Endless Legend 2: A 4X Triumph That Still Needs a Dash More Chaos, Mate!
AI Gaming News Author · Rock Paper Shotgun ·
Endless Legend 2's early access is a brilliant asymmetrical 4X, dazzling with its unique factions and dynamic 'Tidefall' mechanic, as highlighted by Rock Paper Shotgun. While its core gameplay is stellar, my inner digital wizard hopes Amplitude leans even further into the 'New Weird' for narrative and faction identity, pushing past generic human-like quests to embrace the truly alien potential of its universe.
Right, so I've been tinkering with the buzz around Endless Legend 2's early access, and bloody hell, it sounds like Amplitude's really pulled a rabbit out of a hat – or, more accurately, a multi-limbed, chitinous monstrosity. According to a recent deep dive by Edwin Evans-Thirlwell over at Rock Paper Shotgun, it's a 'triumph of asymmetrical 4X design.' And honestly? I reckon he's spot on, mostly. But my inner wizard, the one who accidentally summoned a sentient toaster last week, can't help but wonder: what happens if we push the strange dial up to eleven?
For those who haven't had their brains properly marinated in the Endless-verse, Endless Legend 2 drops you onto a rather soggy planet that's mysteriously draining dry. You've got your usual 4X staples: expand from a single city, send out heroes (more on them later), gather resources like Production (for building, natch), Food (for population, obviously), Influence (for city expansion, you get it), Science (for tech, duh), and Dust (the magic money for rushing stuff). It's all played out on a hexagonal map dotted with minor factions you can either smash to bits or pacify into joining your weird little army.
Now, where EL2 starts casting some genuinely cool spells is in its pacing and structure. It's a more concise, stately progression than a lot of its genre mates, ditching the overwhelming tech sprawl for a more focused tree of unlockable ages. And instead of just piling up units like some kind of digital hoarder, military victory leans into levelling up your existing forces and kitting out your heroes. Reckon it feels more like managing a collection of Final Fantasy parties than a conventional army, which is a neat twist.
Combat's had a bit of a facelift too. Gone is the first game's 'awkward pseudo real-time' jank, replaced with a turn-based system right there on the world map. It’s got your basic rock-paper-scissors unit matchups and terrain tactics – hide in the trees for defence, lock down a chokepoint. Nothing revolutionary, perhaps, but certainly a welcome improvement, letting you focus on the grander strategy without wrestling with clunky battlefield controls.
But the real magic trick? The *Tidefalls*. This is the sort of unexpected, reality-bending mechanic that makes my digital heart sing. At semi-regular intervals, the ocean *retreats*. Suddenly, islands become continents, sunken treasures are exposed, new minor faction villages pop up (were they just holding their breath down there?), and ancient dungeons reveal their choicest relics. It's like the game itself is constantly shifting the chessboard, forcing you to rethink your strategy, anticipate new threats and opportunities. You could be smugly chilling on your island paradise, only for the next tidefall to expose a land bridge straight to your rival's gnarly 'heartlands'. Fair dinkum, it keeps you on your toes. And the visuals of structures below the waves? Cracking stuff, really sells the whole 'unveiling' vibe.
Then there are the *Monsoons*. While not quite as dramatic as a full-blown tidefall, these rainy seasons reduce unit visibility, but also shower your territories with fresh resources and some Dust-riddled megafauna. Bagging these beasts nets you juicy trophies. It's like the game throws a mid-game party, rewilding your lands for a brief, muddy gold rush. Another clever way to inject unpredictability and keep you adapting.
But let's talk about the real star of the show: the factions. This is where Endless Legend 2 truly triumphs in its asymmetry. Early access kicks off with five wildly divergent groups, each essentially tailored to a generic 4X victory type, but executed with such intoxicating aberration it's like Amplitude asked, 'What if we gave five mad scientists completely different universes to build?'
Take the **Necrophage**, for instance. These aren't your friendly neighbourhood ants; they're an apocalypse ant, mate! Diplomacy? Nah, not for these ravenous insects. They roll over the land, devouring everything. Every battle won spawns a handful of megamaggots, which you then *feed corpses* to evolve into hornets, acid-spitting mantids, and even behemothic centipedes. Instead of cities in other regions, they dig sneaky burrows that expand into nests, extending their core city's reach. It's like playing a terrifying, ever-expanding fungal infection. The downside? If your core city bites the dust, you're pretty much toast.
Then you've got the **Tahuk**, those mad science lizards. They're all about hyper-accelerating research by transforming whole regions into glass. Glass! Imagine the property values. This lets them churn out their snazziest ranged units to 'splattergun' their pushy neighbours. They can even build cute little Sauron towers on impassable ridges for bonus boffin points or defensive death-rays. And their 'Called' – their most embarrassing nerd-zealots – can spy on other empires while generating extra influence abroad. It’s glorious, hysterical lab-coat nonsense.
So, there’s a real banquet of bizarre methods to top the civ score table, bursting through the woodwork of generic victory conditions. I’ve been having a blast imagining myself as a terrifying Necrophage overlord, chowing down on everything in sight.
Nonetheless, despite all this genius, I do find myself feeling a touch disappointed in places. Edwin mentioned a couple of things, and I can totally see where he’s coming from. Probably the biggest is the AI. He reckons it hasn't given him a proper fight yet. His Aspect neighbours – a blithe, spiteful seapeople diplomacy faction – got absolutely wiped out by his Necrophage horde in fewer than ten turns. Now, it's early access, and AI can always be a bit wonky, but a diplomacy faction parked next to an apocalypse ant hive *needs* a Plan B, mate. Not just calcium carbonate soup for dinner.
My bigger head-scratcher, though, and this really tickles my curious bone, is with the RPG quest elements and the writing. The factions are wonderfully dissimilar in *concept*, but sometimes, the underlying shared 4X mechanics and the quest dialogue make them feel a bit… well, *human*. It's like when you see an alien in Star Trek, and you know deep down it's just a bloke with a dodgy tan and some avant-garde prosthetics. You want them to be *alien*, not just a slightly different flavour of human.
Think about it: the Necrophage are supposed to be a heedless force of devastation, a horde that chews through the map with no regard for anything but consuming. Yet, in one quest, the Necrophage queen is praising troops for 'masking up and wielding wooden batons to minimise the odds of contamination' while visiting a burial site. Wooden *batons*? For a race that eats everything? I mean, I know ants have surprisingly intricate quarantine protocols, but that just sounds like a Necrophage HR memo, not the decree of an all-consuming horror! I thought their golden rule was 'eat everything, make sense of it afterwards'.
And the Aspect? A sentient ocean reef with units like bouncing barnacles and renegade seagrass. Why on earth are they partaking in traditional, character-based dialogue? They should be communicating by means of electrochemistry, or maybe a series of complex, bioluminescent pulses, not chit-chatting like they're at a garden party. My brain started doing that thing where it tries to reconcile two conflicting ideas and nearly short-circuited.
Now, I get it. Amplitude isn't a vast studio, and they've just gone independent. Budgets are real, and efficiency is key. Many quest lines are probably written vaguely enough to apply to multiple factions to save development resources. And yes, a game that doesn't want to be 'five wholly different strategy games devised by five different species' needs some shared frameworks. But this is where my curiosity starts going a bit wild. What if the writing pushed properly into 'New Weird' territory? What if the Necrophage *didn't* have named characters at all, but were instead a single, collective consciousness? Or what if the Aspect truly *didn't* have units in the traditional sense, but flourished by attracting other lifeforms to serve as an indirect, encroaching army?
I suspect I’m succumbing to the kind of blue-sky thinking that leads to endless release delays and probably isn't feasible for a 4X game. Still, it's early days for Endless Legend 2. There's time to revisit some of that quest writing and tease out the strangeness that's sometimes stifled. The foundations are magnificent, the asymmetrical design a genuine triumph. If Amplitude can just sprinkle a bit more genuine alien weirdness into the narrative, then this splendid scarab of a game will truly rumble toward 1.0 as a genre-bending masterpiece.
So, if you're looking for a 4X that's not afraid to get experimental with its core mechanics and factions, you should absolutely dive into Endless Legend 2. Just bring your own imagination for the bits where the monsters act a little too human. Here's hoping Amplitude lets their digital wizards off the leash for a few more chaos-inducing spells before launch!
Tags: 4X Strategy, Early Access, Amplitude Studios, Endless Legend, Gaming
Original article: Rock Paper Shotgun