Review – Endzone 2 – Gamerview

When I played and analyzed the first one, I left him with two sensations. The first was tired, in the face of an exhaustive title of possibilities. The second feeling was that there was potential there. This potential is delivered to a gold tray with an even more solid title in its segment.

A few years after the original release, practically amending with the additional content of the first game, developer Gentlymad Studios put her sequel to early access. The post-apocalyptic aspect becomes less and less impactful at the same time as we are presented to an extremely satisfactory settlement management game (s).

Tutorial for those who need tutorial

The studio knows it has a complex title in its hands and again offers a very complete tutorial for the player. However, since the first minute of Endzone 2, you can feel that something is different. The game is freer to decide where your settlement will start. The dialogue is looser, even more hopeful and even less dark. The franchise has never mirrored a frostpunk or even a fallout, but there is an air of adventure and not survival in this continuation. This softening of experience is not only manifested in tone, but also in its mechanics.

If before the tutorial was an indispensable part of the experience, here it flows with such tranquility that it might be jumped. Several details can be intuited even before the explanation appeared and I was often ahead of my guide. Management layers have been simplified, interfaces have been optimized, the information is passed in a much clearer way than before (even though the game suffers from very small sources on the screen).

Radiation system itself, once so devastating and complex, here it becomes just a slight easily circumventable obstacle. Similarly, the degree of settlement of the settlers has less impact than before. There are already sufficient details for the administrator candidate to feel challenged. If the first game was often suffocating, Endzone 2 offers a much more manageable trajectory, without the game having to fall into the casual trap. All of this helps to speed up sessions in which I didn’t feel time passing.

Fortunately, they corrected the slowness of the characters. In the first game, I realized that it rolled too slow at the basic speed and too fast at accelerated speed. Now the rhythm is perfect and no need to advance time at any time.

The developer also simplified the spatial organization of her colony and it is no longer necessary to worry about so many details that optimize the production speed and movement of the characters. However, the individual AI of the units follows the same and often saw some settlers assuming routes that completely ignored the roads I built. Apparently cutting the way through the high bush is even a human addiction instead of bending a paved corner.

World, world, vast world of endzone 2

A big change that was very satisfied was the possibility of establishing new settlements in the same map. These are different colonies, with different names, in regions that produce different resources. They can be interconnected by a commercial route that transports products and raw materials that complement their post-apocalyptic “empire”. Vila da Bala, Vila da Gasolina and Vila da Água are an image that comes in comparison, even though the Gentlymad Studios game has almost no trace of violence.

In addition, Endzone 2 offers much more dynamic expeditions in which it is necessary to take direct control of a single settler, which will explore nearby ruins in search of points of knowledge of old times and special resources. These two news together, the possibility of expanding settlements and expeditions, increases the scope of this world and makes the map much more delicious to explore.

On the other hand, the expedition system becomes a weak point of the game. On the one hand, they are an impasse to research new technologies. The player needs to quit all administrative work, leave his settlement (s) without direction, and wander the devastated land behind specific places that can provide expeditions. On the other hand, as soon as this place is found, the exploration is extremely simple, not to say uninteresting, with minimal puzzles and some clicks in 3D scenarios.

Beautiful for the eyes, not so much for the ears

In the audiovisual aspect, we have a gain, a defeat and a draw. Graphically, the new engine is improved, generating a more beautiful world with improved performance. Not that the first game was not beautiful. Endzone was a eye drops, but Endzone 2 goes further, without having to fry an egg on his GPU.

Unfortunately, the developer repeats the error of the original game and offers a half -mouth art direction. The 3D models of the buildings remain confused. It’s okay that we are talking about minimum infrastructure conditions, but the fact is that it is practically impossible to decipher what each building does without putting production icons on top. Also, the characters who appear speaking in the menus have an art art made, but I hope to be wrong in this regard and are just generic and poorly inspired illustrations.

The great audiovisual defeat is on the soundtrack. The music of the original game was so fascinating that I wanted to hear it outside the sessions. Endzone 2 composite tracks are much less striking. They do not even testify against the experience, but only being there in the Plan of Funda is a significant drop in relation to the previous work.

For all this, Endzone 2 can be a genuine evolution of the first game. The slightly simplified new direction may displease the more hardcore players who have sinking into the infinite layers of the original game, but I believe this may also be the way that will bring back those who were scared a little before the previous title. The Hope of Hope is loaded, waiting for his driver.