Comments on: Thoughts: Endless Space.

By: Tryzon (@Tryzon)

Tryzon (@Tryzon) — Tue, 01 Apr 2014 11:24:01 +0000

Yeah, that’s pretty fair. These days I’m more impressed by the quaint charm of the FMV bits and all the fluff text for the world. I probably wouldn’t be blown away if I found it for the first time today.

By: Hentzau

Hentzau — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 23:19:39 +0000

I played it about ten years ago (RIP Home of the Underdogs), but even then it didn’t seem to have aged all that well. Few things as old as Fragile Allegiance have, to be fair.

By: Tryzon (@Tryzon)

Tryzon (@Tryzon) — Sun, 09 Feb 2014 14:31:21 +0000

Ever play Fragile Allegiance? It’s a 4X thing I invested questionable amounts of my youth into. I tried the GOG version and I still like its personality but I’m not sure it would hold my attention without the nostalgia factor. Might still be worth a look, since 4X appears very much your thing.

By: Max

Max — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 13:46:29 +0000

How did you rate Sins of a Solar Empire?

By: Spacey Snippets – 7/17/12 | Space Game Junkie

Spacey Snippets – 7/17/12 | Space Game Junkie — Tue, 17 Jul 2012 19:37:03 +0000

[...] are more Endless Space reviews over on Space Sector, The Scientific Gamer and Out of Eight PC Game Reviews, who also has a video of his playthrough of the game, which [...]

By: hentzau

hentzau — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 10:44:53 +0000

I’ve been aware of Matrix as a publisher of niche war/strategy games for a while, but every time I see one of their titles that I think will interest me (usually as part of Tim Stone’s Flare Path posts on RPS) I go to their website, see that it costs £30 and think “Ha, no chance.” With Distant Worlds the problem is compounded by the fact that it’s £28 for the game and £18 for the expansion, making it £46 for a game that I’m not even sure I’ll *like*. It’s a shame because it really does look interesting, but I don’t have the money to take that sort of chance right now.

(Not saying that they’re wrong to price it that high, mind, these are boutique products and there must be enough people out there willing to pay that much to make the whole thing viable. I just can’t justify it to myself when the same money will buy anywhere from two to six games on Steam.)

By: Redwuff

Redwuff — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:29:31 +0000

Just as a side note, Matrix Games (publisher of DW) has a pack of screenshots from the Legends expansion available here, if you want to see if it looks interesting:

ftp://ftp.matrixgames.com/pub/DistantWorldsLegends/DWLPreviewPictures.zip

Redwuff

By: Redwuff

Redwuff — Tue, 10 Jul 2012 21:23:26 +0000

It still sounds like it’s going to be interesting, and I will definitely be picking this up eventually… but I’ll probably wait to see if if it goes on sale during one of the big Steam summer or fall sales, first.

Lately, I’ve found myself playing Distant Worlds: Legends again, and I continue to find it the best 4X space game since MoO2, at least in its current form. Hentzau, did you ever get a chance to take a look at this? I admit, the cost of it makes a pretty substantial wall, especially as playing the full, mostly-unbroken version requires buying the original game and both expansions (the original game by itself had a lot of promise but was both somewhat broken, and lacking in certain areas – the first expansion fixed a lot of these, and the most recent expansion, Legends, fixed still more, plus added a number of really nice touches including what is basically a ‘hero’ system, allowing you to recruit and train exceptional governors, generals, admirals, diplomats, and spies… the game is not unflawed, but I like it a lot, and I have to admit I’m curious as to what you’d think of it, since we seem to share a number of tastes and opinions on 4X games.

Thank you for this follow-up review of Endless Space, it was good to hear some of the problem areas remaining post-beta.

Redwuff

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 19:56:51 +0000

That’s a good point, just about everything in that game is presented as a number or color. Also, I forgot about science/spy/conquer tech screens in MOO.

What I don’t understand about ES is they went through a heck of a lot of effort to create a good foundation and then it seems like got lazy about the details. The last 5% is sometimes just as important as the first 95%.

By: hentzau

hentzau — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 18:27:07 +0000

Alpha Centauri is probably the gold standard for personality in a 4X, and while most 4Xes aren’t willing to do what Alpha Centauri did re: the plot they could at least cover things up in game by not referring to everything with a number – AI#5, fleet Interception 4, ship class LargeSophonThingy2. Those little pop-ups where it tells you about an attitude shift — why don’t those have portraits attached instead of “Race name likes you more!”. It gets to the point where the colour of the race in question in their major identifying trait, not who they *are*. I thought most of this stuff was placeholders for alpha and I’m a little disappointed it’s made it into the full game.

Also, you can do personality outside of diplomacy, like MoO did with the science, general and spy dudes for each race.