out if you’re a fan of fantasy based strategy or hex grid Civilization style games.

7/10