Amplitude Studio’s space TBS 4X game Endless Space is now officially available for digital download on Steam.
After being released in Alpha state back in the 2nd of May of 2012, and after having received high praise from the generalised gaming press, Endless Space has now finally released officially, currently only available in digital form. A retail box product is expected to come a bit later. The last word was that Iceberg Interactive, Endless Space’s publisher, is targeting a retail release of Endless Space for August 24th, 2012. They expect to ship also French and German game versions.
Iceberg operates in Europe, and to my knowledge (from other publishing deals they made) I think they will probably supply stores in the UK, Germany and the Benelux (Belgium, The Netherlands and Luxemburg). I don’t know what other countries may be selling Endless Space box, but I know that Iceberg usually ships worldwide.
Endless Space is also selling on GamersGate, GreenManGaming and Gamestop/Impulse in digital form. The boxed version can be bought on Iceberg’s shop and Amazon.co.uk.
We will publish a review as soon as humanly possible :) In the meantime you can get a taste on what to expect by reading our alpha first look preview. And by checking out our AAR (after action report).
By the way, if you haven’t noticed yet we have an Endless Space giveaway contest running. We have 10 (now only 9) Emperor Edition steam keys to offer on the 17th of July 2012. If you can’t wait and need to buy now that’s perfectly understandable :) But, you can always get into the contest anyway and offer the game code to a friend as a present, in case you win.
One more space 4X game sees the daylight. Happy day!
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I signed up for my free chance at the game, but realized this game looked too good to wait another 2 weeks to see if I won, so I purchased it.
I must say, this game looks beautiful and has an amazing soundtrack for starters. The tutorial did well explaining the ins and outs of the game as well. The UI is fantastic, very orginized and easy to track what is going on. I also love the tooltips, almost everything has a tooltip which is a huge plus in my book. I can easily get info on certain things by just scrolling over them to see what the problem is, or any useful detailed info.
My first thought when going through the tutorial was, this game is almost identical to MOO2. This really made it exciting for me. I love the fact that you can move population from one planet to another and the ability to have hero’s on a star system or a fleet is a huge plus. Those were just a few key things that got me, but they have added so much more than MOO2. The addition of anomalys, moons, strategic and luxury resources are just a few things that make this a game of depth.
One other thing about this game that I love, is that it’s turn based. I haven’t played any, recent, turn based space stratagy games in a long time. MOO2, and GalCiv2 are my top favorite space turn based games and I haven’t seen anything worthwhile come out since. Distant Worlds and Sins of a Solar Empire are great games, but are Real Time and it’s nice to get back to a turned based game that isn’t so outdated. I know it might be early to give this game such high praise but so far it hasn’t dissapointed me.
You sound just like me when I first played and wrote the first look preview. The game does look amazing. Superb UI, good soundtrack, lots of tooltips (also a big plus for me). Good menus, functionality, turn-based mechanics, the all package.
Then I experienced combat and got a bit disappointed. I don’t know if the combat experience has been improved or not, with the introduction of the free camera feature and all, but I plan to find out pretty soon.
I also agree that Endless Space shows the potential to be running for the best turn-based space 4X game after MoO2 and GalCiv2. Time will tell. And, the dev’s willingness to keep on improving the game will also be key for that.
Going into it I saw what the battles looked like and I too was a little disappointed, but not totally turned off by it. If you think about it the battles in MOO2 were nothing special either and I mostly just put it on auto and watched the action. MOO2 did, however, offer the player to manually control the battle and decide where to move and who to fire on. During late games in MOO2 it was too time consuming so I would auto battle and actually preferred that method instead.
I do think the battle cards are kinda neat, but it doesn’t really offer too much to the battles, but maybe more toward the multiplayer battles. Actual battles, in space turn based strategy games, have never been a high point in my opinion. MOO2, Galciv2, and this game offer nothing exciting as far as battles, but its everything else that makes the game. I guess space battles is that one thing that never seems to be perfect in turn based games like these, but I can do without.
I do love how you can customize your hero’s to you’re liking, something that I haven’t seen done before.
So far my one gripe is not being able to see how many turns it will take a ship to reach it’s destination. I realize you can count the big blue dots and see that way, but it’s really unnecessary, especially if moving long distances.
You still can’t see how many turns it will take a ship to reach its destination?! I’m disappointed. I thought that was one of those obvious things that needed polishing at beta. I remember seeing people complaining about that in the ES forums. What a heck?
About the battles I confess that they aren’t the crucial aspect in a 4X game for me. I tend to like to control what happens in the battles, tactically I mean, but I also enjoy games that don’t have tactical combat at all (Civ up to 4 or GalCiv2 for example).
My problem with Endless Space’s battles (at alpha) was that they felt a bit too repetitive for my taste, and they failed to offer (or at least give the illusion of) being in control of things, at the very least to control what you see. It was very distracting to watch scripted scenes where you’re watching something and then another just immediately after without having a word to tell. Something had to be done to fix this.
That’s why I’m hoping that this new free-camera feature helps mitigate this to some extent. I want to experience our ships in action, our creations, from which angle we like. That’s why I love MoO2, and that’s why GalCiv2’s combat was also ok. Because you could actually see what was going on, see the damage and not get distracted with some scripted movie.
About MoO2’s combat, there are certainly good and bad aspects to account. The best in MoO2 is that you can experience your ships in action. You can almost feel them. You can choose your targets, choose weapons. There’s a lot of choice, and lots of reward. There’s also very bad stuff. Late game battles were just impracticable, you couldn’t stand those end games with dozens and dozens of ships. Of course, you always choose auto-resolve by then.
I also like ES’s hero system. Seems clean and deep enough. But, I need to play more to have a good grasp about it.
I wrote to them in the forums about the movement turns and they said it was something that was brought up and a number tooltip was suggested but that was it.
As far as the Free Camera option, it is a little disappointing in my opinion. It gives you the option to move the camera around, but you are very limited to where the camera can go. You can zoom in but only so much and you can’t move the camera all the way around your ships like Sins. Picture if you were standing at one spot in space and you had binoculars, that’s pretty much how it is. It’s only from one point of view and sometimes you can’t get close enough to see detailed action. The camera rotates 360, but only from your point of view, so its pointless really. I guess it’s better than nothing, but something that can be improved on.
I see. No, that doesn’t help much. If we can’t see detailed action and can’t relocate the point of view I also see little value on that “free”-camera option. Well, I’ll try it for myself and let you know my thoughts.
I played around 100 turns so of the official release tonight. I expect to wrap my current game up within the next few days. I haven’t decided which victory method I am going to try to go for just yet.
My opinion hasn’t changed on the battles. I just don’t care for them at all. I would have been okay with cinematic battles if they involved more than just broadside line battles, but as in the alpha and beta, this is still the extent of the combat. I was hoping for something more dynamic when they first announced it, ships swooping around and such. Instead, it is line up and shoot until one side dies. It is the weakest aspect of this game for me personally.
The free camera is a disappointment, I agree. However, and I understand why you didn’t notice as it is not explained or intuitive really, but you can move your point of view around using the arrow keys on your keyboard. So basically, the mouse controls the camera angle and zoom, and the arrow keys move your virtual camera around. All in all, it doesn’t make a drab battle look any less drab.
Thanks for letting me know about the camera options. I guess i tried everything but the arrow keys to move around. That makes things a little better.
Hmmm…finaly. I got OFFICIAL VERSION!!! :)
All species…everywhere rejoice!
So…
After played beta like a hell, i have some realy nice suprise in end(less) release. LOL
First and top of all, YOU CAN DESIGN YOUR RACE! Like in Moo2. Goood.
Next, combat and ship balance realy better then was in beta. The combat system is not so big fun, but fair for this game, bc i think about this game like a pure strategy (with minimal tactical aspect). I agree some ppl, who want better controllable combat with more tatctical elements, but i think this combat system have so many possible way where can developing more in future. Will see.
Other good point for me, game running smooth and perform better than beta. I dont tested it to much at this moment, but this is my first impression after 3-4 hour gaming.
How would you guys compare this to Distant Worlds: Legends? The complexity and level of control in that game was awesome, and I know that it was one of Adam’s favorites :)
I would say it’s up there with Distant Worlds, but one is Real Time strategy and the other is turn based.
There are a lot of similarities that both games share such as: heros, (although DW you can’t customize their abilities), Influence or Territory areas, ability to customize your ships (DW is far more detailed), and strategic and luxury resources (although DW has far more than ES). Those are a few things that came to the top of my head as far as similarities.
In DW there are a lot of things going on at once, and it can be hard to micro manage them all, but they did an good job of giving you a lot of ‘Auto AI’ options, so the AI can do the work for you in whatever fields you desire. In ES it’s turned based so you play at your own speed and take as long as you want to manage your empire and strategize your next move. DW does, however, have a pause option.
Diplomacy and Research do just in both games as they are both detailed and have good depth in my opinion. DW you had 3 trees of research in which you can research one per tree at a time. ES has 4 trees but you can only research 1 at a time. I do like that option better as it really makes you think what road you want your empire to follow.
The biggest difference in my opinion, besides being RT and a TB game, is planetary management. This is one field that ES does better than Distant Worlds in my opinion. This was always my favorite part in a 4x game, the planetary management. ES did a good thing by following what MOO2 did. You have food, industry, science, and dust (money), to manage and can move population around to help out new colonies.
One thing that I love, that I didn’t know if I would like, is the fact that you share buildings, construction, and resources with all planets in your system, meaning less micro managing. In MOO2 and GalCiv2, for example, each new colony in your system had to build its own buildings and that took forever to get up and going. With FS, if you have 4 planets in one system, they all share the buildings, and their resources are pooled together to grow all the planets in the system, not just one. Some might be turned off by only 1 construction que in a system, but there are plenty of systems for the taking and having a construction que on every planet could be very hard to track.
Overall It’s probably one of the best 4x TBS games since MOO2. The only downfall of this game is it’s combat. You get to pick strategic cards that can help you win the battles, but its just a cinematic where you sit back and watch things go pew pew…or you can just skip it all and auto resolve.
One other thing I would like to note. Distant Worlds is a very complex, detailed game, especially when making ships. They have so many components you can put on a ship, and it takes a long time to get used to. If you played MOO2 and have customized ships, then you will like this. It’s not complex like DW, but its not dull either. You have plenty of choices but not all the little components DW had. I prefer this customization over DW.
Great summary, thank you very much. Time to purchase :)
I’m sure Adam Solo will give you a well detailed review in the next few days or weeks in case you weren’t sure. The review I have seen out there are all at least 9/10 and a lot of them call it the closest thing to MOO2
Can anyone give me a fair assessment of the AI? This is for me the most important aspect, and is not really mentioned yet. Is the AI actually intelligent, or is just swarms of units being thrown randomly at you?
I couldn’t really tell you quite yet, since I’m still playing my first game still. I’m playing normal for now and have 5 AI’s and each one started off with peace treaties with me. It reminds me a lot of Civilization 5 AI, if you ever played that.
The diplomacy AI so far is good. They offer open boarder trades and fair resource trades. I noticed in my game when you are with peace with a faction they slowly become to like you then they offer open boarder, then grow to be friends with you and so on.
As far as strategic gameplay it wouldn’t be fair to comment unless I tried harder difficulty. So far my current game is very diplomatic.
Reading the forums i have seen a post or two about the AI needing improvement, but again it’s too early to tell. Next game I will try on hard mode.
I completed a game tonight on the Serious difficulty, which I believe is one notch above hard. I had victory had hand, but I advanced just a tiny bit too slowly and one of the enemy AI was able to achieve an economic victory. My goal was not to get a supremacy (capture all capitals) or expansion (basically, a military victory) victory, so I spent a lot of time fostering diplomatic relations and researching. The reason I launched an attack was because they were ahead of me in consideration of a diplomatic win (89% is when I decided I had to break off my alliance with them. I had 76%). They also had already researched the first tier of Endless Space (tech victory condition).
At the time the AI won, I was taking multiple systems from him every single turn. I had collapsed his empire in half within about 20 turns. All told, I went from dead last with no military ships to having the strongest army within approximately 30 turns or so.
From an infrastructure building perspective, the AI was quite good at keeping up with me. However, they had quite a few more systems than I did. Given a system advantage, and whatever advantages the Serious difficulty gives them, I had to optimize everything I had to try and compete in research and economics.
From a ship design perspective, the AI did poorly. I routinely routed entire armies of 13000+ military strength with 7000+ strength ships and took little to no damage in the process. Even with level 20 generals on their side, they weren’t able to dent me. The AI invested very heavily in weaponry, but lacked defense, and didn’t adjust their designs when I changed my rock, paper, scissor strategy to defeat them.
All in all, I enjoyed the game, but the races are quite similar. I don’t think they play all that differently given the multiple times I’ve played through the game now.
Great game summary Keith. Taking systems in a single turn hem? I’m still figuring out how to invade properly here. Last time I tried to take one system I had 7 ships in the Hissho’s capital and couldn’t take it for like 4 or 5 turns. Is there a way to check on invasion’s progress? Or, is it just a question of waiting and hoping?
About the AIs playing very similar, you mean that you didn’t detect any personality twist on them? Like some being more aggressive while others tending to turtle more?
Well, I was taking systems every turn, but in order to do so I was invading multiple systems at once. Some systems I was able to take in less than 3 turns though. It depends heavily on if system defenses have been built that add to their invasion defense, and it also depends on the military strength (“fists” rating) of your attacking fleet.
I didn’t notice any differences between the AI personalities really. I’ve also played several of them and the differences seem to only be skin deep. The Cravers and perhaps Sowers are likely the only exception. I’ve played as the UE, Amoebas, Horatio, and Hissho each for a full game since the alpha. Their unique technologies and traits didn’t offer any radically different changes to gameplay.