ENDLESS Legend™ 2

I have played every Endless 4X game to some extent, and I would personally even say that Amplitude makes the best turn-based strategy games. This game appears to follow in those footsteps nicely. (I am writing this review during Early Access, specifically in Summer 2026, so take everything I say with a grain of salt.) The Good * City management has never been so intuitive and easy to understand. * Combat is miles better than in Endless Legend 1. Units feel very distinct in their roles, and some units even have special abilities they can use during combat, such as heroes, which gives battles a lot more flavor. * All factions feel incredibly unique. None of them goes so far off the rails with their mechanics that you feel like you're playing a completely different game, but they all offer a distinct experience. I'm personally a big fan of the new Necrophages and how they play. * The world is much more fun to explore than it ever was in Endless Legend 1. Especially once the first few tides roll in, the world becomes much more interesting to expand into and claim new territories. * The game looks gorgeous. If you zoom into a late-game city, you can really appreciate how great the art direction is. The Bad * The game is currently very buggy, and some of the bugs can be really frustrating. The issues I've encountered range from my city models disappearing (which a simple reload of the save fixes) all the way to a natural wonder simply not working or a hero becoming soft-locked in my council without providing any bonus. While I understand that this is an Early Access game and bugs are to be expected, I still think it's important to point them out because this is the current state of the game. That said, I haven't encountered any game-breaking bugs. * While I really enjoy all of the factions, there are currently only five (the Aspects, the Kin of Sheredyn, the Last Lords, the Tahuks, and the Necrophages), and those five simply don't provide enough replay value. You quickly run out of new factions to try, but you also run out of interesting opponents to play against. I understand this is another issue that comes with Early Access, but I still feel like adding at least one more faction would go a long way toward improving replayability. Overall Thoughts This game seems like it will settle in nicely alongside Amplitude's other great strategy games and the rest of the Endless series. While the currently small lineup of factions and the occasionally frustrating bugs do sour the experience from time to time, I would be lying if I said this wasn't worth the money. So far, I haven't been able to launch this game without it turning into a 7- to 8-hour session, and that's exactly how it should be. Endless Legend 2 already feels great to play and could eventually even surpass Endless Space 2, but that remains to be seen once the game leaves Early Access. Would recommend. (English is not my native language, so I apologize for any awkward wording.)

Not yet. The first one is still both better and cheaper, but this is on its way to being a successor. The seas draining away to reveal new land is a great mechanic. 1. Too many bugs still. Off the top of my head, Tutorial on population resets every time you boot the game, even when loading into a save. When building buildings in your cities, the resource bonus calculation is broken. It doesn't consider what buildings you have queued, and if you have a tier 2 building it often doesn't calculate right. Like it wont warn you that placing a housing unit next to a works will cause mood decrease if the works is level 2. 2. Combat AI is dumb. It does have some ability to focus a unit, but it is too dismissive if attack of opportunity, units tend to get spread out and come in in small groups instead of as a single wave, doesn't really consider terrain advantage, doesn't consider if it has ranged superiority, and doesn't consider if its attack or defender. If the AI is the defender and has ranged superiority, it should find defensive terrain instead of bum rushing you. 3. While is quite pretty, it doesn't have the visual clarity of the first which matters a lot when building districts because of the various adjacency bonuses. My suggestion is to give a toggle to make the various districts light up a color related to their primary purpose (works is orange, food is green, dust is gold, influence is purple, unique is white, ect) when building districts so they dont have to redo a bunch of art work. 4. Now this is probably just a me thing because of the neurological damage I have, but something about the sound mixing is really draining that I didn't have in the first. No idea what it is, but its a thing. My enjoyment went distinctly up when I had the game muted vs with sound, which I'm very sad about because the audio is the first game was so good its actually a sizeable reason I played it so much. 5. Needs more races. I'd like to see dragon people again, though they dont have to be the same as the last and/or wolf/dog-folk. For some reason fantasy is allergic to a full race of them, i blame werewolves.

Если честно то спорно. Городов стало меньше но они стали больше и нужно больше думать где они и какие районы нужно строить (стеларис?). Воины стали более унифицированы. можно больше не плодить элитные и расходные войска. но вариативность упала. Больше всего бесят квесты. Особенно за некрофагов. Какого чёрта выиграв игру про войну я должен чувствовать вину. Я ♥♥♥♥♥ некрофаг моя задача жрать и размножаться. Это блин не фростпанк.

Amplitude, I love your games, but you have to figure out how to make the game more interesting as each core element feels bland, whether it's building your cities, or expanding, or your armies/battles. I'll give this a thumbs up when you do. Building your cities doesn't feel that spectacular, you just plop a district down when you can in-between building internal buildings (which are boring static increases). You can tell it wants to be more complex but it isn't. Something like the ability to add additional upgrades on-top of existing districts by fighting for special resouces to power them or winning battles etc, and they then give bonuses to other things around them or something, would make this gameplay more enjoyable as every city just feels sooooo static and unalive. The monsoon was cool the first few games and then you realize the game is literally chained to it and not in a kinky fun kind of way. You can't pre-explore it at all which would make for interesting gameplay, you just sit armies around waiting to dive into it, only to find out you were waiting at a part that only exposed 3 tiles and not a new landmass. It is a weird race to the bottom, it'd be more interesting if it just randomly flooded whole zones of tiles, reducing resources, or causing you to rebuild or repair or retreat armies to support, something more immersive. The progression is weird. There's tons of cool unique auxiliary factions and you want to recruit them and use them, only it's locked behind tiered up science so instead you just build your units. Stuff like this is simple tuning but right now it just ruins every game cause you're just going down a tunnel to the bottom where even though the best lands and minerals are finally exposed, you've already won or lost. Build depth, build immersion, help us power up our cities and armies and lands with this beautiful world you built, not just pump out static +1s waiting around for someone to turn the page finally for us. The combat...it's just like it was before. I expected better for a sequel. Movesets you could design or build around that you really felt in battle. All that said, it is some of the best combat IMO in most of these types of games I just thought they'd step it up a few notches. Heroes that get ultimates or abilities you can swap in or out...IDK - something to make the RPG part of it feel real? My hours are high cause I leave it on in the background all day but most games I find myself quitting early from boredom or racing through next turn to just end the game I won already

If you're interested in Endless Legend, and never got the first one. Get that instead. Cheaper, and vastly better. If you got Endless Legend 1, and think you're going to get the same here, think again. IT's EL1 Lite, with everything dumbed down, mechanics removed, and combat imbalances galore. Endless Legend 2 is a shadow of Endless Legend 1 sadly. Quite honestly everything about this game is a downgrade, or in shambles compared to EL 1. Not saying EL didn't have its issues, but this is just a downgrade in every way possible... So as a quick list: * Science Tree is even smaller.. It was already pretty small in this 4x game, they removed half of it. * Combat is so broken unbalanced.. The changes to combat heavily favor one play style over anything else. (not saying other play styles can't exist, but they suffer greatly) Because every unit has high damage, and low armor (which you can't adjust or change really, as even upgrades your attack power goes up too so the same ratio of attack/defense stays relatively the same). This means that yolo or damage stacking is that all really matters, and whoever does more damage out of the gate faster, wins. Defense, turtling, locking down enemies, none of it matters. Cavalry is worthless because they'll get either entirely 1 shot by Archers, or if they survive the onslught, make it to the front line, they will die the next round as they get pummeled by Archers, and then killed when they try to disengage to get their bonus charge back. This means you have 2 options in battles: Abuse the crap out of chokepoints, or be sure you do the most alpha damage out of the gate. Otherwise you lose. End of story. It's a massive downgrade from EL 1 * No unit customization You have 1-2 "upgrade paths" for each unit now. No longer do you get equipment that has an array of options, stat changes, buffs, or special stats to them to let you build your army or units how you want to play. That's out the window. Have fun with 1-2 upgrade paths, none of which actually changes anything because of how linear the combat is I mentioned above. * City building vastly more limited in the sense of expanding, vastly smaller provinces, and the new city attachment system + The inability to actually garrison Heroes, etc to further customize and strategize the city. * The uniqueness of the cities building up and expanding is mostly gone due to how slow you expand and build up the cities compared to the hyper fast pace of the game with everything else. Wasn't strange in EL1 to have like 3-4 cities that covered half the territory, in EL2 you're lucky if you expand past Ring 2 if even. * The combat changes, and balance of units is a joke. Example: With Kin of Sheredyn, the Chosen unit that is limited how many you can even build, is worthless. It requires vastly more build points to build, cost more gold upkeep, doesn't have the combat power, defense, or health to justify its tiny bonus to attack/hp vs its build time. It still gets focused and nearly 1 shot in a battle the moment it dares to sneeze at an enemy, even if you try to surround it by other troops. Most "special" units are like this.. Not worth the extra time/investment for what it brings to the table, further limiting any actual real options in the dumbed down linear, garbage that is Combat in EL 2. * Furthering with it, the combat forces one play style mostly as I mentioned. You can't really "turtle" because the damage output in the game is so insanely stupid high, with Generals doing so much blatant AOE damage on top of that, with such low defense to units, it forces you to to go yolo steroid mode as the main way to play, OR play chokepoints. There is no in between. With disengagement penalties, no way to "lock" an enemy in position allowing them to just merry go round on your units freely to get to your back line with no punishment, etc. It' makes the combat a laughing joke. * Factions are vastly more dumbed down and linear. EL1 factions all played very differently, with focused positives, and negatives to them. Unique mechanics that made them feel truly unique, and different. Yet the new factions are somehow even more hyper focused, yet all just play the same in the end anyway. I can't even put my finger on exactly what it is its such a trash game design for these factions. Both being hyper focused gameplay, yet so samey at the same time. * Resources are neutered. Rarely useful, only to upgrade new recruits, or some special buildings, then left forgotten. *Anomolies again are more or less, useless, and forgotten. Unless you plan to build a city right on it, don't bother. You will never "expand" out to it like you would in EL1. Further simplifying and dumbing down the whole game. You either do or you don't. There is no choosing a good location and planning for future expansion in most cases, since most games you wont see your city grow out from 2 rings anyway. * Game pace is entirely whacked and trash. The storms come so fast that you never have a chance to use the new choke points, or unique landmasses that are revealed to truly setup any sort of expansion, or unique situations for long term. "Just set the game time longer bro" I hear you say, well that makes it so everything builds so insanely slow, that the same problem persists.. WIth game length just deciding how long you want to wait for your units to build and buildings to finish, not add or subtract anything meaningful to the game. * Minor Factions are "meh" at best.. Some very OP ones, most totally trash and worthless over all. This is due to either their passive buffs, or their units and how combat actually plays out. * Hero downgrades, and imbalance.. I could make a whole new list and feedback post on this alone.. It's garbage.. The stats and abilities do almost nothing actually impactful or useful, except a few that are OP. Others are wet farts, and over all doesn't feel impactful at all. Arguably they can't feel impactful because the moment they do, they become broken OP and imbalanced even more with a massive snowball effect.. This should of told the devs right out of the gate this is not a good idea. They also can't be garrisoned in cities, or have skills/buffs for cities, or territories they're in like in EL 1.. They're just Generals, and generally they suck at doing even that, just being glorified potion throwers. Their active abilities, or passive abilities are "meh" usually resulting in less damage than a regular attack.. yes you heard me right. No, its not a fluke or bug or "you didn't build it right". --------------------- literally across the board this game is a major downgrade in every way to EL 1. Do yourself a favor, and get EL1, That is a great game.

An excellent successor which will only get better with time. The base game mechanics are all sound with plenty of disparate factions with custom builds available too. Exciting roadmap to look forward to. Solid 9/10

Not ready to leave EA by a long mile. I tested it early in early (pun intended) and it had potential but was not ready at all. I was surprised to hear of 1.0. I had followed the patches to see changes were made. I thought the game would be readier. Turns out, it's not ready at all. The cinematics and musics are great. The identity of the game great. The factions are very different as usual. Except the GAME itself, the playing, is horrible. The UI is still very clunky (Clicking on a unit on a city...) The AI balancing is horrible: The moment you leave moderate difficulty, you will find a necrophage fielding multiple army units at your door while you barely started your second, before turn 40. The combat is horrible: It's not enjoyable. Heroes used to be overpowered, now they are... just a beefed unit normal unit with some power. Yay. They don,'t turn the tide of the battle, because only having more units turn the tide of the battle. The pace is horrible. For the first 20 turns, you will be moving 2 or 3 units max. The quest windows was improved... but not improved very much. The overall combat has not been improved. Even with comments on the discord, not enough is being done. You are better off buying Endless Legend 1, or simply go for Endless Space 2. 50 Euros is WAY too expensive for what EL 2 is right now.

I anticipate returning to play Endless Legend 2 for many years to come. In Early Access at time of review; [edit (post Retold Tales Update, but still in Early Access): I think the new dialogue system is miles ahead of the click ad nauseum that was happening before this update. way more compelling and feels like a more concise experience. I might have been a little harsh with the feedback on terrain, below. (I had forgotten q and e keys could rotate the map, making the delineation of upper/lower ground easier. I think they added some changes to the terrain to try to make it stand out more, but without the q and e shift in perspective I think I'd still struggle to tell them apart sometimes. TLDR; an engaging game that keeps me coming back, and often poses provocative and consequential choice] it is a good game in current form that will probably be great once DLC increase the replayability of the game by adding more factions and hopefully adding some great features that only the folks at Amplitude could dream up. The further unveiling of the game, which is mid-way through Early Access as I write this, will dictate whether it ends up great upon launch. [b]The Exceptional[/b] *** Periodic Tidefall offers a more dynamic experience of exploration and exploitation. Monsoons offer a similar catalyst for more rewarding exploration. *** Combat is stellar. Varied unit and hero abilities and faction traits can make for some very interesting tactics and strategy. Amplitude’s use of the world map terrain as backdrop for the tactical battle terrain has added a layer of semi-predictable strategy for choosing the optimal direction of attack. Though I will add a couple comments on other aspects of combat in sections below to balance this glowing endorsement. [b]The Great[/b] ++ Another Tidefall related scenario. Optimal territorial expansion is usually pretty obvious in general, but there are ways in which this game’s variable landscape forces premature choices. (For example, want to settle that territory with resources you lack but land that may or may not still be covered by water for 50+ more turns, and have a narrow slice of land on which to do it? Pretty fun gamble when the AI is competitive for territory, which will likely only get more so..) ++ As in most good 4x, exploration in EL2 is very good, and its applicability to the game actually gets replenished periodically by the monsoons, so it’s not just an early game feature anymore. ++ The asymmetry of the factions is quintessential Amplitude. I think they do a great job presenting a plethora of gameplay style options. I’m sure there are more surprises to come. ++ soundtrack, although some of it is getting a little stale on repeat over 3 games now, one can always back it with any track you want. I will have to pay closer attention to the frequency of some themes going forward to give a more nuanced take on this.. [b]The Good[/b] + The Multiplayer experience has been pretty stable recently. When in early beta it was far less stable for me, so they’ve already improved that a lot. + Diplomacy is already better than most diplomacy systems in 4x until late Civ games (which probably borrowed from something more obscure). It has levers of control that used to be lacking in early 4x games. I do think there’s room for improvement in making the diplomatic interactions feel more organic. They’ve already improved it by making agreements turn-limited, and allowing for the praise action. I hope the developers don’t think this will suffice to make diplomacy shine though. [b]The So-So[/b] = I said I’d come back to combat, here is the first caveat to both combat and to the beautifully rendered world/battle maps. The terrain can be difficult for judging relative height of terrain, even adjacent terrain, and for where there is an impassable obstacle to traveling a straight path (for example a slightly raised terrain that is at least hard for my eyes to see on a 16” laptop screen. This is made a less relevant critique by the path-finding the game has for traveling terrain on the world map, but for planning combat, it can be a real confusing situation that sometimes loses a unit or a battle as a result. = While the asymmetry of factions is excellent, there are not enough total right now. As it is currently communicated, if there are multiple of one faction in a game it’s kinda hard to tell the difference between them. They have the same leaders. I hope we get at least 2 more factions before launch. I would also suggest having at least 2 sub-factions of each faction, that vary either only by the leader (maybe only the leader’s names need to be different) or perhaps even more vast differences. At least a couple of them. I mean, to have 2 aspects hopping around when their whole narrative is they died down so much is a bit strange. = Speaking of strange, how were these minor villages inhabited when these lands were under water? Perhaps there’s lore to learn about that, like reasons they were habitable zones. I’d hate for there to be fewer minor villages, so I’ll accept any explanation really, perhaps they migrated from elsewhere on the map to reclaim past villages? = On a related note, minor factions quests can be very hard to track (though there is a small convenient window for tracking quests that allows you to see the target locations). I believe my problem is that the mini-window doesn't give info about what minor gave that quest, so you have to go to the quests window, which is hard to read. (Would be nice to have the name of the minor faction visible on the first level of that screen summarizing all the quests). With as much time in the game as I have, these things have gotten easier to track but it’s still far from optimal.. That’s my biggest gripe with the UI (which I think is largely easily navigable). I know some reviewers have been calling it out for being horrible and I don’t think it’s really bad at all. = The roleplay with Heroes and counselors is decent, I am hopeful they will expand on this with DLC, to introduce a bit more flavor for each faction = Voice acting is well performed, but I kind of shudder at some of the lines of introspective narration uttered. = This topic belongs above on this list in terms of importance to the end result for this game, and that is Endgame feels lackluster as it is currently implemented. I just expect to find Amplitude unveiling a few more interesting aspects, one of which has been announced, which is endless monsoon. I would actually put this in the next lowest category, but we haven't seen the final version of the endgame and I don't actually have a lot of endgame experience (the two reasons that it's not yet influenced my overall evaluation of the game) [b]The Bad[/b] - Another thing about combat: the AI is sometimes bad at combat. It can be forced into doing very dumb things tactically in some specific situations. (They are pretty good at focused fire and exploiting special attack bonuses, when applicable, so maybe the AI belongs in the category above: The So-So.) - still an occasional disruptive error (at least in multiplayer) and a fair share of immersion breaking missing text in tooltips) The frequency of updates with fixes for the more important bugs is reassuring though. [b]TLDR:[/b] If you like to care if your units die because it has one of the several extremely useful skills, Endless Legend 2 might be for you. If you are interested in any of the following playstyles: Turtle, Diplomatic, Warlike, Ravenous, you can probably find a faction you’ll enjoy playing. If you find fantasy storytelling intriguing, it'll probably hit that itch. It’s a good balance of micro and more broad gameplay. It’s good now ½ way through Early Access, very playable with some immersion breaking bugs. If you can’t stand any slight bugs, wait until release. Will try to update this upon release if there are any glaring changes to how I feel about the game.