Amplitude Studios' Endless series of 4X games, to me, have always been characterized by visually striking, high concept civilizations and incredibly evocative lore writing. Big picture world building has always been the series' strength, but I've always found the smaller details and character writing to be just a bit lacking. This is, of course, completely fine in a 4X game, where you're managing entire armies and building massive superstructures. But in a more intimate setting like a dungeon crawler, where individuals are the focus, I couldn't help but want a bit more out of the heroes' colorful personalities. While the between-level elevator conversations are fantastic and give a tiny glimpse into who these people actually are, the more interesting ones are unfortunately relatively sparse as unique dialogues aren't even guaranteed to happen unless you happen to have a specific combination of characters. Even then there's only so many elevator rides before a run's over.

I understand if the focus is on the gameplay, but to be honest, while the series' games do fulfill a niche of providing fun, unique spins on 4X archetypes, they never quite reach the same level of depth and replayability that classics in the genre, such as the Civilization games, are known for. I find the same problem to be true for this particular foray into the tower defense/dungeon crawler genres. And while there's definitely a lot of polish and some pretty interesting interpretations of the mainline games' 4X mechanics, for some reason I just never found Dungeon of the Endless to be as addictive as the many other roguelike dungeon crawlers on the market. A lot of cool ideas here though, so hopefully they'll improve upon them in Endless Dungeon, the slightly confusingly-named spiritual sequel.