Trying to find the end of Endless Space...

Endless Space

The Basics: Turn Based 4x Space Strategy Game

Previous Time Spent: 15 minutes

Expectation of learning Curve: medium

Why I bought this: Super-cheap steam sale, reviews, art style

First Impressions: Endless Space has lovely art and interestingly thought out factions full of intelligent beings of different mindsets and abilities. I found myself lingering over the various sliders that come with starting a game, including galaxy size, relative connectivity of star-systems, and the age of the galaxy. I was also taken aback by the differences in the groups, and found myself settling on "The Cravers," a group of cyborg-insects, which bore a strong similarity to the Borg, and seemed like an interesting start. Everything looked cool, and the first few turns seemed to provide interesting choices and goals.  

My 3 hours: I spent my first hour with Endless Space trying to learn, following through in-game tutorials to make sure that I understood the systems involved in the game. I played as the Cravers for my first hour, and spent some time tooling about the galaxy and focusing on trying to colonize other worlds. I had set up the galaxy so that spreading out was fairly challenging, and my ambitions of spreading like cyber-locusts and darkening the skies of the entire Galaxy were ended when a heroic space pirate set up a blockade around my home system, effectively preventing construction and further growth. With that, I scrapped my first game, and first hour within the game. Overall, I found myself liking the feel of the game, and finding the basic systems well-described, but frustrated by a lack of external benchmarks for my performance. 

In hour 2, I excitedly restarted the game, this time taking on the role of some kind of birdlike warrior race (think Goose-Klingons or something), and I ended up in a less doomed starting position, but ultimately not getting very far. This came down to the barren galaxy I had chosen  to set up, and what seemed to be a relatively non-transparent system for colonizing. There are a variety of technologies needed for colonizing non-earthlike planets, and I focused too much energy on learning how to colonize fairly exotic planets, instead of covering the basics. This led to the area around me getting taken over by more pragmatic aliens, and a lot of lessons learned.

In hour 3, I restarted once again, this time as a species of friendly space Amoebas. My goal here was a focus on mostly peaceful expansion throughout the cosmos. I knew the systems far better, and was this time able to concentrate on gaining the ability to colonize actually useful nearby worlds, creating a small foothold in my galactic neighborhood. I also experienced some mild conflict with my neighbors here, without ever escalating into a declared war. 

This allowed me to see the way the game handled combat, which I quite liked. When a battle is about to commence, you as the player don't get to control your fleets directly. Instead, you have something like a deck of tactical cards, built up by your technology and other special abilities, and play one card per combat phase, which generally dictates what your assembled fleet will do. There's a bit of a rock paper scissors match to this, with some cards effectively countering eachother at various phases. I'd like to see this in more detail in the later stages of this game, with higher technology and fleet sizes, but for the scale I saw it in, it was great fun.

My Highlight:  Testing out if an opponent would be willing to declare war after I chose to destroy one of their scout vessels that had been trespassing far into my territory and threatening an area I was eyeing for colonization. I got to feel some legitimate fear as I entered combat, crushing their ships, and waiting for a diplomatic response. Realizing that my foes were too smart to be baited into war by one hostile act was exciting to see. 

My Verdict:  Endless Space is a game with a lot of character, and some great writing. But, ultimately, I don't see myself returning to it in the near future, as once I had the basic systems down, I more or less felt like I was clicking through turns, waiting for things to happen. I think if I had more time on my hands, my verdict might be very different, but for now, it's not for me. 

Next post will be on October 23rd, where I'll be reviewing Evochron Mercenary