You already know what’s actually neat? Corals. They’re unimaginable lifeforms and a bit underappreciated within the realm of fantasy. You already know what Limitless Legend 2 has to supply? That’s proper, corals. Or, to be a little bit extra exact about it, sentient coral robots. It additionally has bugs – each the insectoid and technical selection – and people, however the Features are what stand out whereas taking part in a preview construct of the sport.
Their appears aren’t the one distinctive options of the Features. They’re a pacifistic race, who profit extra from getting into helpful relationships with different factions on the map than to beat them, and so they slowly unfold fields of corals all around the world, assimilating the map into their larger consciousness – which, sure, carries some darkish undertones. It’s a little bit bit just like the Zerg spreading Creep in StarCraft and it feels fairly satisfying as a participant to see such a visual reminder of your affect on the map.
Limitless Legend has all the time been a standout within the style because of its faction asymmetry and on this regard its sequel follows its footsteps. Amplitude is clearly placing plenty of emphasis on every faction’s mechanics and narrative. I say narrative, as a result of that’s a significant a part of the sport. Every race has what’s basically a primary storyline it could actually comply with all through a match with dialog selections, quests, and rewards, on prime of aspect tales offering further taste and alternatives.
This has been a pattern in turn-based technique video games, however Limitless Legend 2 is admittedly turning it up a notch — it looks like taking part in a RPG generally and people storylines additional add to the identities of every faction.
In fact, the core gameplay is shared between everybody: You agree cities, increase your realm, assimilate minor factions, discover dungeons, and attempt to overpower the opposite main gamers utilizing Amplitude’s FIDSI system – that’s meals, trade, mud, science, and affect. Affect nearly looks like the primary factor you’re typically starved of, being not solely required to increase your presence into different zones of the map, discovered cities, and assimilate smaller tribes, but in addition being wanted so as to add new hexes to your settlements and to have interaction in diplomacy. It’s no coincidence that the devs modified the identify to FIDSI from FIMS – meals, trade, cash, science – to emphasise the important significance of affect.
It does incentivize you to suppose lengthy and laborious on the influence of your choices and your priorities, which is sweet, but it surely generally feels a little bit too stifling.
Limitless Legend 2’s different distinctive hook is the local weather system. Devastating storms can envelop the map and retreating tides slowly reveal extra areas to discover and settle. With the construct being locked to 125 turns, I really feel like I haven’t seen most of what the Tidefall mechanic can do, however my early impression of it’s completely constructive. It provides a little bit of dynamism to the map itself, a characteristic you don’t actually see a lot of in turn-based technique video games.
Like in its predecessor, heroes play a big function in your empire, be it as generals or politicians. You’ll be able to slot Notables into your state councils to obtain passive bonuses from them, buying extra personnel via quests or faction assimilation.
Heroes have a number of attributes, which in flip affect the effectiveness of their lively and passive skills, of which you’ll unlock extra as they stage up. There’s a gear system to additional energy them up and Amplitude went above and past to offer the characters with extra character as properly: They will have lovers and archenemies and even get a private headquarters that seems as a district on the map. All of that has plenty of potential to create completely different tales from match to match, enhancing that role-playing facet.
That is the place Limitless Legend 2 shines brightly to date. The place it falters for me comparatively is the fight, which – merely put – is a little bit boring. Valuable few modifications have been made in comparison with Amplitude’s earlier video games: You smash your models into enemy models, terrain influencing the numbers a bit, however there’s been shockingly little taste and selection to all of it to date.
In comparison with style friends like Age of Wonders 4 or Civilization 7, fight feels barren and a bit like an afterthought — I discovered myself utilizing fast resolve to skip battles very early on, which isn’t a terrific signal. I discover that actually shocking, as a result of the sport’s asymmetrical design and the personalities of all of the completely different factions ought to make for incredible, diverse fight mechanics. It’s just like the battle system took a rest room break when the builders bestowed taste and uniqueness on the sport’s components. It’s not even essentially a depth drawback. There are many passives and abilities that present tactical challenges and alternatives and there’s an intriguing improve system that means that you can specialize your primary models. It is perhaps the presentational layer extra so than the mechanical one, however actually, I can’t fairly put my finger on why precisely the battles didn’t click on with me but.
One other concern is its technical state. I often had points with turns merely not ending and locking the sport, making me pressure a shutdown, restarting, after which redoing the flip. The UI definitely had extra thought put into it than Civilization 7’s and is basically in a very good place, although the sheer quantity of choices introduced on display could also be a little bit intimidating to gamers in the beginning — to not point out the flood of notifications you’re getting. Some choices are positioned surprisingly, equivalent to characters’ lively skills throughout fight, which may be discovered within the prime left aspect of the display subsequent to their avatar as an alternative of a extra standard bar on the backside.
You’ll be able to actively use nested tooltips, locking home windows to stay open by urgent Shift, which is neat, and it’s simple to check gadgets with one another to find out what’s finest in your heroes to put on. There may be plenty of good quality-of-life stuff within the UI. Although a minimap is absent, you may zoom out to get an outline of the world, with icons even denoting strategic assets — which is important, as a result of there isn’t a different indication on the map itself telling you that these tiles are of particular significance.
Visually, the sport’s map is its prettiest asset, its lush fantasy environments and the factions’ distinctive structure mixing into a delightful picture. Animations aren’t all the time the perfect and it looks like fight as soon as once more is bearing the brunt of this, including to the system’s woes.
As talked about above, being restricted to 125 turns – and so far off the endgame – didn’t give me probably the most full overview of the sport and its methods. It might be that fight is getting significantly better with late sport models or totally powered-up heroes, for instance. My first impression stays a cautiously constructive one, although. Amplitude’s world, faction design, and narrative concepts are fairly convincing, the empire administration relies upon largely in your opinion on the FIDSI system, however has been very partaking to date for me, and fight wants to enhance. However that’s nothing that couldn’t be finetuned in Early Entry. All in all, Limitless Legend 2 is shaping as much as be a sturdy enchancment on its predecessor.
