New 4x game on the horizon - Endless Space - not an advertisment thread :)

[Kozmos]

Seems very nice actually. Any release dates?

 

[Son of Erdrick]

Sometime July, I think. It's in Beta right now, but it's the most stable beta I have ever seen ever (it was actually released as an alpha; I like to believe they did this to poke fun at SOTSII). If you buy it now you do can get it at a reduced price!

 

[GrayingGamer]

July 4th according to steam.

 

[Kozmos]

Well that's pretty soon. And around my finals. Oh joy.

 

[GrayingGamer]

So any first impressions?

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Played it for a few hours - it's awsome for now. Addictive and definitely getting the MoO2 feel. Combat seems intresting but i haven't researched much in that direction yet. I really like the planetary exploitation and system improvement thing. (as opposed to the more common type)

What i don't like is the tech tree. Sure it seems nice but the design is very impractical. (or maybe i just have a chaotic way of doing research) This type of design is made so that you ignore at least half of your tech tree. (not sure if this was intended)

Will play again in a few days.

 

[Rub'Rum]

Have been quite interested. Will most likely get it during a sale.

 

[GoodGame]

Funny that there is yet another space opera 4x game just released the last day on Steam.

 

[SouthernKing]

This looks cool, especially how it manages to look nice and still have good gameplay (at least from my perspective from previews etc.) and the reviews seem positive, so I might try this out some time from now.

 

[blasto]

Yeah, buying this tonight. I read 5 reviews and it seems to be consistently rated higher than CiV.

 

[Dell19]

I'm half considering getting this so I'm curious if people kept on playing it after they brought it or not? Also how steep is the learning curve and is it worth it? Sometimes I find that once I've spent the time to get good at a game it turns out that there is basically just one tactic to win.

 

[GoodGame]

Some of the Metacritic user reviews are pretty unfavorable about this one.

 

[Sonereal]

Some of the Metacritic user reviews are pretty unfavorable about this one.

The Metascore (from 16 professional critics) is 77. The user score (from 123) is 7.6. "Generally favorable reviews".

Looks like both are in agreement about this game. Though, this user review stood out.

I got this game because it was rated so highly and everyone seemed to have great things to say about it. This game is really not that great. It is at best a mediocre 4X Turn-Based game and at worst terribly boring and frustrating. It seems to be trying to combine Civilization with Sins of a Solar Empire but it really never seems to come close to either game.

My first complaint is the combat system. It seems like it was originally intended to be somewhat like either Sins or Total War but they scrapped that and just decided some cheap Rock, Paper, Scissors card game, where you have next to no control over your fleet, was better. It really isn't and you are better off just hitting auto resolve, the result is pretty much the same anyway. If they were just going to make something that is essentially random then they should have just stuck with what Civ does and have them duke it out on the galaxy map instead of wasting the player's time loading up a separate screen.

My second complaint is that the game seems to be a mess of poor and annoying design choices. For instance you will be penalized for over-expanding early on in the game which is fine, it happens in Civ too. The problem comes when the only way to offset these penalties is to go deep into the tech tree, pray you find a hero that has some approval bonuses available on level up, or just not expand at all because if you keep going you'll pretty quickly find yourself with a revolt on your hands.

If you stop expanding, you better hope you have some defensive fleets keeping the AI at bay because anything that you leave unguarded they'll colonize because they seem to suffer no penalties from over-expansion, they just keep going until there is nothing left to take. You'd also think that the race that is supposed to expand quickly, because they are essentially locusts, would not suffer this over-expansion penalty but you'd be wrong.

If anything the game I played as them the penalty actually seemed worse than in any I'd previously played. Another annoying design choice seems to be the AI's lack of ability to do anything but expand. Diplomacy is basically finding them, waiting a bit for them to warm up to you a little, and then asking for a peace treaty which won't ever be refused. Declare war on them and they do nothing about it except occasionally harass your fleets as you try to take their systems, never once did they send fleets to attack any of my systems.

In fact the only thing that ever actually attacked me were some pirate fleets that were completely unkillable at my tech level. The fleet attacking my system had an attack score of over 4000 when the best the AI or I could seem to field at the time was just over 1000. Went in and tried to win manually, which like I said is a waste of time, and their first barrage wiped my entire fleet out and I barely even dented them. Didn't even bother attacking with my second or third fleets that had arrived because it wasn't even worth the effort of hitting auto resolve.

The concept of the game seems to be interesting and it could have been good but there is just so much wrong with the way this game works that it really isn't worth playing. I guess for a first game in the genre it isn't awful for the company and hopefully their future games will have a little more playability. As it stands you are better off playing Civilization or Sins instead since they are a lot more enjoyable and better designed.

 

[Maniacal]

professional critics

Good one. Metacritic accepts reviews from some extremely unprofessional reviewers quite often. (Machinima.com, seriously?).

 

[spider1]

This is a great game, and it's very addicting. Yeah, the combat isn't so great. Big deal. It's a turn based strategy game, what do you expect? This game is addicting as hell and is fun to play, which is all I care about. It was completely and totally worth the full price I paid for it. Out of the box, it's a hell of a great game.

The aspect of running through the tech tree to get some of the more crappy planet to be worth while is fun. Also, designing your own player with the strenght and weaknesses you like to play with is great. For myself, this game is just flat out enjoyable in a way a game hasn't been in a long time.

 

[Sonereal]

Good one. Metacritic accepts reviews from some extremely unprofessional reviewers quite often. (Machinima.com, seriously?).

To be fair, I didn't go through and actually looked at who was reviewing the game. I couldn't think of what else to call it. Site reviews?

This is a great game, and it's very addicting. Yeah, the combat isn't so great. Big deal. It's a turn based strategy game, what do you expect? This game is addicting as hell and is fun to play, which is all I care about. It was completely and totally worth the full price I paid for it. Out of the box, it's a hell of a great game.

The aspect of running through the tech tree to get some of the more crappy planet to be worth while is fun. Also, designing your own player with the strenght and weaknesses you like to play with is great. For myself, this game is just flat out enjoyable in a way a game hasn't been in a long time.

The most common complaint about the game, even from good reviews, is that the game lacks depth.

I think I'll wait until it runs into the $5-$10 range.

 

[Rub'Rum]

Which shouldn't take that long since it's indie and all. I'd probably pay 15$ for it.

 

[Dell19]

Thanks I think I'll probably wait for the price to fall as well then.

 

[Synobun]

The game is incredible. Combat is awesome. I love the tactic card system. They're adding a new faction and carriers soon, so that's nice.

Remember, this is an Indie game. It will be added to as more and more time goes by, just like Minecraft. I've already put in 28 hours. Still fun as hell to play.

 

[Kozmos]

It is an okay game. The AI is a terrible cheat however, able to pull out 143 fleets from one system. Anything above the lowest difficulty and it cheats. I'm hoping they will resolve all that with updates eventually.