I've been thinking of getting this, but what you all have to say is giving me pause.
It seems like the only innovative mechanic is the winter creep and that is blatantly ripped off from Fall from Heaven. Not even FFH2 but the first one, the mini mod that came with Beyond the Sword, where the God of Winter kept freezing more of the landscape until you killed him (FFH2 let you *become* the god of winter 
Also, I hear magic is just artillery in disguise, meaning that none of the crazy redefinitions of terrain and battle mechanics I expect from magical strategy, and that even FFH2 offered years ago, are viable
I wouldn't say it was ripped off from FFH, unless you would call every game with a winter-mechanic a rip-off. The way it works is that you start at summer for roughly 40 turns, and then it turns to winter for a few turns. In the beginning, winter cuts your food production in half, cuts your armies vision and movement in half, and provides various other penalties to FIDS. It also shuts down a lot of powerful economic buildings, which improve your tile production. Over time, the summers get shorter and the winters longer, while constantly stacking more and more penalties during winter, until you're stuck in Endless winter. This creates an interesting balance, where it's very easy to expand early game, but the longer the game goes on, the harder it is to grow. A lot of the factions are also balanced around this, where powerful builder- and economy factions like the Roving Clans and the Wild Walkers have an unstoppable economy early game, and then they rapidly lose momentum later on as they respectively get huge penalties to their economy or lose most of their bonuses. The ultimate late-game faction on the other hand, the Vaulters, are built around winter: With buildings that reduce winter penalties; focus on the only FIDS not affected by winter (Science); the ability to buff their economy with a strategic resource and doubling the production of it during winter (and giving a combat bonus to units using that resource); and even the ability to teleport between their cities, negating the movement penalty of winter entirely.
While we're at the factions, they're awesome. Every faction is fleshed out with their own gimmicks, lore, unique units, and traits tailored to their play-style. The factions manage to be so unbalanced, that they swing right around and become balanced again. The Roving Clans, for example, are a pacifistic nomadic desert people, who practically worship dust; this allows them to move their cities at will, gives them so many trade bonuses that no other faction could win an economy victory against them, and allows them to use mercenaries to attack other factions without declaring war. But they also have the most severe penalties during winter of all the factions and can't declare war, which pretty much means they have to win a victory early or risk falling behind. This is just one of the factions.
I could go on, but to put it short, Endless Legend is a very good game. The empire building mechanics are completely unique and very fun, the winter mechanic is well implemented and creates a unique balance between factions and adds nicely to the empire building, the combat is decent, the units are fun and unique, the factions are all awesome and unique, the lore is great, and the art style and music is beautiful. This is one of the few 4x games, I actually finished. The only gripes I have with the game is that the AI is dumb as bricks, and the end game can get a little boring.
And to answer your concerns about magic, it is non-existent from what I know. There are no spells. The only faction that deals with magic, is mostly about building temporary improvements, that provide buffs. I don't think they even mentioned adding a full magic system in the game, and the game is more like a fantasy Civ 5, with tactical combat and additional features, than an AoW-like. If you were interested in the game for that, then don't buy it, I guess.
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Topic: Endless Legend (Read 19765 times)