Hi all. Since this game is still in early access and,presumably, looking for feedback, I thought I'd do a little write up on my thoughts after my first play-through. These opinions are all based one one Play-through, so they are obviously not representative and I am far from a top player. With that in mind, I hope they will be thought provoking, or at least interesting to the design team and/or players.



My first play-through was with the Vaulters on Normal, and my first impression is that i love the aesthetics and settings of the game. This is more than just 'My computer is good and I can play it on high graphics,' and more about the science-fantasy setting. Glassteel, Steelstalks, Rumbling stones. The Science-fantasy setting is brilliant. I would legitimately pay for some kind of spin-off 'expanded universe' series of novels, and if you guys have an agreeable stance on fan-fiction then I might even dabble in it myself. Add to that the Faction uniqueness and stories (The bittersweet tragedy of the Broken lords...), and the game has quite an amazing setting, which is honestly what drew me in. When I first saw endless legend, I assumed it was another standard fantasy 4x, and I really had no motivation to build my 317th video game empire, but then I saw one of the faction introductions somewhere, got interested and began wiki-reading. I particularly like the fact that the faction quests are 'nested' within the game, and not as separate scenarios contrasted against a standard empire-building game. As someone with little-to-no interest in non-co-op multiplayer, this is a great boon to replayability.



Anyway, on to the game. As I said, my first playthrough was with the Vaulters on normal. I was having a lot of fun at the start. The Wind Walkers were on my left and almost immediately we were trading volleys. The Ardent Mages were to my right, and that was a cold front. I don't think I saw a single Ardent Mage unit until the Vaulters quest bade me capture one of their cities, which they defended lightly. The Cult was above me, and provided a challenging first target. I had no idea what their preaches actually did, but they kept sending them towards my cities and I feared some kind of religious revolt. Obviously, the prime solution to that is volleys upon volleys Vaulter marine fire.



his brings me to the combat. Obviously I had had combat before (Wild Walker skirmishing, natives,) but I'll talk about it here. In my opinion, the combat is the weakest part of the game. I did like the addition of the city's defence onto unit HP for the defender (A very clever way of managing defender advantage!), but the combat mechanics as a whole feel like they are missing some important features, at least in my opinion. First, the ability to hold a line/front with troops. I tried using Dawn officers and Delver Dredges to hold a front-line and defend the marines, but enemy soldiers were able to ignore the front. I think the game would benefit from some kind of 'zone of control' with melee units, or even just infantry (More on that in a moment.) For example, say melee units project a zone of control in the spaces immediately adjacent to them, and enemy units can not move both in and out of the zone of control in the same turn. This would mean, properly managed, Infantry could hold a proper line. For a game that uses a mechanic similar to what I envision, look at the Battle for Wesnoth. Not only would this, in my opinion, make the battle mechanics better, but it would help diversify the units a little more. Flying units may be able ignore zone of control, making them valuable units for any army. This would also help fix another issue with the combat mechanics (again, in my opinion) – the lack of tactical withdrawal. At the moment, combat is all about attacking (so far as I can see.) Zone of control would add positioning into the mix a little more strongly, but it would also allow for the withdrawal of injured units. Many times I've had an injured battalion of marines attempt to escape, only to be chased behind the lines and attacked. Any kind of tactical withdrawal seems like a waste of time, and the best way to keep units alive is not to keep an eye on attrition, but to just try beat the enemy before they die. Introducing line-holding mechanics would allow injured units to retreat to relative safety, although ranged units, flying units and flank-attacks would still be an issue, preventing retreat from becoming a 100% safe 'I win' option.



Anyway, back to the campaign. Over a series of sieges, I managed to bring down the Cultists and take their city. I was rewarded with a ♥♥♥♥ton of production (they had two steelstalks!) and immeidately made this city my recruiting zone. At this time I had only colonised one other city (for a total of 3, including my capital,) and over the next few turns I settled two more cities and made contact with the Broken Lords. I had been following the Vaulters quest and there was talk of a rebellion. I expected one of my cities to have turned rebellious, and that I would have to send an army over to bring them under heel, but nothing like this happened and I was very disappointed. The story is one of the things I love about Endless Legend, and one of the major reasons I bought it - it would be great if it influenced the game a little more than with passive rewards and quests. One of my cities rebelling, and spawning a few units from my own unit pool would have been great fun.



It was about this time that the Wild Walkers had enough of me, and they declared war. They had a vastly larger empire than I did (I expanded slowly), so I expected an onslaught. They sent one army with native battalions against my capital, and I teleported there quicksmart. By this time I had figured out how to upgrade units and I had some fairly good units, I think. Two Glassteel marines with Crossbows, One with a Longbow, and a dawn officer 'Doppelsoldier' armed with the most damage-doing two-handed weapon I could find and an init boost. I defended my capital admirably, at no losses, and then advanced into the Wild Walker empire unopposed, taking two cities. I could have taken more, but I wanted to win by the Vaulter quest not conquest. I expect if I had pressed I could have taken the Wild Walkers out there, for I never faced any counter attacks. By this time, everyone was eager to make peace with me and were rated as 'terrified.' I presume this is because I was playing on normal, but I'm going to go ahead and suppose that the disciplined glassteel volley from a Vaulter marine squad is a truly terrifying thing.



From this point on, the game was a breeze. Again, normal difficulty – but I think it is something more than that. Most 4x games I have played suffer from a kind of 'tipping point' – the moment a player gets too powerful, but the game hasn't ended. Based on my experience with Civilisation, Sword of the stars, Total war and other 4x-ish games, this is insensitive to difficulty. For example, if I play the harder mode on civilisation or total war the starting is very difficult, but if I survive I reach the tipping point. Usually, I have to settle for a difficulty that provides a fun initial challenge, and deal with the tipping point. I've come to accept this as a 'feature' of the 4x genre, but I wonder if it has to be this way. Total war: Shogun 2 attempts to solve it with 'realm divide' by having all AI gang up on the player, but it doesn't quite get there. Perhaps Endless legend could do something similar, and have the AI go into a coalition against the player, and get some sort of economic or military boost, when the player gets close to victory? The problem is, unless you are a player, the 'tipping point' is hard to define.



Anyway, by this time I had virtually won. The Broken Lords had been overrun by the Wild Walkers long ago, and although both the Wild Walkers and Ardent Mages had larger empires than I did, both were 'terrified' of me. Normally, I would have declared myself victorious and left the game there rather than go through the chore of capturing every city, but I wanted to progress through the Vaulters Storyline. I was up to the part where I had to capture a city, which turned out to be one of the Ardent Mages cities, so I loaded my army up on a boat and sailed to their harbour, taking the city in a turn. I continued on to the ruins, and left a small garrison under the charge of a Drakken hero at the newly taken city to face the ineffectual counter-attack, and continued the quest. Soon after that, I made it up to the mission where I needed to get my vaulter hero to 'expert alchemy' (I think.) In any case, the result was I had to level up 3 times, but my hero was already level 15. I suppose it is my fault for doing the quests so slowly, and I realise now I should have just bought a new Vaulter hero and levelled them (I was making over 2k a turn...), but at the time I had no intention of grinding a level 15 hero to level 18 when I had no enemies that could provide a challenge. Over the next few turns, I sent all my armies out and won a supremacy/expansion victory, and I left the game feeling honestly a little bored and disappointed.



I had a lot of fun in the initial stage of the game, and it is for that stage and the setting that I am coming back, and will recommend the game to everyone I know. I'm currently playing Broken Lords on a harder difficulty, but I know I'll reach the 'tipping point' eventually, and I know if I just go play on Endless Difficulty, it will be too hard to start and I'll have no fun getting nowhere. Finding the balance is always tricky, but I think Endless Legend is already a great game and with a little work it could overcome the 4x curse and become even better.

Link to the forum dedicated to community content (not mods) including fan fiction: /#/endless-legend/forum/16-creations

Very nice review!

MetroRanger wrote:
By this time, everyone was eager to make peace with me and were rated as 'terrified.' ... From this point on, the game was a breeze. Again, normal difficulty ...

It sounds like you are playing on Endless game pace on patch 1.02. If you are, get the latest patch, which removes a huge bug on the AI for that game pace.

IonDragonX wrote:
Very nice review!





It sounds like you are playing on Endless game pace on patch 1.02. If you are, get the latest patch, which removes a huge bug on the AI for that game pace.

No idea what I was playing on, honestly, but this was before the recent patches via steam. I'm all updated now for my Broken Lords game.

MetroRanger wrote:
No idea what I was playing on, honestly, but this was before the recent patches via steam. I'm all updated now for my Broken Lords game.

Good Luck on the Broken Lords. They are currently the weakest start faction. Their only hope is to snowball super hard.

I had noticed my inf were doing little-to-no damage. What I wouldn't do for a good unit of Vaulter marines...



I'm playing on serious, and 60 turns in I am lowest in scores with four cities. I think I'm doing okay, but perhaps imminent destruction is only a turn away..