ENDLESS LEGEND 2

A much-needed flight of fantasy for the 4X genre

- Robert Zak

Coral, coral, coral, as far as my mechanical eyes can see. I didn't know quite what to expect when building camps to claim territories and plonking down coral spreaders in my role as leader of a faction of part-mech, part-tendrilly oddities, but it certainly wasn't anything so drastic as half the world becoming carpeted in purple sprouting flora (or is it fauna?) in a matter of hours. As much as I'm in support of regrowing the reefs and so on, I can't help but feel that here on Endless Legend 2's world of Saiadha I'm propagating some kind of fuchsia-colored ecological disaster.

But from the perspective of the Aspects faction, this is a (ahem) core-al mechanic; it improves tile yields, heals my armies, and acts as a super-highway by letting units move faster across the map. The coral weaves towards water bodies where it spreads faster, and towards villages made up of wonderfully weird minor factions who might be eel-beings, dudes who fly around on giant owls, or vicious dark unicorns blustering for a fight. The coral automatically pacifies these factions, bringing you a step closer towards assimilating them into your empire. It's even a tool in diplomacy, where you can offer the benefits of coral to friendly factions who choose to embrace it.

True to the Endless series' philosophy of asymmetry, the great thing about all the above is that it's unique to that one faction, and that each of the game's six factions will offer different ways to play.

FACTIONAL WARFARE

In the preview build, I also had a run as the Kin of Sheredyn: militaristic zealots who count fervor-fueled iron giants among their ranks and build up 'zeal' when you improve cities' fortifications, which can then be used to issue commandments that range from creating divine populations in your cities to smiting enemy armies on the campaign map. The Kin could well be the most vanilla of