As I played this game late into the AM hours for the third day in a row, I found myself wondering why exactly I loved this game so much. Strategy games like the Civilization series have been infamous for the "just one more turn!" phenomenon, but Endless Legend took this to the next level for me. Normally, when I beat the game with a faction, I can put down the game, released from the need for completion, and would come back weeks or months later to try out conquering the world as Germany, or Brazil... or heck, sending the Iroquois into space as the first manned attempts to colonize the galaxy. Each turn based strategy game is a commitment, as any lover of the genre can tell you, and one that you should contemplate if you have time for before hitting the start button.
Yet, Endless Legend has me hitting 'new game' as soon as my last run through one finishes... not just in a context of completion or achievement grabs either. I'm not just trying to beat the game with every civilization just because I can, but because I genuinely need to see and experience more sides of this game. Why is this? It might be how the game, you realize, isn't just to succeed, to claim victory over other factions. Instead, the planet Auriga - almost a character all itself - is dying. You fight for survival and the maintenance of a sense of identity for your faction as much as you fight for victory.
The great success of Endless Legend is in how it make the factions and the world itself come to life through a constant threat of struggle. It's engaging, it offers a sense of challenge, a need to always grow. Good game mechanics are a needed baseline for this sort of game - and the ones here are certainly worth mentioning - but for me, its the aesthetics and the premise that makes this game fun, and one of my favorites this year.
Every civilization you can play as starts in the context of struggle in Endless Legend, a plight which threatens their lives, their way of life, or even just their sense of purpose. Turn based strategy games aren't known for being able to add a feeling of pathos or gravitas to who you are playing as, but this is wonderfully turned on its head here using three tools: the wildly varied factions, the addition of a quest system to game-play, and the planet itself.
Don't worry, epic battles and city building are also in the game... but we'll getto that later.
The Wild Walkers, the often bland 'elf' faction in much fantasy writing, are undergoing a cultural shift, changing and adapting to a dying world. They realize the world is undergoing climate changes, and so have begun to leave the forests, leaving tribalism behind. They are doing this by building cities for the first time, becoming a grounded civilization rather than just forest wanderers. In contrast, the Broken Lords were once honorable knights that also realized catalsym was coming, and worked to prepare. They perhaps...overcompensated, drastically imbibing magic so their armored suits became their bodies, empty shells for their souls. Now, they toe the line between being honorable warriors and vampiresque horrors to those around them.
The brief backgrounds work because of how effort is put into them, and how much their gameplay reflects their individuality: this isn't just empty story. The Broken Lords, for example, don't use food...ever. Instead, they have to produce more Dust, the magical currency, and spend that instead to generate their population. They don't heal naturally...yep, instead, more Dust is needed. Another faction that I absolutely adore, the Roving Clans, can't declare war. Can't. Its simply not in their nature, being the tradesmen of the planet. Sure, they all have great cavalry units and plenty of movement for their armies, but its not in their nature to want outright conflict when they can instead profit from those around them. Your faction choice follows you, not just as flavor text, but as something that changes how you have to approach each game.
Of course, there is the faction chooses to simply convert the various minor cities to a greater cause...even if it is a cause that calls for destruction:
...Remember, the video above is introducing a faction that is twisted and corrupted by madness, a story of purpose going off the rails. And yet...and yet, there is something that calls to me here. The need, the desire for action, for fulfilling purpose even when it all seemed lost. Maybe its just the fantastic music that makes this little minute feel so powerful, but the faction introductions for this game should raise the production value for other strategy games which come out after this one.
The brief backgrounds work because of how effort is put into them, and how much their gameplay reflects their individuality: this isn't just empty story. The Broken Lords, for example, don't use food...ever. Instead, they have to produce more Dust, the magical currency, and spend that instead to generate their population. They don't heal naturally...yep, instead, more Dust is needed. Another faction that I absolutely adore, the Roving Clans, can't declare war. Can't. Its simply not in their nature, being the tradesmen of the planet. Sure, they all have great cavalry units and plenty of movement for their armies, but its not in their nature to want outright conflict when they can instead profit from those around them. Your faction choice follows you, not just as flavor text, but as something that changes how you have to approach each game.
The game is not only pretty, but also reinforces the uniqueness of the factions.Each city has its own aesthetic depending on the owner.
The tiny vignettes like the one above set the stage, coaxing players to try a particular faction's style as they attempt to conquer the map time and time again. Here, like most other games in this category, there is no overarching 'end' to this game, as it is purposefully left open ended for each new play-through to determine winners and losers. However, a sense of progress is kept throughout in Endless Legend thanks to the quest system that has been laid on top of the typical 4x strategy game.
The turn after you found your first city, a white screen with exposition will pop up, and not just instructions about what resource to collect or which village to attack; a story, set in the point of view of your faction appears as well, entirely optional to read through, but entirely worth the additional effort. It's a quest chain meant to round out that starting premise, each step revealing more faction-specific rewards in unique technologies or improvements to your town.
Lets take one of my favorite factions, the Vaulters. A lot of big site reviews are talking about this game by dubbing it "Science-Fantasy", and the main reason for that is probably the Vaulters:
These guys feel like the standard 'space marine' army you can find in manyscience fiction games, but are made unique through being thrown into a fantasysetting instead.
Their story has them emerging from their mines and their safe havens deep under the earth's crust after earthquakes began to wrack the world. There was a hidden gift however: vaults which opened, metal domes which cracked in the damage, and let them inside to explore. Inside, they found machines with their family's markings, objects that all appeared familiar yet foreign. A man "whose limbs were covered in rust" is found, and helps to guide them towards rediscovering their past as not tribal men of the earth, but as star-farers whose great ancestors had crash landed long ago. They will survive the cataclysms by rediscovering these truths, and taking back to the stars.
I can only have respect for how so many tired tropes have been re-purposed into something I want to experience; the story, the plight of each race inspires me to see more, to do more, to experience it. The Drakken (A fancy name for Dragon-people) are wonderfully curious due to their place as ancient protectors of the planet, elevated to a mature state of society by the Endless some time long ago. Their story is told from a pair of leaders who take turns hibernating and waking, pushing forward their people to become leaders by example: one through peace, and one through preparing for war. I still haven't finished that story line - I abandoned it halfway through to go for an entirely bloodless victory - and now I find myself wanting to replay that faction just to see where that particular story leads.
One more thing about the game, something that oddly brings it all together: winter. No, this isn't Game of Thrones, as no white walkers emerge as a global threat; somehow though, the natural simple premise of weather change feels more devastating. Auriga, the planet where Endless Legend takes place, truly is going through catastrophic change, something it makes real by the sudden and terrible winters which plague not just you, but everyone. This is not a random effect that swings the fight by chance, but a global effect that is miserable for everyone. It causes the map to freeze over and become desolate for turns at a time. As the game wears on, the winters become more and more common, as wars, economy, and keeping food in your cities become more difficult.
What makes this worse is how the winter seasons progressively become more severe as the turn count wears on. When the game starts, there is usually about thirty turns before the first winter hits, a countdown that gives an estimated range of how many turns until your plans get dashed against the rocks. Once winter appears, the countdown instead ticks down the amount of turns left...again, an approximation. As the game wears on, the winters become more and more common, the summers now less the standard, and more the reprieve from a time that wars, economy, and keeping food in your cities become tougher challenges.
Perhaps one thing you should keep in mind about me as the reviewer: I am a sucker for wistfulness, for that emotion that mixes wonder and hope with worry and sadness. Its a bizarre, sublime thing, where you can see good, even great things, but yet still know things could have been better. Endless Legend practically bleeds this emotion in its story, and how the stories of its people play out across a dying planet. Many factions are fighting for a great future, but it is one filled with tough times as they weather a possible state of extinction that is going to come across their planet. In the case of the Vaulters, they will certainly survive out in the stars (And in Endless Space, they are a faction, after all)... but they are leaving something behind as well. The themes of the game are filled with a bittersweet taste that I can't get enough of, and constantly want to know more about.
There will be a time to talk about mechanics later: believe me, Endless Legend has enough charts and statistics to make any number crunching gamer happy. For now though, this - this wonderful sense of story and place - is enough. It's enough to see a 4x game that has made itself feel so distinctly unique, merging different themes into something new, that draws the eye with its art style, that has created something that is an ode to endings and beginnings on a scale far beyond us.
I'll get to writing about the mechanics, I promise. Just....right after another game or two.
