I love Endless legend, though in some respects maybe not for the reasons I'm supposed to.
Hey look, screenshots that I took. I'm right professional, me.
Endless Legend is a strategy game in the vein of Civilisation, and as such you'd imagine it was meant to be played like a strategy game in the vein of Civilisation. I don't do that, though granted I also don't play Civilisation like a strategy game in the vein of Civilisation. I play Endless Legend more like cult medieval sim Mount and Blade, but with a clear end-game. I'll create a world of a specific size depending on how long I want my empire's story to last, with anomalies set to high so I can easily get a fuckton of resources, and I role play as one of the many fantastic factions in a quest for some form of world domination.
In my brief experience with Civilisation I did the same, and very much enjoyed the single game I played in it. I can still remember the story beats of my Japanese empire, and the lay of the land. I remember nuking Rome, my slow expansion into naval warfare, and having everyone declare war on me just before I could escape the planet's grasp and reach Alpha Centuri. And while Endless legend doesn't really have many of those big emergent narrative events like Civ does, it does have it's own stories to tell, as well as offering a more melancholy experience in a far more beautiful and fascinating fantasy world.
See, each of Endless Legend's incredibly diverse factions all have a main quest to follow. One of the victory types is in fact to complete this main quest, which may be an easier task for some empires than others, and you can often tell if an empire is reaching for this quest victory by their actions on the field. There are also a bunch of side quests, expanded on by a small and really quite good DLC pack which gives a whole bunch more of them that further explore the amazing Minor Factions that inhabit each region and can be assimilated into your empire. This quest system serves as the game's alternative to Civ's big events like nukes and spaceship launches. It's a straight path, but it delves into what is definitely one of my favourite videogame worlds.
One thing Endless Legend undeniably does better at than Civ however is it's factions. While Civ's different leaders basically decide on a colour scheme, some diplomacy lines and a few minor stats, Endless Legend's factions all play incredibly differently, and are accompanied by gorgeous art design tieing them all together. One of my favourites is The Broken Lords, ghosts inhabiting suits of armour that feed on dust, the game's magical currency, which they use to increase their city population and heal, and who therefore completely ignore all of the Food resources on the map. Another is the Cultists of the Eternal end, creepy white ceramic... things, that only get one city and need to convert minor villages to their religion as their main form of expansion. Honestly I could make this entire... whatever it is I write just about the ins and outs of the different factions and how amazing they all are in their own ways.
I won't do that though. Because there are other things to talk about.
Namely, have I mentioned how gorgeous it looks? Because it's gorgeous. Gorgeous fields of sand, grass, forest and snow, punctuated by roads, villages and anomalies, enchanting little individual pieces of fiction that give benefits if you build a city near them, like floating green orbs and life-giving trees and exotic plants, and divided up by oceans, cliffs and mountains. The hexagonal design gives Endless Legend the look of a living board game. A gorgeous living board game. Did I mention that it's gorgeous? And the way your cities grow and engulf the nearby landscape while still letting the natural formations show makes you really feel like part of the world, with your cities becoming even more distinctive by way of unique buildings and districts added in subsequent expansions.
Expansions which are overall, excellent. The first major one, Guardians, adds huge Evangelion-esque creatures that can be built by empires as the closest analogue the game has to the aforementioned big events from Civ. True to the rest of the game, they're all gorgeous, and it's fun to build them, as they take up a tile next to your city like a district until complete, where you can see them with scaffolding around them as they're "constructed". The same expansion also adds world events, global challenges for each technology era available to all empires, where the first to complete the task gets the reward. Each era comes with a unique building that you compete to build, a military task and something in between. These challenges can often help distinguish the different empires at play, giving them more character. Often one or two empires will achieve all the military challenges and solidify themselves as military nations, while perhaps another will build all the special buildings, or another may complete the economic challenges. They're a great addition to both the strategy game and my own personal story-based game which I and I alone seem to be playing, though less so the Guardians themselves.
I love them, but because they fit into MY version of the game. They're part of my empire's story. When it comes to usefullness, they offer very little. They are certainly unique, but some are obviously more useful than others, and combat in Endless legend is nothing to write home about. In fact, I recommend setting the combat speed to at least "fast" or you'll likely get bored of it. The second big expansion, Shadows, I was less impressed with, as it was almost entirely about the sort of game I wasn't really playing. It added a sort of stealth system, with invisible units and infiltration of cities, which is simple enough, but nothing I've really engaged with myself. The most recent expansion however, Shifters, is another great one, adding the Allayi faction, Japanese-styled Bat-People, focused around the main crux of the expansion: Winter.
Shifters expands on the Winter system already in the game, where the "Dark Season" will arrive at different points in the game, becoming longer and more frequent as the planet you are on grows weaker(that's lore innit). Pre-expansion, this simply a time where things went badly. Resource production slowed dramatically, as did unit movement spaces and vision range. The shifters expansion introduces the appearance of Pearls during winter, magic balls of magicness which work in conjunction with a new building, the Alter of Auriga. The pearls let you prey for specific effects during winter, such as thick snowstorms which will open previously closed borders, so you can travel freely during winter without having to start a war, as well as additional technologies that will aid you in and out of winter. The Allayi are focused on this system, and also have access to a unique unit which can drain resources from anywhere it sits on, as well as various winter immunities and bonuses, as they change physical form during winter. Shifters is a great addition to the game, even if it is starting to feel a little cluttered with mechanics.
So yeah, Endless Legend is good if you wanted a gorgeous Civ game set in a more interesting world better suited to single player. Niche, but nonetheless worth it.
Next week, I am unsure. Perhaps Castlevania Lords of Shadow, as it was on sale and I've played a bit already. You never know.
Hey look, screenshots that I took. I'm right professional, me.
Endless Legend is a strategy game in the vein of Civilisation, and as such you'd imagine it was meant to be played like a strategy game in the vein of Civilisation. I don't do that, though granted I also don't play Civilisation like a strategy game in the vein of Civilisation. I play Endless Legend more like cult medieval sim Mount and Blade, but with a clear end-game. I'll create a world of a specific size depending on how long I want my empire's story to last, with anomalies set to high so I can easily get a fuckton of resources, and I role play as one of the many fantastic factions in a quest for some form of world domination.
In my brief experience with Civilisation I did the same, and very much enjoyed the single game I played in it. I can still remember the story beats of my Japanese empire, and the lay of the land. I remember nuking Rome, my slow expansion into naval warfare, and having everyone declare war on me just before I could escape the planet's grasp and reach Alpha Centuri. And while Endless legend doesn't really have many of those big emergent narrative events like Civ does, it does have it's own stories to tell, as well as offering a more melancholy experience in a far more beautiful and fascinating fantasy world.
See, each of Endless Legend's incredibly diverse factions all have a main quest to follow. One of the victory types is in fact to complete this main quest, which may be an easier task for some empires than others, and you can often tell if an empire is reaching for this quest victory by their actions on the field. There are also a bunch of side quests, expanded on by a small and really quite good DLC pack which gives a whole bunch more of them that further explore the amazing Minor Factions that inhabit each region and can be assimilated into your empire. This quest system serves as the game's alternative to Civ's big events like nukes and spaceship launches. It's a straight path, but it delves into what is definitely one of my favourite videogame worlds.
One thing Endless Legend undeniably does better at than Civ however is it's factions. While Civ's different leaders basically decide on a colour scheme, some diplomacy lines and a few minor stats, Endless Legend's factions all play incredibly differently, and are accompanied by gorgeous art design tieing them all together. One of my favourites is The Broken Lords, ghosts inhabiting suits of armour that feed on dust, the game's magical currency, which they use to increase their city population and heal, and who therefore completely ignore all of the Food resources on the map. Another is the Cultists of the Eternal end, creepy white ceramic... things, that only get one city and need to convert minor villages to their religion as their main form of expansion. Honestly I could make this entire... whatever it is I write just about the ins and outs of the different factions and how amazing they all are in their own ways.
I won't do that though. Because there are other things to talk about.
Namely, have I mentioned how gorgeous it looks? Because it's gorgeous. Gorgeous fields of sand, grass, forest and snow, punctuated by roads, villages and anomalies, enchanting little individual pieces of fiction that give benefits if you build a city near them, like floating green orbs and life-giving trees and exotic plants, and divided up by oceans, cliffs and mountains. The hexagonal design gives Endless Legend the look of a living board game. A gorgeous living board game. Did I mention that it's gorgeous? And the way your cities grow and engulf the nearby landscape while still letting the natural formations show makes you really feel like part of the world, with your cities becoming even more distinctive by way of unique buildings and districts added in subsequent expansions.
Expansions which are overall, excellent. The first major one, Guardians, adds huge Evangelion-esque creatures that can be built by empires as the closest analogue the game has to the aforementioned big events from Civ. True to the rest of the game, they're all gorgeous, and it's fun to build them, as they take up a tile next to your city like a district until complete, where you can see them with scaffolding around them as they're "constructed". The same expansion also adds world events, global challenges for each technology era available to all empires, where the first to complete the task gets the reward. Each era comes with a unique building that you compete to build, a military task and something in between. These challenges can often help distinguish the different empires at play, giving them more character. Often one or two empires will achieve all the military challenges and solidify themselves as military nations, while perhaps another will build all the special buildings, or another may complete the economic challenges. They're a great addition to both the strategy game and my own personal story-based game which I and I alone seem to be playing, though less so the Guardians themselves.
I love them, but because they fit into MY version of the game. They're part of my empire's story. When it comes to usefullness, they offer very little. They are certainly unique, but some are obviously more useful than others, and combat in Endless legend is nothing to write home about. In fact, I recommend setting the combat speed to at least "fast" or you'll likely get bored of it. The second big expansion, Shadows, I was less impressed with, as it was almost entirely about the sort of game I wasn't really playing. It added a sort of stealth system, with invisible units and infiltration of cities, which is simple enough, but nothing I've really engaged with myself. The most recent expansion however, Shifters, is another great one, adding the Allayi faction, Japanese-styled Bat-People, focused around the main crux of the expansion: Winter.
Shifters expands on the Winter system already in the game, where the "Dark Season" will arrive at different points in the game, becoming longer and more frequent as the planet you are on grows weaker(that's lore innit). Pre-expansion, this simply a time where things went badly. Resource production slowed dramatically, as did unit movement spaces and vision range. The shifters expansion introduces the appearance of Pearls during winter, magic balls of magicness which work in conjunction with a new building, the Alter of Auriga. The pearls let you prey for specific effects during winter, such as thick snowstorms which will open previously closed borders, so you can travel freely during winter without having to start a war, as well as additional technologies that will aid you in and out of winter. The Allayi are focused on this system, and also have access to a unique unit which can drain resources from anywhere it sits on, as well as various winter immunities and bonuses, as they change physical form during winter. Shifters is a great addition to the game, even if it is starting to feel a little cluttered with mechanics.
So yeah, Endless Legend is good if you wanted a gorgeous Civ game set in a more interesting world better suited to single player. Niche, but nonetheless worth it.
Next week, I am unsure. Perhaps Castlevania Lords of Shadow, as it was on sale and I've played a bit already. You never know.
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