A sentient rock, an ancient hologram and an alien zealot are debating how we respond to the imminent arrival of a slumbering, long-forgotten god. Do we try to shackle them? Do we prostrate ourselves before them? Do we try to impress them with our mighty deeds? I dunno—I'm too busy sacrificing mortals to a great and terrible machine in an attempt to resurrect an army of chivalrous ghosts and super-charge my economy. It's been a busy day.
Such is the life of a ruler on Saiadha, the water-logged setting of Endless Legend 2. This bizarre, constantly shifting planet has stories to tell: of lost spacefarers, of secrets buried beneath the planet, of species fleeing extinction and fighting for dominance. You'll face gods, commit atrocities in the name of survival and cover the map in gorgeous, city-shaped dioramas.
These stories and unpleasant decisions are built on top of systems both novel and compelling—an elaborate lattice of interconnected faction traits, technologies both fantastical and futuristic, and weird twists on genre mainstays. I've played three and a bit campaigns so far, and each time I've been delighted by a multitude of new surprises. This is not the comfy familiarity that you get with every new Civilization; it is alien and odd and undeniably something new.
Where the original Endless Legend took the concept for one of Firaxis's greatest games, Alpha Centauri, and ran with it, generously weaving together storytelling and 4X mechanics, Endless Legend 2 slams its foot on the accelerator, filling its campaigns with dialogue and quests and unique curiosities.
This is not a case of a conventional 4X adding a layer of novelty to keep things fresh. The novelties are woven throughout, inextricably linked to everything you do. This is most keenly felt in how Amplitude Studios has designed its factions—of which five are available in this early access build. Each of them is utterly distinct, and their eccentricities inform every move you'll make as you lead them, changing how you develop your population, manage your economy and conduct diplomacy.
Endless asymmetry
With the insectoid Necrophage this presents itself as an insatiable lust for conflict. There are fewer repercussions for their constant warring with other factions, and they can strike with terrifying alacrity, using burrows to traverse continents, assaulting your cities and armies without warning. Every faction serves a particular playstyle, but you're still the author of their journey across Saiadha, with the ability to carve out your own path on the way to the varied and elaborate victory conditions—which include the basics, like just crushing everyone, to narrative victories like how you deal with the aforementioned slumbering god.
I'm rather partial to the Last Lords myself—which is no surprise, given that their predecessors, the Broken Lords, were my favourites in the original game. They are essentially ghosts bound in armour, obsessed with chivalry and honour, even as they leech life from their mortal servants. Their story homes in on that friction, as they juggle their competing natures. They face an existential crisis, you see, and each conversation between their leader and his advisors places this front and centre. How can they protect everything they hold dear, how can they survive in this new world, while not losing themselves?
This friction, and their spectral nature, is also reflected in their unique traits. They do not consume food like the other factions, instead relying on Dust, the Endless series' primary currency, to grow their population. But Dust has many uses, allowing you to expand your cities, broker deals and—specific to the Last Lords—instantly heal units.
While the Last Lords are the easiest faction to turn into an economic powerhouse, they also have the most expenses, and with that comes a drive to expand, to assimilate, to consume. Which doesn't bode well for the minor factions.
Endless Legend 2's playable factions share the planet with an abundance of tribes—plant-like gardeners who kill for compost, fallen fascist empires, chatty rocks—who can be pacified (through conquest or questing) and then assimilated, netting you bonuses, new leaders and unique units. Though not as mechanically elaborate as the primary factions, they're a richly diverse bunch, with clearly defined cultures and traits showcasing Amplitude's creativity almost as much as their playable counterparts.
And because Endless Legend 2 is so committed to putting a unique spin on everything, how you interact with these minor factions differs depending on who you are playing. As the Last Lords, I could erect estates within their villages, leaning into the feudal themes by generating income from tithes. This building also allowed me to force minor factions to send me their citizens, putting them to work in my cities.
While extra pops are a precious resource, this system also feeds into the faction's darker nature, working in tandem with another Last Lords trait—their ability to sacrifice alien pops to resurrect more valuable Lords, who've been slumbering since the group left their previous home to journey across the stars. Handy, for sure, but this sort of thing doesn't exactly make assimilated minor factions fans of their overlords, hastening the likelihood of rebellion.
Always, Endless Legend 2's mechanics, narrative components and faction personas are in lockstep.
Always, Endless Legend 2's mechanics, narrative components and faction personas are in lockstep. For all of its vibrancy, for all of its experimental twists, this is a 4X that's never anything less than cohesive. It just works really well. With one notable exception.
With such distinct and eccentric factions, you might expect to find diplomacy quite lively, but even Amplitude has acknowledged that it's rather underwhelming at this point. It does what it needs to do, just, but it's perfunctory. This is a particular shame because one of the most unusual factions, a bunch of coral cyborgs known as the Aspects, is driven by diplomacy.
They spread coral throughout the planet, which benefits both them and the other factions, who can harvest it, but it also makes everyone more susceptible to making deals with the Aspects. It can also pacify minor factions automatically—a significant boon in a game where swallowing up small factions is so beneficial. They're still fascinating, but they are lessened by the fact that the major mechanic underpinning all that cool stuff is uninspired.
Amplitude also really needs to find a way to make diplomacy work more sensibly for the Necrophage. In the first game, they couldn't even engage in diplomacy thanks to their thirst for conflict. Now they do, and it makes them a pain in the arse, constantly lurching from truces to wars without any thought to the realistic outcome.
When a faction has just been utterly stomped, is down to a single city, and isn't able to protect it, is war really the right call? As the Necrophage keep discovering, it absolutely is not.
Wanderlust
Endless Legend 2 embraces all of the 4X pillars, but it is particularly interested in the first two: explore and expand. Amplitude has given them new life, making the work of uncovering the map and spreading across it more riveting, more exciting, than any other 4X that's come before.
The exploration phase is almost always the most compelling part of any 4X game, but by the midway point you'll have seen it all. There will be nothing new to discover, just rivals to fight with. Not so in Endless Legend 2, though, where the map grows and changes throughout a campaign.
We've got Tidefalls to thank for this. Saiadha is a wet world wracked with foul weather, like monsoons that change the temperament of the creatures and minor factions dwelling on it. But what begins as a mostly water planet transforms over the course of a playthrough, as Tidefall events pull back the oceans, revealing new lands, resources and potential discoveries.
This has an incredible impact on the pace of the game, lending it a kinetic energy that never settles down. More expansion is always on the cards, with mighty, late-game empires rushing towards new regions, their armies slamming into each other as they squabble over exotic resources, mysterious fortresses and, simply, space.
You're no longer fretfully creeping into the unknown; you're charging in, guns blazing.
Rather than making an entire playthrough feel like that early exploration phase, it elevates the later phases, adding more variety, more excuses for conflict, which all feel different when you're a huge, continent-spanning superpower with multiple super-charged armies at your disposal. You're no longer fretfully creeping into the unknown; you're charging in, guns blazing. It's wonderful.
With so much room to spread out, Amplitude has smartly designed a settlement system that offers an impressive amount of flexibility and versatility. After you've placed your first settlement, you expand by claiming discrete pieces of territory with camps. Aside from the influence cost, there's no limit on how many camps you can plonk down, and any unit can do it.
These camps can't do much, though. They give you control of the land they're established in, and if there are resources you can build on top of, you're free to do that. And that's about it. You can expand and you can exploit some resources—which is convenient, but you'll want to do more.
By spending yet more influence, you have two options: turn this camp into a city, or connect it to an existing one. The latter option is a clever way to let players spread across the map even if they are building tall rather than wide. When they're connected, they look like a separate city, and they can expand further, swallowing up and exploiting all the tiles in that region. But they share the same building queue, pops and economy as the city to which they are attached.
Nearly every tile has something to offer. A bit more Dust, or maybe some science, or industry, or influence. Basic tiles offer these in small amounts, but the resources generated can be enhanced by buildings erected on top of them. You'll also encounter more exotic tiles with special features, which offer greater boons but can't be built on. There's always something just out of reach, encouraging you to spend influence on expanding the foundation of your city, or march into neighbouring territories.
These diorama-like settlements can grow dramatically, and evolve as you unlock new technology and buildings, reflecting the advancements you make as a society. They're lookers, too, and the same goes for Endless Legend 2 more broadly. It's a stunning game—probably the prettiest a 4X has ever looked. There's just so much of it—so many different biomes, resources, flora and fauna, all lovingly rendered with an absurd level of detail.
I do, however, miss the more abstract aesthetic of the first game. It had a stronger visual identity, but also less variety and clarity. It's a strange word to use for a game that's so weird, but Endless Legend 2 looks more, I guess, realistic? While Endless Legend 1 looked more like a physical board game where the artists were in charge.
When I say realistic, though, I should make clear the fact that the city and unit designs boast a great deal of creativity. There's some conventional stuff, sure, but also some brilliantly out-there designs, like a hero unit who is essentially a whole bunch of ghosts uncomfortably squeezed into a fat suit of armour. I do love that guy.
Modern warfare
On the subject of your eager little armies, Endless Legend 2 has made some significant changes, doing away with the brisk, surprisingly hands-off battles of its predecessor. This initially concerned me. Combat in EL1 was divisive, but I loved it. Look, I'm going to be playing a good 4X game for an unhealthy amount of time, and if I can claw some of it back by not spending hours and hours in combat—the part that I am, I confess, the least interested in—then I'm going to be happy.
That said, I rather like the new approach, even if it does draw from Humankind's combat, which I never really gelled with. You have full control over your units, many of whom come with passive and active abilities, and in the case of heroes this number can grow thanks to upgrades and equipment, in a nod to RPGs.
When fights kick off, Endless Legend 2 creates a battlefield out of a specific section of the campaign map, complete with all of its terrain features, which like Humankind play a major role not just in how you move around the battlefield, but how you take advantage of it. What makes Endless Legend 2's combat so much stronger than Amplitude's take on Civ is the unit design. Instead of perfunctory 'soldiers with guns shoot guns' you've got all sorts of physical and magical attacks, as well as items and consumables that can quickly change the direction of a skirmish.
These additional complications, impressively, don't mean that fights overstay their welcome. You can speed up the animations, and after a handful of turns, the battle ends, even if neither side has wiped out their foe. You may reengage next turn if you wish, and you can actually leave the battle whenever you want to potter around on the map before returning to it. This keeps the proceedings brisk even if you've got two full stacks to command.
I'd love to see some more open spaces where I just get to let rip.
I do have one bugbear, though: the map design massively favours chokepoints. Saiadha is absolutely rife with bottlenecks, which isn't as apparent when you're exploring it, but is very obvious once a battle commences. This means you'll spend a lot of turns shuffling units around, especially infantry, and then just using the guard ability. I'd love to see some more open spaces where I just get to let rip.
This side of Endless Legend 2 gripped me the least, but it's still a solid improvement over Humankind and, crucially, one you aren't expected to focus on much if it's not your bag; you can auto-resolve most fights, and when you do engage they are over quickly. And it's bolstered by the units themselves, and the fact that they have both character and utility in spades, especially the heroes, who contain plenty of RPG accoutrements, as well as the ability to make friends and rivals, which in turn provide statistical bonuses.
I find myself annoyed that, in writing this feature, I now no longer have an excuse to play Endless Legend 2 while I'm working. It's got me in its vice-like grip and I don't want to be free. The AI could be more active and enthusiastic, Amplitude is still trying to figure out major features like diplomacy, and there's one gap in the faction roster, so yeah, Endless Legend 2 still has plenty of room to grow and improve over its early access phase. But I can't pretend I would have been content to wait—not when this version still lets you play fully-formed campaigns with wildly creative factions and a ridiculous bounty of clever ideas.
Even in this in-development state, Endless Legend 2 is an incredible 4X, almost making me forget how conservative Humankind felt. It's been a decade since the first Endless Legend launched, but there's no denying it: Amplitude's still got it.
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