Game intel
Endless Legend 2
With a mysterious, ever-changing world, unique factions, and epic storytelling, the much-awaited sequel to the strategy game classic ENDLESS Legend is here, op…
I came to Endless Legend 2 with exactly two things in my head: the itch for a grounded, crunchy 4X with an actual map I could read without a galactic diploma, and a slightly guilty nostalgia for the first Endless Legend’s oddball factions. After a year of bouncing between Civ comfort food and Stellaris’s bigger, wilder ambition, I wanted something new that felt old-in the best way. By the end of my first weekend with Endless Legend 2 (about 20 hours split across three campaigns), I’d met that game. It’s very much a return to Amplitude’s weird, faction-forward worldbuilding, except now the map itself shifts under your feet. Literally. Tidefall is not a gimmick; it’s the spine.
But this is early access, and it shows. The bones are strong-those factions bite, the heroes matter, and the map sings. The flesh is a bit thin. Five factions mean your third or fourth run starts to echo. Some city-management screens fight you. And once in a while the UI tells you a fib. None of this kept me from staying up too late “just to see what the next Tidefall uncovers,” which is the highest compliment I can give a 4X in early access. Still, you should know what you’re walking into.
On a 34-inch ultrawide at 3440×1440 with everything cranked, Endless Legend 2 is lovely without grandstanding. The color palette leans toward watercolor blues and browns, and the ocean’s slow retreat leaves glossy seams on the land that are both beautiful and ominous. It’s not the kind of beauty that begs for screenshots every five minutes; it’s the kind that keeps your eyes relaxed during hour four. The UI goes for bold icons and airy panels, which I mostly liked. “Mostly” because a few info pop-ups didn’t match what was happening under the hood. One early game tooltip told me a building provided a flat bonus when it was clearly percentage-based. Amplitude has admitted some info is inaccurate right now-that lines up with my experience.
By the end of the first session (roughly four hours), two things locked in for me. First, Tidefall fundamentally changes how I plan. It’s not just, “Cool, the water went down, new land!” It’s the way choke points shift, how safe backlines suddenly turn into shared beaches. Second, the heroes aren’t throwaways. They’re not immortal unless you toggle permadeath off (which you can), but even without that risk, they feel like anchors to your empire. More on both in a minute.
Amplitude’s magic has always been factions that make you play differently instead of just reskinning a +10% bonus. Endless Legend 2 arrives with five, and every one made me change my flow. That’s good design—and it’s also the root of the early-access repetition. You’ll want to try all five, and then you’ll wish there were two or three more. They’re coming—Amplitude says a sixth faction and custom creations are planned—but here’s how the current cast treated me.
The Aspects might be my favorite so far. They ooze spores—creeping coral-meets-machine vibes—that spread across the land. The twist is that these spores also help your rivals. Early on, that felt like I’d brought snacks to a neighbor who already hates me. Around turn 60, I had an “aha” moment: fighting on spored tiles keeps my units topped up and mobile, and those same tiles make enemies more vulnerable to my Chorus’s influence. In my second Aspects run, I intentionally “accidentally” spored the border between me and a rival, then dragged them into a war on my terms. Watching their units benefit from my spores and still crumble to my influence felt deliciously wrong. Chef’s kiss.
The Tahuk are the opposite vibe: steady, inquisitive, almost wholesome in how they bind science and faith. I leaned into research structures early, built a prayer-focused edict midgame, and hit a serene rhythm where breakthroughs felt like a ritual. The payoff sneaks up—by hour six I was chaining discoveries and unlocking synergies that made me reconsider my usual expansion timing. If you like to tinker with “how does this bonus talk to that system?” they’re your playground.
Necrophage are the bullies, and they rewarded my worst impulses. They funnel everything into a single hive city and move through underground tunnels like blood through veins. In my Necrophage campaign, I was losing a coastal skirmish when a Tidefall exposed a cave mouth two regions away. I rerouted a swarm through the tunnels, popped up behind the enemy, and chewed through their backline. It was nasty, messy, and exactly the kind of asymmetric “gotcha” that Endless Legend’s best factions enable.
The Kin of Sheredyn are essentially “starter strong.” They drip-feed tech from spacebound allies as you reestablish comms, which makes the early turns feel guided rather than aimless. I recommended them to my friend who plays one 4X a year, and he actually finished a campaign. That’s not faint praise; introductory factions are hard to make interesting, and Sheredyn’s gradual empowerment curve feels good.
Then there are the Last Lords. They’re patient monsters. Early on, I was broke. Dust (the setting’s currency) fell through my fingers like sand, and my empire felt like a séance where the spirits put me on hold. But as Saiadha’s waters receded, forgotten caches surfaced, ancient troops shook off their sleep, and suddenly I wasn’t scraping—I was hoovering. Around turn 110 the power curve snapped and I went from reactive to unstoppable over a handful of turns. It’s a satisfying payoff if you can stomach a lean opening.
Only having five means your third campaign starts playing against familiar silhouettes. The AI loves its early expansion on normal difficulty, and after you’ve faced Tahuk twice, you can see their cadence coming. That repetition isn’t a deal-breaker—the mechanics are flexible enough to stay interesting—but it does pull a little mystery out of the midgame.
The headliner is Tidefall, the periodic shifts in sea level that literally rewrite your borders. The first time it happened to me, I was mid-scout on a peninsula. The water dropped, a land bridge emerged, and two things clicked at once: my scout wasn’t isolated anymore, and my neighbor now had a highway into my hinterland. The tension it creates isn’t like “random disaster strikes”—it’s closer to a season change you have to account for. I started staging armies not just for immediate threats but for “what happens when that bay becomes a road?”
I had a turn 72 moment I won’t forget. Playing Aspects, I’d painted a coastal ring with spores. Tidefall receded, exposing a derelict ruin right between me and a rival Tahuk city. I rushed a hero-led stack onto it, discovered a unique interaction that boosted my healing on spored tiles, and pushed into their land before they could reconfigure. The point isn’t the loot—it’s that the map’s tempo pulled me into a fight I wouldn’t have chosen on a static board.
Crucially, Tidefall isn’t just about expansion. Sometimes water rises and reminds you that you can’t count on fixed borders. Supply lines you thought were safe become brittle. In one Necrophage run, a retreat route I’d been using vanished under a monsoon, and I had to dive into the tunnel network to avoid losing half my army. The system nudges you into dynamic planning without feeling like a cheap twist of the knife.
Hero units in Endless Legend 2 feel like a midpoint between 4X governors and Total War’s headline lords. They have skill trees, gear loadouts, and tangible impact on both the economy and the battlefield. Because I left permadeath off (it’s a toggle in settings), I treated them like veterans. My first hero for the Tahuk took an “infrastructure-first” route, buffing construction speed and providing healing in friendly territory. By the midgame, that same hero could flip into a frontline anchor with a couple of equipment swaps, letting me pivot from tall to punchy without retooling my whole army.
They also participate in narrative beats. Sometimes that’s exciting—a character chiming in to frame why a faction goal matters—and sometimes I wanted them to take a breath so I could finish micromanaging a border war. It’s not constant, but there were a few turns where I clicked through dialogue faster than I’d like just to get back to the map. The balance is close; I’d love just a bit more pacing control here (a “read later” panel would be perfect).
This is where the early-access sticker shows. City screens are clean at a glance but occasionally unclear in the details. I had to hover and re-hover to parse the true impact of an upgrade, and a couple of times I discovered the description didn’t match reality. That’s frustrating in a genre where clarity is the difference between a crisp plan and wasting six turns.
There’s also the old 4X lull: building queues set, timers ticking, end turn, end turn, end turn while you wait for a milestone to hit. To be fair, almost every 4X stumbles here. Endless Legend 2 mitigates it somewhat with Tidefall and faction objectives that give you little pop-up goals to chase, but there were still stretches—especially in my first Last Lords run—where I felt like a manager overseeing construction rather than a mastermind guiding an empire. Late game automation and better alerts could help.
Readability on ultrawide was mostly fine, but the smallest text on some tooltips felt muddy. I’m not on a Steam Deck, but Steam Deck support is on the roadmap, and I hope the UI work includes scaling options. A 4X only sings when your information diet is clean.
My setup: Ryzen 7 5800X, RTX 3080, 32GB RAM, NVMe SSD, Windows 11. I played the Steam early-access build and also dipped into the PC Game Pass version to confirm parity on my machine. At 3440×1440, I hovered between 80-120 fps on the main map and never felt input lag. Tidefall animations introduced a small stutter twice—noticeable but not deal-breaking. I had one crash to desktop during a long session after alt-tabbing between turns; autosave saved me from losing more than a minute. End-turn times stretched past 20 seconds by the very late game on a large map, which is acceptable for early access but absolutely an area I hope Amplitude keeps tightening.
Audio is tasteful—ambient water, distant wind, and an understated score that never grated, even when I looped the same few tracks. If you’ve played Amplitude’s games before, you know the vibe: calm, slightly melancholic, and easy to live with for hours.
What you get today: five factions that feel meaningfully distinct, hero progression with skill trees and equipment, the Tidefall system that converts the map into a living puzzle, and nine victory routes including conquest, score, and several narrative-led goals. That’s a lot of 4X for a first bite. What’s missing: online multiplayer (planned), more faction variety (a sixth plus custom creation are on the docket), and Steam Deck support (also on the roadmap). The developers have been frank about wanting community feedback to shape the build, and based on my time, that openness tracks—the core systems are set, but the sanding and polishing are ongoing.
I didn’t bump into any progress walls or “come back in six months” quests. Everything I wanted to pursue I could pursue, but the edges are fuzzy. The city-management clarity and the occasional misleading UI are the most obvious rough spots. Multiplayer’s absence is the elephant for a lot of people, and if that’s your must-have, you should wait. As a single-player 4X toy box, though, this already has enough juice to fill a few long weekends.
Three snapshots define my experience so far:
And the misses:
If you adored Endless Legend and want that feeling with a fresh mechanical hook, this is already worth your time. The factions are not timid, heroes feel meaningful, and Tidefall keeps the map from going stale. If you’re a single-player strategist who enjoys poking at systems and watching your plan bloom across 150 turns, I’d say go for it now and enjoy the evolution with the community.
If you crave polished UI and airtight tooltips, or you live for multiplayer knife fights, you’re better off waiting. The roadmap calls out online multiplayer, the sixth faction, custom creations, and Steam Deck support, and all of those will deepen the game. None of them are trivial. Give it a few updates and circle back if those are deal breakers.
Endless Legend 2 lands in early access with two big wins: factions that force new habits and a Tidefall system that makes the map a living opponent. Heroes give campaigns a spine. The art direction is easy on the eyes. And despite a few stumbles—UI inconsistencies, city-management friction, and a small roster—you can feel the heart of a special 4X beating here. My gut says that if Amplitude spends the next few months tightening the screws and widening the cast, this will comfortably sit beside the original in the genre’s upper bracket.
Today, it’s already good enough that I lost track of time twice in a row. That’s the bar for me: does a 4X make me think about it while I’m making coffee the next morning? Endless Legend 2 does. I’m eager to see it grow, and I’ll gladly keep playing as it does.
Score: 8/10 (as of early access). With its roadmap fulfilled and those rough edges smoothed, I can see this climbing to a 9.
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