TL:DR; Not for people with a short attention span - you need to commit to learn the game, around 2-5 hours. Though I still highly recommend it.

So here we have a 4X Space-Based Strategy game with about the same complexity of Civilization V (Base Game).
I highly recommend this game to anyone with some patience and the will to learn a new game, as Endless Space is not easy to jump right into.

The Tutorial is a series of text-based prompts with pictures; remeniscent of a wikipedia instead of an in-game tutorial, this coupled with a few 'ease-of-life' features (such as the Waypoint system) not being included in the tutorials make for an experience and a half when it comes to learning the game. Once you get the hang of the early game, however, everything else simply falls into place and all comes together. Between myself and my friends, we became competent in the game within 2-5 hours of playing (without the tutorial).

In terms of difficulty; Pirates tend to give people a hard time, but can be disabled in 'Game Settings' just before starting a new game. The AI controlled Empires unfortunately 'cheat' at higher levels, gaining bonuses to their entire economy which grows exponentially with difficulty. That being said; after playing against them for a while, you'll begin to notice patterns in their behaviour and countering the AI becomes trivial after a while.

Combat's not too complex; you do, after all, play the role of the Emperor. When 2 fleets clash, you're only able to select a 'battle action' for each of the 3 rounds. (Basically cards which give bonuses and negatives based on what your opponent chooses - some increase a specific defence, while others may empower your ships' weapons).

The game is pretty, cinematic battles which take place in rather stunning space-scapes, beautiful galaxy maps with subtle animations in the background, dynamic changes to planets based off of which anomalies befit it and how much population is on it.

Well, if you've read this far you're likely patient enough to learn and enjoy Endless Space, also thanks! Your dedication is appreciated!
Regardless, I beleive this game is most fun with a few friends, though most of the time I've played has been in singleplayer. I also Highly recommend Disharmony - Endless Space's only DLC, it adds a few features that really help the game among other things, as well as adding a couple more layers to combat.


P.S: In the Galaxy map, hold 'Ctrl', click on a system you own, click on another system (you don't have to own the second system); Congratulations! You just set a system waypoint, now whenever you create a ship in System A, it'll create a fleet as soon as it's done and move to System B.

I fell in love with Master of Orion II when it came out first (1996) and since then I look for a worthy successor. Played several 4X games and they had their pros and cons. Endless Space is one of the better 4X games and absolutely worth buying, in my opinion. Wouldn't have played 300+ hours else, heh. I am reviewing it including Disharmony expansion.

Galaxy: Endless Space offers some variety of galaxy shapes and sizes, some favoring defensive players, some favoring offensive ones. Additional finetuning of the galaxy is possible. I miss the opportunity of creating a REALLY huge galaxy, but maximum size with just one opponent works ok as a sandbox mode. During exploring you will find nice bonuses, a few pirates, wormholes (basically dividing the galaxy until you can travel through them) and finally different wonders, so exploring is actually fun.

Background story: You learn about the Endless (usual Elder civilization which went extinct) during playing. The game lacks lore summary articles, but there are traces of this ancient civilization everywhere (galaxy wonders, technologies, factions, leaders), which adds to immersion.

Factions: The games comes with 10 to 12 moderately unique prebuilt factions (depending on whether you get Harmony and Vaulters). Each gets specific traits, innate bonuses, ship bonuses and a few special technologies to encourage certain victory types and hence playstyles. Prebuilt factions are different enough to motivate you to try them all. Additionally, you can create your own faction by modifying a prebuilt one. Meaning you can replace their traits completely, but you have stick with their innate bonuses, ship bonuses and special technologies. It has still a high degree of freedom, I enjoy building my own faction a lot.

AI: Computer opponents (artificial intelligences respective AIs) offer a solid challenge. Especially the 'evil' factions tend to attack you early on, so you cannot simply expand all over the galaxy or rush through the technology trees. Later most AI will attack you when they run out of colonization space - unless they are busy with other opponents. But they also attack each other for same reasons and their reasoning is mostly transparent (+x for long period of peace, -y for common borders etc.). At higher difficulty ratings they are more unfriendly (but not hateful) and get the usual strong production bonuses to offer more of a challenge.

Leader: You can hire a few people for boosts to your empire or your fleets. They make a real difference and usually have a nice background story. It takes some time to learn about their feat trees, but once you became familar with it, your leader can turn a fleet into a nearly unbeatable force. Which you will need to fend off the many enemy ships at higher difficulty ratings... Using leaders to improve your empire helps a lot at the beginning but loses importance as it grows.

Production: Production is done on system level mostly, saving you some time compared to games which do it on planet level. So most buildings affect all colonized planets, ships are produced by the entire system etc.. However, you can specialize your planets (usually: food, industry, research, money), explore their moons and terraform the planets. Terraforming is an interesting feature here because depending on faction and situation you can be better off with unfriendly environment. Since production shouldn't be automated, you will spend a lot of time with tweaking your systems. But that's true for many of these games...

Technology: There are basically four technology trees and they sometimes offer different paths to specific technologies. It honestly needs quite a while to get used to them, but it offers interesting decisions to make. Technology names are often NOT related to their benefits, so at the beginning you will have to check their descriptions often. Other games did that better. Well, on the plus side you have many interesting concepts in the tech description texts - some scifi fans will like them.

Diplomacy: The negotiation with aliens is a solid feature. At the beginning you are at "cold war", meaning you can invade other factions' outposts but not colonies - a bit confusing first. Of course there are war and peace. Peace can be upgraded a bit by two more treaties (open borders, cooperation) and there are alliances. Alliances are usually a short-lived thing with AI empires, but a few traits and technologies reward you for allying. Upgrading from war to cease fire to peace to additional treaties / alliance goes slowly since there is a hardcoded turn amount between them. For instance you have to be at war with your opponent for 10 rounds, then both sides can offer cease fire. At the beginning of the game this makes some sense (why ally instantly with some empire you barely know?), later it becomes kind of a burden. AI empires sometimes ignore the turn amount, speeding up the process. Beside this you can trade dust (basically money), technologies, systems and special resources. At the end of a long war you can even make an AI empire give you all its colonies.

Covert operations: There is no secret service in any empire which is a bit of a letdown. Leaders can steal some dust (money) and technology points from other empires, but that's it.

Ship design: This game gives you rather much freedom how to design your spaceships. The weapon choices are a bit dull: Level 1, 2 and 3 versions of mass drivers, beam weapons and missiles, plus some fighters and bombers. You can defend your ships with thick armor, defense systems or simply taking out the enemy ships fast enough. Finally some special systems make your ships truly unique: Better engines for raids, better scanners to avoid getting surprised, siege for slow invasions, marines for fast invasions (they cost population!), multiple colony pods for quick expansion or multiple layers of armor to accept and shrug off enemy hits.

Battles: Endless Space has a somewhat simplified battle system. You cannot control single ships or squadrons, instead you set the overall strategy by picking a card and probably refine it by formation and general targetting tactics. Leaders add a bit of complexity with their special cards. 'Manual combat' just means you can watch the battle (which looks nice) and change cards every combat phase. Of course this card system means you lose some control (compared with other games), but it also reduces micromanagement and makes the AI more competitive in battles. Some people hate it, some love it, I'd say it's ok.

Bugs: Endless Space crashes ocassionally, let's say every other game. In every case reloading the latest savegame fixed the issue. According to the error messages it's mostly about AI diplomacy - playing with less opponents and in smaller galaxies might help. Given the fun the game provides, I accept the rare crashes though.

If you like complex 4X games, you will (very likely) enjoy Endless Space and its addon Disharmony.

The short of it: This game is really good, BUT ONLY WITH THE EXPANSION! DO NOT BUY AND PLAY THIS GAME NAKED!

Unlike a lot of 4X games, Endless Space is more about building your empire than about developing your colonies or really fighting wars. Not that you won't fight wars, the AI is usually vicious enough to wait and plot and it will build up an overwhelming force based on your existing military might before waging war on you. And it WILL do that. Every single chance it can, unless it can't, it will do that. Never think it won't, since it has no reason not to.

We'll get more into that later, but right now let's focus on the empire-building. Building up the empire is the primary focus of this game. Oftentimes if you look at too little at a time, you'll tunnel vision yourself into a corner when you should be keeping yourself as distant as possible. A prime example of this is expressed in happiness. The morale of a system and its subsequent production bonuses are NOT more important than the overall happiness of your empire. After all, a 15% production bonus across 4 stars is better than a 30% bonus in just one. If, when settling a new system, you have a planet with lots of production, or a planet with a high amount of happiness-boosting, you pick the one that makes your empire happy, or you lose the game.

Now then, let's talk about war. War is problematic in this game because A) it's inevitable, and B) it's boring. The game takes a very hands-off approach to combat and in the vanilla game technology is both everything and a linear arms race. The guy with the most ship tonnage and the best weapons will always win. You can employ tactics cards, but these will only have a minimal impact on the outcome. This leads to a very boring experience, and can force you into certain types of tech progression and thus certain modes of gameplay. To deviate from established doctrine is to lose in the vanilla game.

DO NOT PLAY THE VANILLA GAME. Instead, do yourself a favor and get the Disharmony expansion. The Disharmony expansion does away with about 75% of the weapon-tech in favor of just four generations of guns. Each is a sizable improvement over the last generation, and keeping up the with the AI is definitely important, but with tactics, ship design, aimpoint selections, and formation management you can steal victory from the jaws of supposedly assured defeat.

Endless Space encourages you to use your distant veiw not to mess with the minutae of your own empire, but rather to mess with the other guys. Through trade, trade routes, blockades, invasions, explorations, treaties, and wars you are charged to take away the choices of the enemy for as long as possible while you improve your own choices. How you do this is entirely up to you, and Endless Space: Disharmony actually allows you quite a bit of wiggle room on how you do it.

Think Civilization in space, a beautifully crafted and easy to get to grips with 4x4 strategy game that can operate anywhere from small galaxies with two races to a huge universe with 8 factions. The joy in this is the expansion and technological advancement. However, the space combat, while somewhat of a railroad sequence, remains entertaining with a fairly unique 'stance' selection mode where you can choose the tactics your fleet uses.

This game is also has incredible aesthetics, one of it's high points,with the ability to zoom in on planets, ships, the galaxy as a whole has clearly been crafted with love.


IMPORTANT: Get used to this game via a let's play video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVGjqDRgc6w&list=PLA980FA7E19F59120 the tutorial system is the long-winded sort and it's far more entertaining and less of a chore to learn by seeing and then doing. This is a must.

This is what happens when people get used to overpriced games. They see a good game for $1 and start getting suspicious. Endless Space is not the typical type of indie greenlight game trash that floats all over steam. It's a good well-developed game. Also, I hate all that "for $1 anything is good lol" reviews. So I decided to make a review myself.

The game isn't perfect. ES may be not the right choice for a newcomer to the 4x genre. It is very rough on edges and lacks proper tutorial.

Some tips for beginners.
1. Beware of pirates and random events. Events mostly negative and can be very harsh. Both can be disabled in game settings.
2. AI cheats on all difficulties starting from normal, and it likes to spam ships. Be prepared for war. However, unlike Total War series, here the AI is not so prone to backstab you. You will probably see when and why if it gets pissy.
3. LR kinetics rules.
4. For me, the most complicated thing to start with this game was a tech tree. It took me hours to figure what the final goals of my research should be. But then I just gave up and started to pick from those technologies which I could research at the moment and which would be most useful as of right now.
5. "The lines to the new systems looked wavy and I didn't know which research would let me pass it."
Those are wormholes. The game didn't explain it well. But you need to unlock Applied Casimir Effect tech from the Exploration&Expansion tech branch.

Overall I rate this game as a solid but average 4x strategy with its lowest in simplistic combat, rudimentary diplomacy.

Simple Answer -
Even if after 100 hours you find yourself hating this game, the first 75 hours are totally worth it.

Simple Advice -
Buy when on sale (Happens often enough) and make sure to get Disharmony.

Supplemental to Answer -
I dislike the AI amplitude uses. Trying to predict how they will behave is annoying. However, if you play with a friend then the two of you can explore and learn at the same time. After about 30 hours you will have figured out the majority of the game and how you are suppose to build. (Hint: Same theme in Endless Legend). All in all I could not say I love the game, but I can say that for the price tag, it provides plenty of entertainment.

Supplemental to Advice -
The DLC makes the game complete in terms of play style. Without the DLC planetary invasion feels lacking. I would also recommend you ignore the game's rating on difficulty. Just start on easy (or less if you are new to 4x Games). After you learn the mechanics move one tear up at a time. I made the mistake of starting on normal and expecting this game to be as easy as most other games. Normal had me pulling hair out and screaming "the game is cheating" - which it does. >.>

After I got over my ego being bruised the game smoothed out.

Got this game from a bundle along with some others.
Some time ago.
7pm. Pretty bored. Need to kill some time.
See this on my library. Decide to give it a shot. Download it. Watch some videos from youtube. Try to familiarize myself.
Think I got this sh*t.
Start a 8 player game on easiest AI with random civ. Got amoebas.
No I didn't.
Economy in shambles. No industry. No science.
Military is a joke. I only made a couple colony ships to spread a bit. Own a couple systems.
Fast forward 50 turns.
Pretty much trapped between two gigantic civs. Empire and those bird people.
They form an alliance. Declare war on me.
P*ssy out. Close the game.

Fast forward 30 minutes. Still have nothing to do. Launch this game again.
Again 8 player easiest AI. Done my research this time though. Choose Vaulters. Isolationalist space huns with viking elements. My jam.
Go out. Spend my first 50 turns colonizing, next 50 turns industrializing and the rest pretty much being a cool guy.
There's a harmony on my upper left side and empire on up right. Down there are insectoid goons but I ddon't care about them.
Become bros with harmonies. Trade knowdledge. Trade resources. Donate some in the proccess.
Then there is empire.
Strongest player on the galaxy. Makes more money in a turn than I make an entire game.
Tells me I am a cool guy.
I tell him he is cooler and offer alliance.
Accepts.
I try to maintain it while slowly but steadily making my towards a science victory while he just goes full baby toddler on galaxy.
Declaring random wars against people I have long and strong trade deals with.
Demanding science and resources from me.
I clench my teeth n put up with it.
Memes.
3 turns till my science victory.
"EMPIRE WINS FROM ECONOMIC VICTORY."
Ragequit this time.

Fast forward 30 minutes again.
Extremely salty.
Launch the game again. 8 player easiest. Now with sophons.
Take no prisoners.
Take no sh*t.
Pretty much act like a cold blooded dead*ss mofo. Science maxed. Kill everyone and invade everything in sight and damage anything else as much as my poor fleets and heroes can.
Science victory on 70th turn.
Happy. Fulfilled. Cooled.
Look at the clock.
It is 9 in the morning.
Late for school.

I recommend it to everyone regardless if you hate strategy games or 4xes with a passion. Moderately easy to get into and offers pretty much enough depth to keep you awake at night with a craving for just an another turn.

Enjoyable and fun game experience. Can be a little frustrating at the beginning but once you get into it will consume you. Lore of the game is really interesting , races are well designed and unique. AI isn't that great, even if its you best friend he will probably attack you becouse 1) you have a higher score than him 2) he has no room to expand. So yeah diplomatic is kinda hard in this game, one of the most difficult victories to achieve.

There is also a supremacy ( aka conquest homeworlds ) , expansion ( own 3/4 of galaxy ) and wonder victory.

So I suggest cooping with a friend becouse its always more fun. Games lenght depends on your map settings, they can last few hours or even days. There is lots of customization when it comes to the galaxy settings, like shape , size , ammount of planets and their size, events etc.

Races are also great. There is a race that devours worlds so they need to expand if they want keep their strenghts up, pacifist robots , religious robots , various humans sub-factions, et's , some kind of samurai aliens and finally my fav race Harmony.
Race made of living crystal that wants to purge galaxy of dust ( aka gold, game income ).
There is also an option to modify current races and select different traits for them, its a fully customizable.

Soundtrack is amazing, really enjoyable to listen.


~~What are the minuses ?
AI cheats a little , how is that possible that he can manage so many fleets and still have a decent income.

Combat system is unbalanced. Kinetics op - even when they were designed for close combat they deal sick dmg at LONG range, just go full kinetics and every game is won.

Bomber units are useless.

UI could be a bit better. Becouse later in the game micromanaging your entire galaxy gets a bit annoying, yes there is an AI governor to help with that but that isn't always a good option to choose.

And many other small things that you will probably get annoyed by them and you will think "what the heck devs where thinking".

So yeah , its worth a money especialy when its on the sale. Buy it together with the Disharmony DLC becouse it adds lots of new stuff and overall gives a better player experience than vanilla.

When it shines, it's a beauty, but when it stinks, it kills everything good about it.


I want to like this game. It has that "one more turn" factor. Visually it's well done, and the UI is pretty clever with most complex orders only a few mouse clicks away. But then you find reordering production queues to be unusually clumsy. Most of the game is like that. A few solid hits then a terrible miss. [Queues have been improved in a recent update]

The races are good, well designed and presented, each with their own strengths and each requiring a slightly different set of priorities to succed. But then the difficulty modifiers kick in and the whole race balance goes out the window. Enemy AIs get bonuses to production NOT intelligence and you fight races that can outperform what you could do with them.

Then the AI itself shows irreconcilable stupidity. If i could tolerate 6-7 dumb things the AI does per turn, it would do 10. All too often the AI fleets that could potentially beat you choose to flee (but waste your time, attack, or leave ships behind that blockade you), while i have had one completely unarmed and undefended fleet of invasion ships try to fight back (with tactics, not weapons ofc) and even somehow managed to flee with a few survivors. [AI stupidity has also been adressed with updates]

The AI can sometimes use tactics wisely and from what i saw has no knowledge of your own tactical choices, but the battles are a lottery decided far far ahead, back when you designed the ships. Some survive, some have no chance, and if your ships are very good, then AI will either allways retreat, or allways die, depending on whose territory you're fighting in. Sometimes the very outcome of a war or even game can hinge on the AI doing something remarkably stupid or you failing to understand some of the BASIC fundamental rules of the game. That... is beyond bad, that is awful.

The diplomacy model is one of the better i have seen. Most of it is really good, except of course the one part that kills it completely. It's all meaningless because ultimately your empire exists and therefore it would be better for a rival to take it all away from you. You're the weakest empire? Then die. Wait, you're strongest? Then die. You're in the middle, and a long term trading partner as well as supplier of strategic resources, benefits that far outweigh the problems caused by close borders (and you can see the exact numbers too)? Guess what? Today is the day none of that means anything. Prepare to set the relationship score to -200. And die.

Colonisation and expansion is arguably the strongest part of the game. Exploring the galaxy, triggering some halfhearted random events, scouting good spots for colonies. First contants. All good. But. The game actively penalises you for each and every system you own. Wheter you colonise it or capture it, just having a system increases the penalty higher and higher. Eventually it becomes high enough that it starts to hurt morale and that in turn drops production, research and cash flow. Yes, by colonising a system at a wrong moment, you can drop overall empire wide production by some 10-20%. Does that make any sense?
Yes, there are technologies that reduce the penalty, and yes, it's there to counterbalanc expansion but i am here to play a game, be emperor of space, not to oversee active game modifiers. They should be invisible and subtle, not hit me in the head. When i deliberatly skip average systems that are still well positioned, all just to avoid getting the expansion penalty down the road, i think i am playing a flawed game.

Combat is neither good nor bad except when it's completely illogical. Designing the ships properly takes some experience and knowledge and if you do a good job your fleet will usually serve you well and survive for a long time or you will produce enough replacements for losses to not matter much. The main problem with all the tactical options, counters, different ranges, weapon optimisations, support ships, repair capacity, fighter/bomber cover, is that you very often feel like you just can't take your ships and tell them to "$#%^&* go and kill the enemy!", the MOST BASIC OF PURPOSES for your fleet, but somehow it gets lost in the myriad different things you have to tweak before you can fight. Long story short, i know what i want, the game wont let me, or i have to obey some rule/design feature/balance mechanic.

So while it starts pretty well, and has enough to be fun for a while, it eventually becomes a chore to try to complete a game. The AI has too many choices to make and inevitably it makes poor decisions (compare to SOTS' very basic but lethal AI) and all the strengths of the game are drowned out by the weaknesses.

The best turn based space 4X games have already been made. Master of Orion 2 and Sword of the Stars 1. Maybe even Birth of the Federation, though i am biased about that one. Other games of the genre try to do things differently which is unfortunate because sometimes imitation is the wisest form of flattery. Case in point: Xenonauts. For ages developers tried to recreate the perfect succesor to XCOM - UFO Defense. UFO: Aftershock is 99% as good, and UFO: Alien Invasion is an extremly good remake (but still unfinished). A slew of other games missed the mark completely or admittedly used the old game as a springboard for a new experience. Then Xenonauts imitated the original and surprise, surprise, it hit the bullseye.

Ultimatly Endless Space isn't solid enough to satisfy demanding 4x players, and it isn't "mainstream" enough to captivate the casual audience. So it ends up in between. Better than most, but not good enough.

EDIT - 20 Dec. 2014

Some of the complaints i've ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about have been adressed by several patches released since this review. Production queues and enemy retreat logic have been adressed. Better late than never? Or thumbs up for devs supporting their game well after release? Both pretty much, and the game can't be hurt by extra polish & fixes.

I will not change my verdict, but i will say it's still a game i would like to like. Probably more so than before with the recent updates.

If you're sitting on the fence know that you will probably enjoy exploring the game if you choose to buy it. Exploration and expansion are strong suits of Endless Space. It's just that ultimately i felt dissapointed with what i found, but have to admit it was fun exploring.

A fun, if a bit dated now, 4x space strategy game very similar to classic Master of Orion.

However, while I do recommend this game, I have to say that as of right now; DO NOT BUY IT HERE.

The developer, Amplitude Studios, provides this game FREE to anyone who registers on their website and syncs their Steam account.

Their website being games2gether.com

Feel free to confirm this elsewhere if you think this is fake.