Category: PC GamingSeptember 11, 2025How Endless Legend 2 Raises the Tide on Turn-Based Strategy GamesJoe Robinson, Director of Communications, Hooded HorseSummaryEndless Legend 2 (Game Preview) is a turn-based strategy game coming to Xbox on PC, PC Game Pass, and Game Pass Ultimate on September 22, 2025.The long-awaited sequel to its award-winning predecessor lets you conquer a fantasy world through four distinct pillars: Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate.The Tidefall mechanic is developer Amplitude’s answer to game stagnation, working to keep every session feeling fresh.Endless Legend 2 is a fantasy turn-based strategy game, and the next title from Amplitude Studios who previously made Humankind and Endless Space. At launch it will feature five asymmetrical factions, tactical battles, multiple victory types (including seven different variations of the narrative victory condition), and countless hours of replayability as players explore and conquer Saiadha, a mysterious oceanic paradise going through cataclysmic change. Like the studios’ previous works, Endless Legend 2 represents a definitive step forward in the strategy genre through brand-new mechanics, such as Tidefall.A Tidal ProblemEndless Legend 2 represents a specific style of strategy game you’ll have seen before that sometimes goes by another name, 4X games, a phrase coined a while ago to talk about the early Civilization titles. The four Xs represent distinct pillars: Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate.These days, the genre has evolved beyond this moniker — but that first phase, explore, remains a core design pillar of any strategy game. It’s the part that often struggles beyond the early portions of a campaign and this is one of the reasons the Tidefall mechanic emerged in Endless Legend 2. It represents a momentous event in-game where the oceans recede, revealing new lands, opportunities, and dangers.“Based on the decades of feedback Amplitude has collected since their first 4X game, we’ve found that players often find the exploration phase to be the most fun,” says Endless Legend 2’s Game Director Derek Paxton. “They would play for a while, then get bored when the full map is revealed and all the territory is claimed. At this point your options are to switch to either a full-on warmonger, or stay within your borders and try playing ‘tall’.”“We wanted to solve this by revealing new land as the game went on. Introducing new exploration phases and new opportunities to claim territory and expand. The biggest part of this is Tidefall, which can make strategic chokepoint cities obsolete or turn safe cities in your backlines into exposed targets as new land bridges are formed to other islands and empires.”While there’s less land to explore to begin with, starting in a smaller area does give you plenty of room to grow, explore, and adjust to your faction’s strengths and weaknesses in a relatively safe environment. Once the first Tidefall happens, the map opens up, changing the strategic landscape permanently.This change brings about new challenges – never mind that other major empires might have access to your lands now, but the environment also gets more dangerous. Fortresses guarded by NPC armies will need conquering, and after the third Tidefall event, menacing Doomwraiths will emerge from the planet’s depths, endangering areas you may have previously thought safe.Riding the WavesDisrupting the state of the game and player momentum isn’t something that should be done lightly, or too frequently. The Tidefall mechanic has gone through a few iterations in terms of impact and frequency, but through extensive testing Amplitude feels like they’ve found a good sweet spot.“We started with eight Tidefalls and slowly reduced them as we went through playtesting,” says Paxton. “The more we had, the less land each revealed. We opted to go for fewer with bigger impacts instead of more frequent with smaller effects. When Tidefall happened, we wanted the game to change.”There are now three Tidefall events per game, and the length between them will vary depending on the map size. On average settings, it’s between 40 – 50 turns. But it’s not just about pacing — the broader impact of Tidefalls was also examined closely.“We even considered having the technology eras tied to Tidefall or having Tidefall be destructive (if the oceans came back, for example). But in the end, we decided to keep it solely as a reward because it wasn’t fun to invest in building an empire, just to have something outside of the player’s control set back their progress”.“The only remnant of that idea that remains is that all tiles adjacent to water (oceans, lakes, or rivers) get a food bonus. As Tidefall occurs, the oceans go away and the rivers dry up, removing these bonuses. So coastal or river cities accustomed to these bonuses for growth will lose them.”This feeds into two of the other pillars – Expand and Exploit. While the consequences of Tidefalls won’t be game breaking, they will add just enough tension to your campaign that you will need to plan around this eventually, typically by expanding outward and searching for new or better sources of growth for your empire.Turning the TideAs long as you respect the Tidefall, it can be planned for and some of the chaos that comes with the receding oceans can be managed. You’ll know, for example, that a coastal city at the start of a game won’t remain as such, and that far away island will be accessible eventually. There are other things to keep in mind as well:“On the Strategic map it’s good to keep an eye on areas of the fog of war that are golden,” says Paxton. “We call this the ‘Haze’ and it indicates that this is the edge of unrevealed lands that Tidefall has exposed, and where new dangers can come from.”“Also, if players have river cities that are counting on the food bonuses from the river, building a Dam will ensure that the river remains after Tidefall. Or you can build a Dam for a river that flows into your enemy’s lands and deprive them of their food bonuses without waiting for Tidefall to happen.”The world of Saiadha is waiting – there are other factions to subdue, and a mystery that lies in the heart of the world to unravel. Whichever way you choose to approach the game, make sure you prepare for Tidefall.Endless Legend 2 (Game Preview) releases for Xbox on PC, PC Game Pass, and Game Pass Ultimate on September 22, 2025..post-template-default .xwsrc-block-content-block .wp-block-column.flex-basis-50.push--25.column--content {flex: 100%;margin-left: 0;}The post How Endless Legend 2 Raises the Tide on Turn-Based Strategy Games appeared first on Xbox Wire.