State of the Game - September 2025
Early Access is Almost Here!
[p][/p][p][/p][p]Some of you have found exploits during the Demo. One player even completed the tech tree. Which would be a victory condition if the Demo included the narrative victories. Thankfully, he was kind enough to share his save and we have addressed the balance issues that led to it (but I’m sure he will find more). [/p][p][/p][p]Everyone who played for at least 2 hours was asked to fill out a survey. We ask a lot of questions (thank you to everyone who replied), but there are 2 questions in particular that we use to evaluate if we are ready for EA, “How satisfied are you with the game?” and “Would you recommend the game?”. [/p][p][/p][p]
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The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
[p][/p][p]- [p]Tidefall > This was a core element of the game, and we were happy to see it having a real impact and providing a special experience on Saiadha. The pacing and amount of Monsoon’s and Tidefalls went through a lot of iteration during development (there were once 8 small tidefalls during the game and they were so frequent you started ignoring them), so it was good to see it working out well (at least for the first 90 turns).
[/p] - [p]Faction Asymmetry > This is always a focus of Amplitude, and it is the same here. We don’t expect every player to love every faction, the fact that players develop strong preference for and against different factions tells us the asymmetry is working. Players appreciated that in the two playable factions in the Demo, and we are excited to share more.
[/p] - [p]Art and Sound > The world, characters, animations, vfx all helped create a beautiful world to explore. The sound design, from the minor faction’s little jingles to the sounds of the storm and the amazing music were also well received and enjoyed. [/p]
- [p]Main Screen UI > The bulk of the critical feedback received was around the UI. A quarter of reviews mentioned UI and only 30% of those comments were positive. In reading all your feedback we realize it’s not as simple as making a few changes and we are looking at something larger. There are instances where we displayed the wrong or not enough information. There were UI and text bugs to fix and we think more is needed here, which will take some time.
We are working on concepts to update the main game screen, and will be sharing designs with you to show our direction and get your feedback.
[/p] - [p]City Flow/UI > There are issues understanding the decisions in the city screen. Adjacency, leveling districts, managing population, and having clear decisions on what to build next were all muddy. This is more than just a UI issue and we are also looking at it as a flow issue and considering things like having Districts work like improvements (so you can just select one from the build list instead of needing to click a tile in the world first). This will take time to change and won’t be in the initial Early Access, but we will be sharing concepts with you to get feedback.
[/p] - [p]Writing > One of the goals of the game is to get the player closer to the world, both in art and writing. Because of that, there is a lot more writing in ENDLESS Legend 2 than in the first game, and some of it is between characters. We want heroes to feel personal and deep. They may be members of your council, have their own friends and enemies, and they talk directly to you and each other. But this additional granularity also came with issues. For Early Access we have updated the presentation of the dialog, we are cutting lines and events to focus on only the best and most suitable. In some cases, the wrong character would say something, or a character it didn’t make sense for, which we are fixing.
[/p] - [p]Terrain Readability > Even though the world is beautiful, it was difficult for many players to tell what was important or what was going on. We have made changes to attempt to address this for EA by making foundations more clear (so it’s more obvious that something can be built there), fixed bugs causing blurry graphics, exposed more graphical options to players to adjust to your preferences, reduced the saturation of the terrain slightly, made Grid Lines more visible, made yield icons more readable, and reduced the size of some terrain vegetation that was so large and bright it was easy to confuse with an Anomaly. It’s a difficult balance between providing a lush, detailed world where you can see the leaves blow in the wind during monsoon, and still not have to strain or be confused when trying to see information you need to play.
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Next Steps
[p][/p][p]Game Director of ENDLESS Legend 2 [/p]