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Endless Legend is almost four years old already, but despite its age we’re still seeing continued development and content expansions being released from developer AMPLITUDE Studios. Most recently, there was the Inferno expansion, and generally Legend’s DLC library is growing to warrant one of our hallmark DLC buying guides. Which expansion packs are worth getting? What order should you buy them in? Whether you are brand new to the game or old hat veterans like me, we’ve got you covered.
Endless Legend is one of our favourite 4X strategy games. You should check out the others!
As always, remember that sales for DLC can be quite frequent, ranging upwards of 75% off in some cases, so make sure to keep that in mind when making a purchasing decision. This list is in chronological order of release, so that may affect potential sales percentages as well.
GUARDIANS (2015) - $9.99
Highlights
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- Adds in Guardians, massive super units capable with special abilities like teleportation, mind control, healing entire armies, and being a one-man wrecking crew.
- Legendary Deeds are added to each Era. Requiring special prerequisites, those who meet specific requirements like amassing strategic resources, winning battles against heroes, or building a massive city are granted very powerful unique rewards.
- Globally Competitive and Cooperative quests are introduced, adding in new reasons to be adventurous on the map and make political deals with allies and enemies alike.
- Legendary and Empire-specific Buildings are added to the Tech Tree. These grant large-scale bonuses or can help point Empires towards specific victory conditions that are best tailored to their play-style.
Is it worth it?
As with most 4X strategy games, DLCs for Endless Legend tend to be specialized on a particular design philosophy, or gameplay mechanic that needs an update or otherwise absent from the base game. However, Guardians is arguably one that caters to a wide variety of tastes, as it impacts short and long-term goals, map exploration, army composition, and build orders. Therefore, I’m comfortable considering it a core part of the game. There have been plenty of games where I never bothered using Guardians, but I almost always strive to be the first to achieve a few Legendary Deeds or rush some of the early game Legendary Buildings. These additions help each session of Endless Legend feel unique and mixes up how you might approach playing certain Empires.
SHADOWS (2015) - $12.99
Highlights
- Introduces the Forgotten, a new Empire that specializes in stealth, infiltration, and sabotage.
- Introduces camouflage, stealth, and pillage mechanics for heroes and armies traversing the map.
- Espionage allows heroes to infiltrate enemy Empires, stealing currency or technologies, disrupting building operations, or even assassinating governors.
Is it worth it?
Shadows is the quintessential spying expansion pack. If you enjoy espionage and messing with your friends, this is the DLC for you. The Forgotten cannot exploit Science from the map or cities, and instead purchase technologies outright with Dust. They can also outright steal technology from opposing Empires via infiltration, replacing the standard 'Decrease Science Production' option. This is a perfect example of a DLC that is focused on one sole gameplay mechanic. If stealth and spying is something you enjoy, pick this up, otherwise it’s not a hard and fast requirement by any means.
FORGES OF CREATION (2015) - FREE
Highlights
- IT’S FREE.
- Adds Steam Workshop and Map Editor compatibility.
- A new Sister of Mercy hero and Scythers, Guardian Killer specialized units, are added to the game.
- 20 new unit equipments are added, along with seven new custom faction traits.
- Overall AI improvements to Military, Research, Economics, and Diplomacy.
Is it worth it?
It’s free folks, it is unquestionably worth it.
Echoes of Auriga (2015) - $2.99
Highlights
- Adds 7 new tracks to the game’s overall composition.
- Adds 9 new unit equipments based on music motifs.
Is it worth it?
Musical taste is subjective. Personally, I find Way of the Forerunner to be one of my favorite ambient pieces to listen to. Heck, I’m listening to it right now as I write this! I would suggest giving the OST a listen on their Bandcamp site and making an informed opinion from there. If you like the pieces, support the game and musicians by making a purchase. If not, then pass on this. (I’m willing to bet you’re going to like them though, Endless Legend has fantastic sound design.)
The Lost Tales (2015) - $1.99
Highlights
- Adds 20 new quests based around the Minor Factions you can assimilate or battle over the map.
Is it worth it?
If you like quest variety and little lore bits here and there, then this is a minor purchase that’s worth your while. If you’re the type of person who skips over quest text and just looks for the immediate condition you need to fulfill, you may still want this just for some added spice and rewards from interacting with the Minor Factions. I tend to see at least two or three quests from this cache of content per gameplay session, so they are always around in some capacity. The Lost Tales is a very minor content expansion, but it also only requires a minor investment.
Shifters (2016) - $12.99
Highlights
- Introduces the Allayi, a new Empire that specializes in map exploration and Pearl exploitation.
- A massive Winter revamp. Winters become gradually harsher as a game session progresses.
- Pearls of Auriga, a new resource, can be used to grant Empires protections against the cold and powerful bonuses during Winter.
- New buildings, unit equipment, etc. based around the Pearl and Winter motifs.
Is it worth it?
Avs all products activator. Shifters makes the Winter mechanic in Endless Legend go from being a tiresome waste of productivity to a strategic phase of the game with multiple layers of depth. It is unquestionably the most improved mechanic from the base game, and practically begs to be purchased. Each Winter you’ll have to consider if you want to focus on collecting Pearls that have respawned at various points on the map, and furthermore if you want to spend them on research, production, or unit upgrades. Their limited nature makes for interesting branching decisions, and the progressive harshness of winter adds a nice difficulty curve to round out the later stages of the game. The Allayi are designed to be tall in their city design, rather than expansion based, and instead allow heroes to extract value from the map indirectly. Shifters is a required purchase if you want to experience everything Endless Legend has to offer, the Winter revamp is just that important to the core structure of the game.
Tempest (2016) - $12.99
Highlights
- Introduces the Morgawr, a new Empire that specializes in naval combat, mind control, and aggressive diplomacy.
- Naval warfare has been updated with seaborne units and naval specializations.
- A weather system is introduced for ocean tiles, granting bonuses and potential danger to ships that pass through them.
- Sea Fortresses are added to provide strategic depth and purpose to controlling ocean sections of the map. Likewise, the Fomorian Minor Faction is introduced, which exist within these fortresses.
- New quests, new unit equipment, and a giant Kraken-esque monster to combat.
Is it worth it?
I want to tell you that Tempest is a strong buy, and that the naval mechanics it adds to the game are worth your consideration. My only issue is that it is almost too aquatic-based for its own good. For example, if you ever play on a Pangaea type of map structure, this DLC is practically empty in value during your play session. Sea Fortresses offer nice bonuses to your existing empire, but are they worth the time it takes to research naval units, alongside their maintenance costs and upkeep as you progress throughout the Eras? I struggle to see their value in most of my play sessions, and similar to the Guardians from the Guardians DLC, I find myself ignoring their existence more often than not. The Morgawr are fierce on the water but are otherwise merely passable on land. Their mind control of neutral armies and ability to un-pacify minor factions is an interesting idea on paper, but fairly innocuous in the grand strategy of things. The Black Spot is a new way of pissing off one faction by making them an enticing target to being attacked by others, but the AI often enough will still target you if you are a close and weaker target. Perhaps there’s more value in multiplayer sessions of the game. Overall, Tempest is really based on how much value you place in naval mechanics of 4X games. For me, it just isn’t really all that exciting.
Forgotten Love (2017) - FREE
Highlights
- IT’S FREE.
- Adds 2 new heroes with an intertwining story about one another.
Is it worth it?
Pretty straight-forward here, Forgotten Love was a minor content addon that was unlocked to celebrate the 'Make War Not Love 4' community event put on by AMPLITUDE Studios. It’s free, and the story of these two characters is interesting if you’re into reading hero biographies. No sense in not installing it.
Inferno (2018) - $12.99
Highlights
- Introduces the Kapaku, a new Empire that specializes in high amounts of production, dust eclipse mastery, and terraforming.
- Volcanic biomes are introduced to Auriga for the first time.
- Dust Eclipses offer every Empire a short-term, but powerful, unique boost tailored to their strengths.
Is it worth it?
The short answer is yes, and I happily explain why in my review. The longer answer is that this DLC offers you a new playable Empire that feels just as unique in play-style as its predecessors, without feeling too specialized to not work in general gameplay like the Morgawr. It also expands upon the weather system introduced from Tempest to encompass land tiles with varied kinds of Dust Storms. Likewise, drawing inspiration from the Shifters Winter revamp, Inferno updates the Summer season with Dust Eclipses that give new purpose to retreading previously explored ruins and offer powerful Empire-specific bonuses. I like Inferno because it is built upon the shoulders of its forefathers. As previously stated, small design philosophies from Guardians, Shifters, and Tempest can be seen within this latest offering from AMPLTITUDE Studios, and I highly suggest making the investment in this DLC as soon as it meets a price point you’re happy with.
Symbiosis (2019)
Highlights
- Introduces the Urkan, which are like the Guardians but better and more fun to interact with.
- Introduces the Mykara, a civilisation that follows brings the 'one-city' trope into the game in an interesting way.
Endless Legend Economic Victory Strategies Youtube
Is it worth it?
As Endless Legend's final expansion, this finishes the game on a fairly high note. New content is focused around the introduction of a new giant unit, and a new civilization. The Mykara faction epitomise the ideal of 'single-city' civilisations or play-throughs, but actually make the archetype interesting and feel dynamic, as opposed to limiting. The Urkan are everything we wish Guardians could have been, and make late-game conquest wonderfully silly. It's not a huge expansion by any means, but it's definitely entertaining.
THE BREAKDOWN
ESSENTIAL:
- Shifters
- Guardians
- Inferno
SITUATIONAL:
- Shadows
- Symbiosis
- Tempest
- The Lost Tales
- Echoes of Auriga
FREE:
- Forges of Creation
- Forgotten Love
We hope this list helps you make an informed decision on how best to tackle getting caught up on all the additional content Endless Legend has to offer. If you need to prioritize, personally I recommend going in the above order from top to bottom (except for the free stuff, you should totally nab the free stuff). Thanks for reading and let us know about your favorite Endless Legend DLCs or any purchases you make in the comments below!
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05 Jun 20198Endless Legend (EL) is a very ambitious simultaneously turn based new 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) strategy game in a fantasyEndless Legend (EL) is a very ambitious simultaneously turn based new 4X (eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, eXterminate) strategy game in a fantasy setting by Amplitude studios (Endless Legend, Dungeon of the Endless). The general setting is unusual, as you're stranded on the planet Auriga that has been a favoured laboratory of a powerful precursor race, the Endless, until they erased themselves from existence in a large civil war.
Now, you take control of one out of 8 standard factions or any custom faction you create in an editor, using the basic gameplay of one of the 8 with some modifiers. Your goal is to survive as Auriga is slowly drifting towards an everlasting winter that will snuff out all life left on its surface. There are several victory conditions you can fulfill, ranging from 'bucket'-type conditions like gathering enough currency or being the highest in score at a configurable turn limit to fulfilling a quest and building an expensive wonder, exterminating all concurrents or researching yourself to victory. Not all of these victory conditions are equally fun to reach as 'filling a bucket' can be quite tedious, but the different factions are also specialised at reaching different victory conditions.
And this is where EL is ambitious in the sense that its 8 factions are very asymmetrically designed:
- The Wild Walkers are the not so usual Elves of the game, using woods to boost their industrial proficiency. They get to be the production powerhouse of the game.
- The Vaulters are the survivors of the Dungeon of the Endless game, stranded on the planet. Hightech-dwarfs of a sort with heavy armor and the best science output.
- The Rowing Clans are supposed to be the traders of the planet. They cannot declare war, are better than the NSA at finding out who's selling or buying what to a common marketplace you can get access to by research, and can actually even trade-ban people, bleeding them dry, economically.
- The Drakken are the peacekeepers, a draconid race interested in achieving diplomatic victory by using their influence to force whole empires into peace or alliance with them.
- The Ardent Mages can use spells on the map and in combat. Given enough currency, a weak army of them can still beat a superior foe with enough magic support fire.
- The Necrophage do not do anything but feed, war and reproduce. Peace is not an option, as is not conquering. The Zergs of the planet, indeed.
- The Broken Lords are living armors thinking of themselves as paladins and leeching life like vampires. Lorewise, one of my favourites, their gameplay is centered on currency to buy population with.
- The Cultists of the Eternal End have only one city and expand by converting minor faction villages across the planet to generate troops for them and to harvest resources for them.
In general, this asymmetry is what makes the game nice, but it is also its vulnerability. As each faction plays differently, the AI also has to account for that. During the Early Access phase, the AI made huge jumps and has become a threat to the unwary at higher difficulty levels, now, but still fails in the endgame. It doesn't recognize that, given it is close to winning, the human player in the game will go to lengths to eradicate them. On the other hand, in the beginning, different AI personalities shine through. Around the Ardent Mages, there's always a lot of scorched earth destroyed minor faction villages, while Wild Walkers spread and pacify, instead. I'm quite confident that this will improve, further, but I rate what's present, now.
Therefore I downright recommend to play this game in multiplayer. The simultaneous turns allow for fast games, compared to other titles. You can set turn timers and therefore force people to be fast, or give each and everyone as much time as they want, but a long game would last 4 hours, at most, on fast speed settings.
Even there, though, the asymmetry of the game design has its dangers. You can equip your units with better and better equipment through the ages, having to use strategic resources on the map to get the very best, but there's a clear preference for some attributes being far better than others. Some units you gain by assimilating minor factions (you can then build their units and get some bonus per controlled village of that faction) are better than standard units and certainly better than most other units on the planet. I'm thinking of e.g. Kazanjii demons or Haunts of the Ended here, both having a chain hit special ability.
One thing I have to add about the techtree: It is not linear, there's no clear progression. In each 'era', you have to choose at least x technologies, then you progress to the next era. Each time you research something, the cost for the next research increases, no matter the era its out of.
Overall, the game has a lot of depth for someone who favours empire management over combat. There's still lots of balancing and AI-tuning to do, but the game is fun and I recommend it.…Full Review »
Now, you take control of one out of 8 standard factions or any custom faction you create in an editor, using the basic gameplay of one of the 8 with some modifiers. Your goal is to survive as Auriga is slowly drifting towards an everlasting winter that will snuff out all life left on its surface. There are several victory conditions you can fulfill, ranging from 'bucket'-type conditions like gathering enough currency or being the highest in score at a configurable turn limit to fulfilling a quest and building an expensive wonder, exterminating all concurrents or researching yourself to victory. Not all of these victory conditions are equally fun to reach as 'filling a bucket' can be quite tedious, but the different factions are also specialised at reaching different victory conditions.
And this is where EL is ambitious in the sense that its 8 factions are very asymmetrically designed:
- The Wild Walkers are the not so usual Elves of the game, using woods to boost their industrial proficiency. They get to be the production powerhouse of the game.
- The Vaulters are the survivors of the Dungeon of the Endless game, stranded on the planet. Hightech-dwarfs of a sort with heavy armor and the best science output.
- The Rowing Clans are supposed to be the traders of the planet. They cannot declare war, are better than the NSA at finding out who's selling or buying what to a common marketplace you can get access to by research, and can actually even trade-ban people, bleeding them dry, economically.
- The Drakken are the peacekeepers, a draconid race interested in achieving diplomatic victory by using their influence to force whole empires into peace or alliance with them.
- The Ardent Mages can use spells on the map and in combat. Given enough currency, a weak army of them can still beat a superior foe with enough magic support fire.
- The Necrophage do not do anything but feed, war and reproduce. Peace is not an option, as is not conquering. The Zergs of the planet, indeed.
- The Broken Lords are living armors thinking of themselves as paladins and leeching life like vampires. Lorewise, one of my favourites, their gameplay is centered on currency to buy population with.
- The Cultists of the Eternal End have only one city and expand by converting minor faction villages across the planet to generate troops for them and to harvest resources for them.
In general, this asymmetry is what makes the game nice, but it is also its vulnerability. As each faction plays differently, the AI also has to account for that. During the Early Access phase, the AI made huge jumps and has become a threat to the unwary at higher difficulty levels, now, but still fails in the endgame. It doesn't recognize that, given it is close to winning, the human player in the game will go to lengths to eradicate them. On the other hand, in the beginning, different AI personalities shine through. Around the Ardent Mages, there's always a lot of scorched earth destroyed minor faction villages, while Wild Walkers spread and pacify, instead. I'm quite confident that this will improve, further, but I rate what's present, now.
Therefore I downright recommend to play this game in multiplayer. The simultaneous turns allow for fast games, compared to other titles. You can set turn timers and therefore force people to be fast, or give each and everyone as much time as they want, but a long game would last 4 hours, at most, on fast speed settings.
Even there, though, the asymmetry of the game design has its dangers. You can equip your units with better and better equipment through the ages, having to use strategic resources on the map to get the very best, but there's a clear preference for some attributes being far better than others. Some units you gain by assimilating minor factions (you can then build their units and get some bonus per controlled village of that faction) are better than standard units and certainly better than most other units on the planet. I'm thinking of e.g. Kazanjii demons or Haunts of the Ended here, both having a chain hit special ability.
One thing I have to add about the techtree: It is not linear, there's no clear progression. In each 'era', you have to choose at least x technologies, then you progress to the next era. Each time you research something, the cost for the next research increases, no matter the era its out of.
Overall, the game has a lot of depth for someone who favours empire management over combat. There's still lots of balancing and AI-tuning to do, but the game is fun and I recommend it.…Full Review »
Almost legendary.
By Brandin Tyrrel on
Free silent hunter 3 download for windows 10. It's difficult to know the breadth of the Endless universe through one game alone. The mythology tells of a galaxy conquered by the eponymous space-faring civilization, The Endless, and torn asunder by their subsequent civil war. Endless Legend picks up a small speck of that saga on the planet Auriga centuries after conflict sterilized the world.
That narrative is a fitting analog for Endless Legend: as life returns and new civilizations emerge to strike out on this familiar world, so too does developer Amplitude, returning to its roots in the realm of 4X tactical strategy. And those efforts are beautifully and familiarly realized. Legend toes the edge of unique and alien, and twists small flourishes into hallmark mechanics that set it apart. Yet in that same motion, the thoughtful focused attention elevating it also rends flesh from the bones of the structural skeleton, embedding small nicks that hamper the finished product.
First steps on Auriga are a delight of sights and sounds. The landscape is lusciously vivid, exploding with color and texture from the cold hues of arctic tundra through the flushed accents in arid deserts. Peeling back the numeric veil that overlays the topography reveals a place that uniformly impresses; such detail is paid to the wild landmarks, strange resource nodes, and mysterious ruins that it's easy to forget the statistic-crunching nature of civilization management and just get lost in the potential for adventure. Each lingering note from the wholly appropriate soundtrack fosters this façade: soothing with soulful strings and haunting chants that both sadden and inspire while foreign tones solidify the science-fantasy motif Legend so aptly delivers.
Navigating that experience is done through Endless Legend's powerful and friendly interface. Here, Legend's camerawork is stellar. Pulling in tight highlights the smallest details in the foreground while simultaneously rendering the distance just out of focus, instilling a pervading and artistic sense of vastness to the world. Retracting your gaze to a wide-angled view slowly reveals more and more until the detail falls away completely, replaced by an interactive parchment map of your known world that captures the essence of distant macromanagement defining so much of the genre.
Legend toes the edge of unique and alien, and twists small flourishes into hallmark mechanics that set it apart.
And to that degree, empire planning is as on-point in Endless Legend as we've come to expect from the tactical strategy space. Most key elements now associated with large-scale interaction between empires are all adequately represented and fleshed out to an effective degree: there is an era-based tech tree for research gains, a healthy city-building structure that draws from each tile's natural resources, and a diplomacy path that has provides substance while eschewing needless heft.
But the initial step toward conquest is the choice of faction to best represent your interests on Auriga, and here too, Amplitude has deftly worked style-centric decision-making into the recipe. The eight empires on tap run the spectrum of archetypes--the forest-folk Wild Walkers, the zerg-like Necrophages, and the nomadic, commerce-driven Roving Clans--and each carries its aesthetic and functional theme into the fray. Yet it's the special circumstances surrounding faction victory conditions that truly reinforce each culture as a unique play style.
Endless Legend Economic Victory Strategies Review
Those Wild Walkers are expert builders whose natural proclivities tend toward a victory through construction of a wonder; Necrophages' endless hunger drives them to constant conflict to supplement their hindered food supplies with the corpses of the fallen, spurring them toward endless war and victory by elimination; and the Roving Clans, they can't go to war. Instead, they take a cut of marketplace dealings from every faction in a bid for the suggested economic victory. Still stranger is the Cult of the Eternal End, which can't build settlers and thus cannot expand through new cities, choosing instead to architect one great seat of religious power and gain the much-needed FISDI resources--Food, Industry, Science, Dust, and Influence--by enslaving the dozen-plus native factions into an army of converts.
In fact these neutral minor factions are the most serious threat to a budding empire, as their random node placement and penchant for fostering early-game armies of roaming monsters could cripple your efforts before they've begun--especially if you happen to start near one of the more difficult races, like the ghostlike Haunts. But by pacifying the node through fire, bribery, or favor, you're able to assimilate the race into your empire and generate its units as your own. And it's with the artificial intelligence that I take the biggest issue with Endless Legend. Once you've subjugated the immediate neutral factions, and that initial blow of uncertainty in the first two-to-three dozen turns has been weathered, the danger and drama of survival quickly begins to fade. Enemy empires rarely stake claim to your territory and only put up mild resistance when circumstances are reversed.
As I led the Vaulter faction--a science-minded, space-faring people that crashed on the planet long ago--across the many continents of Auriga, I occasionally expanded too fast and spread myself too thin, capturing enemy cities I wasn't yet prepared to defend. But even when I could see a massive neighboring army poised to retake this settlement, the counter-offensive was never mounted, leaving me to wonder what, if any, the point of this conflict is, given how these cultures don't care enough to participate. Endless Legends just isn't that difficult against AI opponents, and victory or quick elimination is more often than not determined in the first phase of a campaign.
But clashes with enemy units are a natural and regular part of Endless Legend, taking place directly on the campaign map rather than whisking both forces away to settle differences on a secondary battlefield. The boundaries of the engagement zone are overlaid and units disperse across the immediate hexagonal map tiles. While tactical considerations can be made with regard to tile terrain--forests provide certain defensive boosts, for example, and enemies on the high ground receive statistical advantages--overall combat in Legend is simplistic.
Skirmishes are capped at six turns before ending in a draw, understandably so, in an effort to prevent battle fatigue. Yet those titanic meetings between unstoppable forces and immovable objects, the kind that can live on in your memory well after the campaign ends, never get a chance to coalesce. Instead, battles are fairly small and straightforward affairs. All unit actions must be decided before each turn, and they require a degree of foresight, but statistical power and numbers almost always land you a victory. Those potential tactical nuances that allow for a victory in the face of utter annihilation have taken a back seat to simple arithmetic.
![Endless legend victory conditions Endless legend victory conditions](/uploads/1/2/3/7/123778254/400727755.jpg)
The most important aspect of conflict then becomes preparation, which Endless Legend does arguably better than any similar game. The addition of hero units add a spear tip to any army when upgraded through a dense skill tree, and outfitted with progressively more effective weapons and armor. Hero units are a vital part of any empire, and honing them into army-crushing killers or economy-focused city governors is as simple as obtaining the right skills and equipment.
Endless Legends just isn't that difficult against AI opponents, and victory or quick elimination is more often than not determined in the first phase of a campaign.
This customization also carries over to units themselves. It's possible to create fully outfitted units from their base models provided you have the resources to reliably recruit them, as equipment quickly bloats unit cost. In this way, rather than simply mass-producing expendable default soldiers, a much closer bond can be forged between you and your faction. When effort and resources are amply invested in heroes and units--and even customizable factions--their fates and wellbeings are more than just a means to an end.
And the end is nigh. The opening arc of nearly every faction references the relapse of a great cataclysm, imparting a feeling of timeliness to expand your empire before the clock winds out. The overall strategy of gameplay reinforces this feeling by incorporating a two-season structure: summers are fertile and bountiful times when life and expansion bloom, while resources, troop movement and empire happiness are significantly gashed during the harsh winters. As the game progresses, the summers become shorter and winters longer; as I neared the 300th turn, the warm unbinding climates were brief respites from the cold truth that winter was coming. It's a feature that can be mitigated by savvy technology spending, but the flow of seasons still provides a fantastic feeling of impending dread.
So, too, do Legend's narrative arcs, which take the form of in-game faction-specific quest chains that escalate toward each empire's unique victory condition. Sadly, these quests are the closest this strategy game comes to a guided campaign or story mode; the incorporated lore and writing are an absolute high point, and tapping that creative vein could have made for an amazing, driven experience. Completing each step of the many available quests nearly always bestows items of value, such as resources, new technologies, and legendary artifacts, but quests are more than just a means to an end: they are an integral part of Legend's high-fantasy character .
What I admire about Endless Legend the most is its constant ability to define itself, serving as its own analog: a storied backdrop, an endless well of hope for each comparatively youthful faction as they strike out, the growing pains and oversights that could cripple a nation, and the inevitable scramble to reach full potential before the coming storm and doom. So too did I bristle at the possibilities of each new game, maintaining that excitement well into an established empire, and scrambling to find new challenges when faced with the inevitability of the end.
Each new game in Endless Legend feels different and exciting thanks to its well-crafted factions and earliest uncertain moments, but those initial distinctive stories begin to meld at some point therein, becoming the same experience. Yet it's hard not to look at the experience as something very special, and that 'just one more turn' hook that's essential for games of this ilk to survive is certainly alive and well. Endless Legend's driving forces are so thoroughly executed that it serves as an imperfect, but well worthwhile step in the series, and hopefully a sign of things to come.