When I loaded Steam today after a hard days graft, an 13 hour day with a 30 minute nap in a car park of a supermarket, suffice to say I was exhausted and ready to go to bed. Steam, being the ever helpful thief of my money demanded I pay heed to this game!
FOR JUSTICE it cried, I took one look at the screenshot's and I was trying to force my credit card into my monitor.
Steam Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/208140/
Website: http://endless-space.amplitude-studios.com/
THIS IS STILL AN ALPHA SO DON'T EXPECT JESUS INSIDE A BOX
The main menu system, smooth, clear and concise and even has popup descriptions that doesn't lag or freeze anything on the screen.
I was pretty much sold on the menu screen, I already liked it. But shiney isnt everything is it, what of the polish and the nails?
The game setup screen, like the main menu, was very informative with the Galaxy creation Advanced Options kind of working (which enable you to change things from number of stars to distance of Constellations).
Starting Empires is locked at 8 at this time.
I started a standard game, 8 players and clicked Start Game.
The game loaded quickly into the main galactical view and immediately demanded I pay homage to the Tutorial gods, which I duly did.
The tutorial unlike most games just explained the options, views shown and how to go between them. Its worth actually reading them through your first play through, especially if your new to this sort of genre.
The view you're met with when you have finished pouring libations to the Gods is in my opinion stunning.
Here's a link to their trailer, it shows the galaxies in detail: http://youtu.be/_Wr19Ln9sO4
The system linking method is similar to warp links in almost all space based games, if it isn't broke don't fix it? But the game does hint that you can invent something that will speed your travel up to anywhere you please, probably wormholes.
The System Management Screen is very very self explanatory, I even expect Hangfire to be able to understand it.
Planets generate 4 main items, food, industry, dust and $$$ (dust is left over old alien people) clicking on a planet will give you a more detailed description and more options.
The Research Screen is well thought out, but it doesn't have nearly enough research fields for my liking, just 4 main ones with a spiders web sort of affair to link everything together.
The Military Screen shows your fleets, locations and general information in here you can even modify your armaments of your space faring vessels. Your fleets can even have combat Stances, in the game referred to as Combat Actions these are cards you can pull out to counter your
Diplomacy Screen is as every diplomacy screen ever was, however at the time of writing I haven't met any aliens that require subjugating so I cant tell you much of this screen, the tutorial does go through it though and it appears to be self explanatory and informative.
The Heroes Screen is where you get your Heroes, go figure, at this time it doesn't appear to have a cap on the number you can hire. Each Hero has 2 skills, gains XP eventually getting better at what he or she does.
I could go on but really Squid described this game with accuracy.
[21:06] <SquidDNA> It looks like some kind of blend between Moo3 and Ascendancy
I will update the post once I have experienced Combat and Diplomacy but I get the feeling that If you enjoyed moo3 you'll enjoy this.
Diplomacy Edit: Invent the Treaty, Meet the Race and Make the treaty. Same old stuff here.
Combat Edit: Combat in the game is handled in a similar fashion to Magic the Gathering, you preselect cards prior to engaging and hope your forces both out damage and you select the correct cards to counter the enemies cards. A novel way of doing the combat, but I personally would prefer to be able to tell my ships what to do myself.
Originally Posted by chelovek_veliki
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