Too Long; Didn't Play: Endless Legend

Sponsored By: Merphle

Time being endless: 91 minutes

First turn review

More like Endless Tutorial, amirite?

300th turn review

I love it when people gift me games that aren't on my wishlist, especially if they aren't even on my radar. I hasten to add that this is not a weasel way of goading people into doing that – in fact, please don't, as my game cellar is embarrassing at this point – but it is nonetheless true. I like getting surprised by a game. There's a certain thrill that comes from installing a game with only the title to go on. It's like opening a Christmas present from an estranged relative. It could be socks; it could be a Puzz3D model of the Millennium Falcon (Thanks, Grandma!). You don't know until you crack the seal on that puppy and load it into memory.

So it was with Endless Legend. It came in completely unknown to me, thanks to Merphle. What could it be? A platformer? An RPG? A JRPG (which is like a regular RPG but with pointy bangs and amnesia)?

As it turns out, Endless Legend is a turn-based strategy game in the vein of Civilization. How much like Civilization it is, I couldn't tell you. The only Civ game I've played is Revolution, which is to Civilization what Burger King is to Saratoga Raceways. Or so I gather from the most trusted forums on the Internet, anyway.

Well, I'm a big boy now, and I have my Incredible Hulk underoos to prove it. It's time to move on from Civ-for-babies and try something deeper. Something with a bit of a story. Something with combat that doesn’t involve stacking a thousand archers on one square and raining death upon anyone within range.

Not that there isn’t something profoundly satisfying about that, from time to time.

Endless Legend puts you in command of one of a handful of character factions that each have their own attributes and blah blah blah. Look, can I just assume you know what a turn-based strategy/4X/Civ-like game is? I’m pretty sure I’m the only person in the known world that hasn’t played Civilization before. Explaining the mechanics of Endless Legend to all of you seems like a pinewood derby runner-up trying to give Dale Earnhardt a few pointers on how steering wheels work. You think it’s going to be precious and entertaining, but it just turns out to be painfully boring. Let’s just move on to my uninformed impressions, shall we?

The game has a sizable tutorial, which is nice but not terribly effective for a mind like mine. I’m not the sort of person that has to be told how to do something multiple times, but I won’t remember how to do something later unless I’m asked to do it multiple times. For instance, I’m sure the tutorial gave me instructions on how to move troops in combat after I’ve committed to attacking, but I’ll be darned if I can figure out how to do it. Or maybe there is no way to move troops after attacking, in which case the combat is just Civilization Revolution without the benefits of stacking.

Either way, I feel like I’m blundering through the combat a lot. In fact, I feel like I’m blundering around a lot in Endless Legend. I’m thirty turns into a three-hundred-turn game, and I still have no idea what I’m doing.

The tech tree is part of that. Instead of a timeline structure like Civilization where you say “I want nuclear power in the late game, what do I have to research now to make that happen?” Endless Legend presents you with a pie chart featuring all of the things you can research before moving on to the next pie chart, which you do by researching nine things.

Endless Legend offers missions to provide me with guidance and direction, except it offers no guidance or direction on how to complete them. Right now I’m stuck on “Assimilate a minor faction after pacifying them.” Well, I’ve pacified – also known as “razed to the ground” – the villages of minor factions. I’ve also rebuilt their villages to show there’s no hard feelings. So why don’t they assimilate? I don’t know, and the game won’t tell me.

All of this makes it sound like I’m down on the game. I’m not. I very much want to enjoy Endless Legend. It’s got a nifty techno-fantasy aesthetic and the playable factions are all unique enough that I want to try all of them. I just wish I didn’t feel like such a dummy while actually playing the game.

One more turn?

I'll probably stick with it for a while longer, but if something doesn't click for me I might have to call this one a regretful loss. I want to like it, but I'm not sure it wants me to like it. Kind of like me and seafood. I know salmon is good for me, but the last time I had it I spent the night in the hospital on IV anti-ralph meds.

Is it the Devil Daggers of turn-based strategy games?

Without a basis for comparison, this is tricky. There was a learning curve with Revolution, but it's nothing like the sheer cliff wall that is Endless Legend.

The funny part is that I don't even know how much of it is the game and how much is me being an idiot. For all I know this is we most intuitive game in the world, and I'm outing myself as a colossal buffoon.

Or maybe the ship has sailed on that one already.

Seven out of nine daggers.

Comments

PS: If anyone can point me out to a wiki or FAQ that isn't painful to read, I'm all ears. Or eyes. Some sensory organ.

Nooo! I can't believe I forgot!

It's all good.

Blundering your way through a 4X game is par for the course for a couple games. Sometimes you just have to do it.

Nice read, DT!

It is interesting that when this the The Hotness that it was touted by many (including me) as being very accessible for a turn-based strategy game. After reading this, maybe it was an accessible turn-based strategy game for people who already knew a bit about turn-based strategy games (which does not seem accessible after all)?

It has been a long while since I have played, I cannot remember any of the guts of this game. However I did still have this wiki bookmarked, maybe it will be useful in your ongoing attempts to learn the game.

Endless Legend demands that you understand the faction your playing and how to exploit their strengths and avoid their weaknesses. Playing each faction the same way is a recipe for disaster. Of course, EL never really tells you this you sort of have to work it out for yourself. Like some other mechanics in the game like how all the bonuses stack in combat and how to utilise luxury resources (which can have a massive effect on how well your empire does)

It is great though, I've been replaying a fair bit lately and thinking of getting the Shifters DLC so there is something slightly more interesting to do in winter.

Great write-up! And glad I got to read from the perspective of another who hasn't a Civilization game!
Endless Legend is the only 4X-type game I've ever bought because I really liked the setting/aesthetic. I still have yet to fire it up (or even install it) because 4X games in general seem so daunting. I'm sure I'll eventually get to it, but at least I now have some sort of expectation for when I start.

On Units:

I've been playing this a ton. Malor commented early on that there were no varieties of units, and that turned me off somewhat from this game. I've since found out that that wasn't quite correct. You only have a native roster of 3 units, but you can customize what those units do through equipment. You could theoretically ping pong between unit types using just those three units by changing their equipment, but that would be royally tedious. The thing to do is to assimilate minor factions in order to get more unit types and slots. Once you have those, you can vary the units quite a bit.

For instance, Vaulters have the Marine ranged unit as basic, and can research the Dawn Officer cavalry unit (infantry in powered armor) as well as the Titan Infantry unit.

The Titan is slow by default and deals damage in a range around itself when attacked - useful for wading through a bunch of infantry. It can use Claws or Swords. Swords turn it into Anti-Infantry with a shield for addition defense. Claws turns it into a shock unit with an area melee attack - which doesn't actually work well with its decreased movement.

The Marine can employ a Bow for more damage but squishier, making it a dedicated ranged unit. Or you can equip it with a crossbow for a weaker ranged attack but with a Shield for better defense. Equipping the Dawn Officer with either an Axe or a Battle Axe gives it Ranged Slayer, so it's a dedicated anti-Ranged unit, but its stats can be modified depending on the equipment.

The SIsters of Mercy Justicar can be modified to be anti-infanty, or anti-cavalry, depending on whether you arm them with a sword or a spear.

Accessories add another level of customization. Units can be made faster, siege cities better, or deal more damage. So you can create a fast-moving, anti-cavalry Sisters of Mercy Justicar, or you can make a slow anti-infantry siege-specialist Justicar. It depends on what you like. Presumably, you're adjusting your other units so you can have a cohesive army.

On Late Comers like Myself:

I don't think of the Vaulters as a good starter faction because their advantages require good city management to leverage and their science boost can be hard to use properly given the tech structure. Of all the factions, I think the Wild Walkers and the Drakken are the most straightforward - the AI plays both factions quite well. But they're still not Civ. In fact, very little about this game is Civ-like at all.

I love 4X games, but I find the time commitment to learn to the point of enjoyment near impossible these days. One of these days, though, I'm going to play an actual game of EUIV and Hears of Iron IV and Endless Space and... sigh. Nevermind.

This review really spoke to me. I got stuck at exactly the same point after exactly the same amount of time, needing to assimilate a faction. I've not been back since, though I feel it deserves a second look. Stop guilting me, Endless Legend!

Also, Civ Rev rules. Talk about an accessible strategy game.

Endless Legend is a beautiful coffee table book in PC game form. I'm proud to own it and plan to keep it and all its DLC installed for as long as own my current laptop. There's simply sexier and easier-to-get-into uses of my time now.

One of these days I will sit down and finish my first playthrough and try to learn how it all works.

Assimilation of a faction requires pacifying a minor faction town - either razing it to the ground and rebuilding it, or doing the quest for it. Once that's done, they're pacified but not assimilated. In order to assimilate them, you have to go to the empire management screen and pay the slot and price for assimilation. You can assimilate one faction at the start, and can assimilate more as you get more tech for it. Each assimilated minor faction gives you an empire-wide advantage (such as unit-healing or more Strategic Resources), the unit for that minor faction, and more meeples for your city - one for each faction town.

LarryC wrote:

Assimilation of a faction requires pacifying a minor faction town - either razing it to the ground and rebuilding it, or doing the quest for it. Once that's done, they're pacified but not assimilated. In order to assimilate them, you have to go to the empire management screen and pay the slot and price for assimilation. You can assimilate one faction at the start, and can assimilate more as you get more tech for it. Each assimilated minor faction gives you an empire-wide advantage (such as unit-healing or more Strategic Resources), the unit for that minor faction, and more meeples for your city - one for each faction town.

Of course! It's so simple!

Well, the tldr for you is:

KILL BURN KILL BURN KILL KILL KILL

Empire management -> assimilate

garion333 wrote:

Empire management -> assimilate

Resistance, is futile

Sorbicol wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Empire management -> assimilate

Resistance, is voltage divided by current

FTFM

doubtingthomas396 wrote:
Sorbicol wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Empire management -> assimilate

Resistance, is voltage divided by current

FTFM

This makes up for earlier. Thanks!

garion333 wrote:

Blundering your way through a 4X game is par for the course for a couple games. Sometimes you just have to do it.

Pretty much, the first 100 or so turns of a 4X game becomes a well worn path for me before I have any kind of success.

I know 'losing is fun' is one of the most annoying things to say to anyone trying to learn a 4X or Grand Strategy (or any) game, but it really is part of the reward structure, and it's fundamentally not for everyone. Beating your head against the wall until something clicks and the systems start to become understandable is the game.

It's cold comfort if you want to get to the meat of a game and you have a pile and the new hotness calling to you, and Front Page articles to write, but games like this are different. I listened recently to the Tone Control podcast episode with Jake Solomon from Firaxis and he spoke about how Firaxis makes games that are more like hobbies. A player may put hundreds or thousands of hours into Civ or Xcom, but they don't usually do it all at once. It's the game you come back to between other games.

I haven't played Endless Legend itself, but the same thing applies to most large strategy games. They aren't well served by brute forcing your way to the fun, unless that's your thing, but better served by walking away, then in a couple of days or weeks when you sit down and are not sure what to play firing them up and taking another nibble.

A couple hundred turns here, couple hundred there, experimenting with races and map types and one day it will probably click and you'll make real progress.

merphle wrote:

Good effort, DT.

Good lord between 'Leg' and Lego legolas I just had chocolate milkshake come out my nose!

That snot pleasant!

I read this:

Either way, I feel like I’m blundering through the combat a lot. In fact, I feel like I’m blundering around a lot in Endless Legend. I’m thirty turns into a three-hundred-turn game, and I still have no idea what I’m doing.

And immediately thought of this:
IMAGE(https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/600/1*snTXFElFuQLSFDnvZKJ6IA.png)
Then I kept reading and saw you'd thought of the same thing.

Great write up as always.