Endless Space

(Metacritic: 79%)

Summary: Nice looking game, but I failed to win on newbie...

Endless Space is one of the latest stream of indie 4x space strategy games building on the gameplay of Master of Orion 2's turn based-slider adjusting gameplay. I'm personally not a fan of such turn based strategy games due the inherent difficulty: the AI seems to know and work along an optimal path whereas you are left with either exploratory play or strategy guides.

The first disappointment was the way the tutorial is presented. No voiceover (as usual) and presented as a screenshot of the selected screen and several text bullet points to its right. Maybe if the bullet points were applied in the actual gameplay window... At first, it was a bit difficult to remember each option, but as I played, almost every screen and function felt well polished.

One thing I missed is the ability to jump to the next and previous star system from within a system view. I had to jump back to the galaxy view or open the systems from the empire view listing.

The tooltips were well placed and very informative. The technology tree was intriguing and very diverse, although it would take a very long time or very large galaxy to research every bit of it within an acceptable amount of real time.

Galaxy- and empire-wide events were good ideas, although annoying sometimes.

The AI seems to be more challenging than the difficulty settings would suggest. I've seen reports about the AI winning easily with economic victory or total points. I thought I could win by military strength, but it soon turned out to be problematic. The AI had at least 25 fleets with the strength quarter of my forces, but they were constantly pounding on each of my fleets until destruction. Early colonization and expansion is penalized by the game and it may take long time to make all kinds of planets colonizable.

The music is acceptable, although sometimes too high pitched. The graphics is okay, maybe a bit fancy on the system view. I played all my battles on auto, so no comment on the simplistic card-based battles.

Conclusion: 70%. Maybe I'll play it one day again.

Once I've finished the Beta-2 of Open Imperium Galactica, I'll try the next of such games I have purchased recently: Galactic Civilizations 2.

Dübörög a független játékkészítés

Ej ha, de ráérünk. Íme néhány érdekesebb független (indie) projekt, amiket mostanában követni szoktam, és van némi közük az Open Imperium Galacticához...

• StarDrive (Kickstarter): érdekesnek ígérkezik, bár jelenleg jó néhány felhasználói felület problémával küzd. A 17.5k az eredeti 7.5k-hoz képest talán nagy eredmény, de attól tartok, túl kevés és a készítő nem fogja tudni befejezni rendesen (bár az egyéb előrendelésekről nincs info).
• Gemini Wars: Egy már kész, jónak tűnő, sztorit (!) is tartalmazó játék, bár sajnos még így is bugos. A felület érdekes, a nagy forgó animációnak vajon mi értelme van a helyfoglaláson kívül?
• Sins of a Solar Empire: Rebellion: A sorozatot sokan ajnározzák. Úgy tudom, nincsen igazán sztori. A felület talán egy kicsit erőltetett grafikus stílusú.
• Endless Space: ebből is csak béta van, de nem sokat játszottam még vele. A grafika mindenesetre szép. Az RPS-nek tetszett.

Előbb-utóbb csak lesz már saját eredeti ötletből fakadó 4X űrstratégiám is...

FTL: Faster Than Light (closed beta)

I have mixed feelings about this game, FTL: Faster Than Like. It is said to be a rogue-like game, but I never played such games.

FTL is a Kickstarter funded independent and ongoing development. Think of it as a game with mechanics you always wanted to do when watching a Star Trek episode: command your crew around, transfer energy around, repair damages, etc.

After playing a few hours, I came to a bitter conclusion: this might not be my type of game. Here is why:

• No save option at all, not even session saves. Some argue that such kind of games can't work when saving is possible. For me, it was kind of a disappointment. If not anytime save, then at least some sector or multi-sector autosaves would be great so you don't need to start all over again. According to the devs, no such feature will be implemented.
• The gameplay seem to rely on precise action from your side, what to purchase, how to use, etc.
• Following the many defeats in the first and second sectors on easy (!), I turned to my old buddy, the Memory Editor, which seemed to be enough for about half the game. After that, defeat and start over. I didn't enjoy that.

I backed this project with the money 3 times of its probable cost after release, but I feel a small regret. Beyond this, I backed several other projects as well, which I will blog about in the future. My current observation so far is as follows: If you back an indie project, don't forget that you are supporting the devs to create their game and not yours. It is their idea, their programming style and their gameplay mechanics. It is yet to turn up if there is a relation between funding and this distance factor.