http://www.yourvision-theirfuture.com/amplified-reality
Let’s hope it’s better than the first one.
Obligatory “let’s hope this one adds the fun” comment…
I’m trying to figure out what exactly that “reveal trailer” revealed.
That it exists.
I hope this doesn’t pull too many resources away from Endless Legend. I know they’ve got another DLC coming, but I’d like to see work continue on that title.
I had more fun with Endless Space than many strategy games. I played this for 75-100 hours. Much better than Beyond Earth, Sorcerer King, Disciples 3 - yeah I know some of those are different style games. I’m not sure about Star Ruler 2 though.
I know Endless Space didn’t have good AI, and despite the UI looking like it was good on the surface, it didn’t always present all the information in a clear way. The battle system didn’t work for me, but it was fun to play through with the different races.
All I’m saying is that even with the flaws I enjoyed it.
Endless Legend was my GOTY for 2014, and it’s safe to assume they’ll take some of the things from that game that worked, like unique factions playing differently.
As soon as this becomes available I’m all over it like stink on a baboon.
Endless Legend and Dungeon of the Endless are “design complete” more or less from day one. They’re below market price and well received. It seems like Amplitutde would rather go do something else then keep hammering on finished games, because the one thing they don’t do well is DLC. It’s almost as if they’re wracking their brains to find things to add in, going, “yea, Endless Legend is exactly the way we want it. What else can we add? Uh… um. Maybe? Nah.”
I take it you didn’t like the Endless Legend DLC, Enidigm?
I haven’t tried Endless Legend yet (it’s near the top of my wishlist once I’ve cleared some backlog), but I really liked the factions in Endless Space–at least in theory.
Especially after the DLC added a few extra races (like the environmentalist robots that lived in floating cloud cities), they were pretty diverse and creative. But they didn’t do quite enough to make the races feel distinct, and some of the alternative mechanics were a bit half baked IMO. (E.g., the environmentalist robots could earn ‘interest’ on unused production up to a cap. Thus, you maximized production by not building anything for 4 turns followed by building a bunch of stuff on turn 5. Aside from being a bit nonsensical, the obvious gameplay problem was that I couldn’t use the convenience of build queues for my planets because I had to micromanage each planet on a strict schedule).
I also liked their idea (again–if not the implementation) of the card-based battle system. It could be a great compromise between player control (unlike auto-resolve) and late-game-battle-overload (unlike tactical systems). I’m glad Amplitude has survived long enough to make a 2nd attempt.
I want a beautiful hex map in space for Endless Space 2. Just take the Endless Legend maps and add space and space related awesomeness.
I felt the way they displayed space and trying to get stuff around in space in ES1 was just not fun. Overall the game was not fun. I don’t even think I ever won a single game. :|
The word space was just used a lot in my above sentences.
loved ES, especally with Disharmony, and am really looking forward to ES2
All they really have to do is, well, it’s kind of a lot:
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Code a semblance of AI.
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Change economy and ship balance so that ships take longer to build and so you don’t fight an endless® series of identical battles with maxed-out fleets in opposing an enemy empire. If I beat enemy main fleet X with my fleet Y, don’t make me defeat a hundred more Xs in the next three turns just to take over a single system.
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Add some fun. I’m sure there’s some sitting around in the office someplace.
Disagree, hex isn’t good, solar systems makes the map, it’s a great navigation system, as for ship battles, Bigger fleets, I want 10-20-1000000 ships in a fleet with same combat…
I always did the quick resolve for fleet battles so that aspect never bothered me. However, it was the piss-poor to non-existent AI that turned me off the game.
Me too re quick resolve. But after a 100 or so in a row it’s not that quick. What I wanted at that point was a war-resolve button.
Endless Space was always a divisive title, but I loved it and still have it installed. Its strengths were empire management, a clean UI, an excellent aesthetic, and a lovely sense of minimalism that permeated the whole design. The races/cultures didn’t quite have the strong differentiation that is present in Endless Legend, but you could see the roots there as there were some fun aspects like the Sowers (purely robotic culture) not needing Food/agriculture, but instead have the population growth and other improvements pegged to Industry and factories. A great game and I am really looking forward to the sequel with all the lessons they learned. RPS has called Amplitude Studios one of the most important and interesting PC developers in this era and I agree; they have been moving from strength to strength and learning valuable lessons with each iteration.
-Todd
One of the more important but neglected aspect is how well it lends itself to multiplayer, fast combat resolution, simultaneous turns, this makes it possible to play for normal people, galciv 3 has fast combat, but sequential turns which honestly makes it a beast to play mp wise. You will literally NEVER complete a game
Well, it’s probably very important to a minority of people. I think even Age of Wonders 3, that has a multiplayer system, in their latest survey around 20% of people play multiplayer. That’s not insignificant, but for these types of games it’s got to be difficulty to put a lot of resources into multiplayer features. I’m guessing an even smaller amount of people buy these types of strategy games specifically for multiplayer. It’s tough because it has to make financial sense for them.
I’m guessing this one is Steam only as well? I completely loved the visuals of the first game, i could not imagine a better look for a space 4x (well it was more a 3x iirc - there was no real use for planets as in building on them etc?), and that lack of planet based stuff made it too ‘lite’ for my general tastes (same issue i have with SotS really), but yeah the Steam only thing did stop me buying it (played it a few times on my buddies PC).