Endless Space preview

[Voigtkampf]

The Endless Space review is now up, share your opinions. In short, good game with some bugs and incomplete features, but will with highest probability get fixed and improved very fast. Cheers!

[Kekvit Irae]

The Endless Space review is now up, share your opinions. In short, good game with some bugs and incomplete features, but will with highest probability get fixed and improved very fast. Cheers!

So how much were you paid by Amplitude Studios for four stars?

But seriously, and I mean no offense, but this is the reason why I don't trust reviews. You need to work on your scoring system a bit. If a review is mostly negative (and it was; I counted), then it should reflect that in the score. A good way of measuring score is start at 100%, remove all sentences (or whole statements) that are neutral (or just those that give background, such as the introduction), and then count how many parts are negative about the game. Subtract that percentage from the 100%, and there's your final score.

I have gone through your review and did just this:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

+This is most likely the cleanest, leanest, meanest UI we’ve ever seen!
+Beautiful, intuitive, making all the game’s features easily accessible and only a couple of clicks away.
+Overall, the artistic approach to the game, coupled with the sense for technical functionality has done true wonders for this title.
+Zooming in and out all over the galaxy, getting into system’s view, picking out planets and assigning build orders is swift and enjoyable, so that one actually gets the feel of sliding between different areas of your empire management.

-Currently, there is no talk about modding tools and their release yet, even though there was some showing of the principles how the game was designed by the developers.
+However, there was a loud call for Steam Workshop support for this game, but no matter how exactly it turns, the modding future for Endless Space looks like a winner.
+Combined with the strategic depth of the game, modding might give it a longevity beyond what even devs thought possible.

+Soundtrack of the game is incredible, and well worth having; if you pay a couple of bucks more for admiral’s or emperor’s edition, you will get the Endless Space soundtrack and may enjoy it even outside the game.
+The music is perfect, giving you the sense of the slow play within the vast regions of space, perfectly calming and soothing, the kind of compositions you might listen for hours and simply keep relaxing.
+Sound effects are suitable and well executed, they too fit well in the surroundings.

-We didn’t like the space combat before, and we don’t really like it now.
-Personally, a flat 2D turn based combat aka MOO2 would be preferable to the “on rails” fights of ES, where you pick three cards (corresponding to the different tactics) and hope for the best.
-I found myself in many cases auto-resolving the space combats, especially when I had an hero admiral in command.
-After all, it seems that the combat itself will stay the same, depending to which extent it can be modded by players across the world.

+But considering all the circumstances and indications (plus my firm intention to keep on trucking with Endless Space), the game seems downright superb.
-A slight disappointment was the specific nature of the combat, but not because it is bad per se, but because we would love to have the actual control over the ships, whether in 3D space or in a 2D version of battlefield, hell, even if it were in a turn-based mode!
+But the game is still a remarkable piece of strategy, and making a full game out of fleet fights would have probably postponed the entire development for a year!

-But there are actual problems in this game concerning AI and its cheating; AI gets insane bonuses per each difficulty, and doesn’t really change its behavior.
-Left unchecked, almost every species will spread like a wildfire throughout the galaxy and will gobble up systems like there is no tomorrow.
-Pirates being what they are, or rather should be, are incredibly overpowered in the game if left unchecked, so that they can, if no species spreads throughout a certain region, grow more powerful than all of the factions, and very fast!
-Fortunately they can be turned off in the starting menu, but they should be nerfed anyway, and fast.
-AI is cheating with the fleet building and is also cheating in the research department.
-Diplomacy system is incomplete and has inexplicable features, your ally making peace with the mutual enemy stops you from being able to attack the enemy systems, because the peace treaty that your ally signs up binds you as well!
-Many times in the game, the AI will demand something, mostly some rare element, or propose a deal; you can either accept it or refuse it, there is no option to alter the deal, and that is disappointing.
-Also, my relationship with my neighboring species has deteriorated to the point of war with the reasoning that “my territorial expansion makes them believe I am up to no good”; the fact that I didn’t colonize a single new system during the last 150 moves doesn’t seem to matter much.
-A 4X game like this should exceed this pitiful level of diplomacy by far.
-One more thing that made me giggle: in my first game, I’ve lost all of my planets and was effectively defeated. There was the notification that I had just lost the game and the option “would you like to keep playing?”. I said yes, just for giggles, the game went for another turn, then the same message appeared. I find it hard to see why the game thinks I would like to keep playing when I don’t have a single ship or planet anymore…

-After all, the AI and the various omissions one can spot only after a longer time spent in the game have reduced the overall enjoyment.
+The positive news is that the devs will with almost an absolute certainty fix all the broken features and iron out the current bugs in the game, but on the other side, we need to assess the game in its current state.
+And if we then consider the possibilities that the modding community and open-minded developers are presenting, well, it seems as the sky alone is the limit. And in this case, it is full of stars!

+ means positive
- means negative

I have taken out the sentences or statements I felt you were neutral or didn't contribute to a positive or negative feeling of the game. I have also removed summaries of statements or paragraphs, as they were simply summarizing what you have already stated.
We are left with 17 out of 30 parts that are negative, leaving the final score at 44%. On a five star rating system, we're looking at 2.2, or two stars if you round down.

Please don't take this as flaming or trolling, but rather as constructive criticism.

[Voigtkampf]

Sadly, nothing. I would have easily given them five stars if they were paying me.

On the other hand, I just might ask how much the opposition is paying you to troll the game? But I am jesting, of course. I honestly give the benefit to all Org members of not being trolls, and I treat all comments seriously and try to respond to them in kind.

Though this may seem as madness, there is method to it, yet to be revealed.

There is a solid reason why one should not trust commercial reviews; I've been reviewing games and writing IT articles for a decade, and I know the drill first hand. You do not piss people off that advertise with your paper/portal. Nobody is advertising at mine. But I also hate writing bad articles. If there is a game below 3 stars (I should really change the rating to 100 score, but cba atm, too much hustle), I simply do not write about it in order not to offend the devs and publishers I like. Gee, you did a booboo with this particular game? Lets not talk about it... Why waste time on it if its that bad, anyway? For that reason the Sword of Stars 2 is still sitting and waiting on my hard drive; if it ever gets stable and playable, I'll review it, not before.

Opinions are like... "rear ends". Everyone has one and thinks out of his/hers there is only perfume coming out. To this day I recall a good friend, a long time gamer, who commented Battlefield: Vietnam game to be bulls***. When I asked him why, he said "no propellers". See, Battlefield 1942 had airplanes with propellers, and Vietnam had jet planes, and he had the feeling those flew too fast. Ergo, to him the game was BS, case closed...

One can't make a review on that premiss.

Alas, to the method. It is not an "add and subtract" method. Ever heard of the phrase "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts"? Same thing goes with games and reviews. Gameplay is the most important factor, the fun factor of the game, and everything else is secondary or even tertiary. Good gameplay will make up for sub-par graphic, but not the other way around. If I had written ten sentences about how good the UI and soundtrack are, and only one sentence like "there are still some bugs and incomplete features that need fixing, and AI needs some balancing", would you then say, wow, cool, you got your scoring system well under control? Simply said, the fun factor of the Endless Space game is for me (and most of players that played the game) is far greater than the problems the game has.


Oh, before I go on, I'll do something I never actually like doing; refer to the Metacritic and readers opinion on the game. General readers opinion is at this moment 84%. There are three official reviews from the portals Metacritic works with ratings of 90% (Game Revolution), 80% (IGN) and 70% (GameSpy), respectively. It needs a fourth review to have an official review score, but you can easily guess the middle of it. I really hate using this argument (it always reminds me of that "eat nectar, millions of bees can't be wrong" saying), but in order to prove me not being too partial (either too positive or too negative), I am reaching out for this tool as well. On the official Amplitude forums, the fans have mostly rated the game with 8 out of 10 (which would be consistent with my 4 out of 5 rating system).

With Endless Space, I have had a great time. There were two issues for me with this game; the card combat and the half-done features and AI balancing. I have thrown the latter in the same box. In the first case, card combat, we are talking about something I didn't like and something I perceived (correctly, if I may be so impertinent) that other 4x players wouldn't like much either. With the latter we are talking about either bad game design decisions, omissions or incomplete features. For each of those, and in comparison with nice graphics, great UI, excellent soundtrack and overall great gameplay (which is by far the most important part) I took away half a point. My and general experience with Amplitude dev team so far tells that they will definitely iron those bugs out and will keep improving on the game.

Now, you said "this is why I don't believe reviews". The hot alternative is to comment on few items one has either liked or disliked and that's it. Let me analyze your "review" of the game.

Combat is a slog. Pick your three cards, take a shower, go to the mall, go out on a date, then come back and hope the combat will eventually end.

All combats being on a timer and lasting maybe 60 seconds, 2 minutes tops, with preparation phase included... You must be really fast to get all those things done.

The AI cheats. A LOT. Early in the game when I barely had two combat ships to my name, the AI had ten (and no, I'm not exaggerating) fleets full of combat ships. It all comes down to a stalemate, even if you have superior ships and tech.

The longest game I played came around 280 turns, and I haven't seen a single AI stack with ten full fleets. Or do you mean ten fleets x 5 ships? How many CP per fleet? What turn was that on? What ship classes were those? Try spamming scouts and you just might realize that you can easily match those fleet sizes, and AI loves spamming scouts.

Game design is horrible. "War has been declared on you." Yeah, ok. Are you going to tell me who declared war on me? No? Well you too. If you're in an alliance, and the ally declares peace on an enemy, you receive NO popup or notification at all. You're left wondering why your invasion of a planet was halted all of a sudden. And let's not forget the bug that prevents your ships from ever moving out of the former-AI's system (even to a friendly or allied system) until the cease-fire period is up. And how the can I or the AI attack each other's fleets if there's a cease fire? You can, which means the cease-fire is bugged too.

this game.

So, basically because of couple of incomplete features, design flaws and some bugs, as obnoxious as they are, you declare the entire game design as horrible?

But I can't really comment on your opinion; it is yours, I respect it in so far that I don't provoke you or label you as a troll. You hate the game, you dumped all over it, your prerogative. But you can not, in all earnest, think for a second that such posting has more credibility than all the reviews? That you saying "flower this game" is somehow more legitimate than a majority of reviews and ratings you can come across online?

For the record: It is a nice, calm Sunday morning, I got time and felt like typing. This was not meant to be a raging reply and counter-attack , just a thorough explanation, because I simply felt like it. If I were to be snide and condescending, I would have done it in one, dry, witty sentence.


TL;DR

The reviews are not based on how many like and how many dislike sentences there are in a review.

Gameplay is the most important factor.

If the developers are quick to respond and community friendly, it is to be expected that they will address the bugs and other issues ASAP.

The alternative to reviews are opinions.

The card combat cost the game ten percent of its overall rating (half a star), and bugs, incomplete features and imbalances cost the overall rating another ten percent of the games rating (another half a star). Overall, 4 out of 5 is very good score; if you would like to give it 0 out of 5 stars, feel free to do so on Metacritic. (Sadly, I don't have that option on my portal, but you can always comment on the review).

Think that about sums it up...

[Kekvit Irae]

So you sidestep the issue by criticizing a subjective post (at no point in time have I ever stated it was a review)? You should run for public office.
I'm not even going to point out the blatant errors in your post. I'm done with you. gg no re

[Crazed Rabbit]

Voigtkampf, it seems like your review of Endless Space was an extension of your preview, in that you had to read both to get your complete thoughts on the game. I hadn't actually read the preview until after the review, so some concepts about how the game played were not readily apparent from just reading the review.

Anyway, thanks for the information about the game!

CR

[Greyblades]

Personally I dont think I would mind as long as they are fun to watch, a minor annoyance with SOASE for me is that the ships just sit still while exchanging fire.

[Voigtkampf]

Voigtkampf, it seems like your review of Endless Space was an extension of your preview, in that you had to read both to get your complete thoughts on the game. I hadn't actually read the preview until after the review, so some concepts about how the game played were not readily apparent from just reading the review.

Anyway, thanks for the information about the game!

CR

CR, indeed, in the final review I concentrated on the new info, and should have pointed out the suggestion to read the preview first. I'd also suggest official Endless Space forum; the players there are not fanbois and do not hesitate to criticize the bad sides of the game and point out the good ones.

GC, the strategic game is challenging, but I would have personally liked to have had more control over the battles if I actually decided to run them.

Greyblades, the combat itself is not that interesting. Here is a video of it; two fleets of cca 4-5 ships (which is usually the cap for fleets, depending on their size, there are no 30, 50 or 100 ships fleets in this game ) fly on parallel course, on rails, and exchange fire until one goes ka-boom. It actually gets old rather fast. All you can do, as you can see in the video, is to pick three strategic postures for three phases (long range, medium range and "melee" phase) for the fight and hope you made the best choice possible.

You can also check out the Out of Eight review of Endless Space, latest one to have appeared. I'd recommend everyone to read as much reviews about this game as they can and then form their own, educated opinion. Cheers!

[Voigtkampf]

Another Endless Space review by Hooked Gamers.