Endless Space 2, Amplitude’s Studios’ latest sci-fi 4X offering, officially released in May last year following a soft launch on Steam Early Access in late 2016. We looked at it in both its pre and post Early Access states for our sister publication, Mega Visions, giving it a well-deserved 5/5.

Since then, Amplitude has offered up a very generous slate of small, free DLC packs primarily featuring new questlines, heroes, minor factions, and quality of life improvements.

More recently, however, the Paris-based developer has turned turned their attention to paid-for content. In January, the “fan favourite” Vaunters faction from the original Endless Space broke the ice, followed by Untold Tales and Lost Symphony.

Endless Space, Finite Content

The former is a familiar bundle of the aforementioned. While being more content-rich than Amplitude’s prior complementary efforts, it’s still a pretty svelte package that adds a 4 minor factions (with whom you can interact with but not play as), heroes for each, plus additional questlines.

The problem is, most of this is simply thrown into Endless Space 2’s existing random number generator rather than taking centre stage in their own mini campaign or seperate mode. Ergo, start a new game and the overwhelming likelihood is that it’s going to take you a fair while to happen across anything new. Indeed, unless you’ve sunk some serious hours into Endless Space 2, you may well struggle to tell where the old content ends and the new begins.

Likewise, Lost Symphony adds 7 tracks to Endless Space 2’s already generous repertoire of grandiose, ethereal musical accompaniments, but throws them to the existing mix at random. Plus, it adds another fan-favourite minor faction to the fray: somewhat apty, The Harmony.

Endless Space 2’s soundtrack has always been a strongpoint, from the warbling, thoughtful minor chords of ‘Geodesic’ to the airy, ascending synths of ‘Dyson Sphere’. This further septet are just as much – if not more – of an aural treat than what’s gone before. We particularly liked ‘Digital Minds’, with its tense and sinister sounding electronica and powerful drum beat.

Summary

The problem with both of these mini-expansions is that the content they offer compliments the Endless Space 2 experience in quite a tertiary way, and paying real money for the mere prospect of encountering new quests or factions at random will not appeal to everyone, even at such a low price. There’s nothing ‘wrong’ here as such, but our advice would be to wait until Amplitude has turned out a few more bitesize morsels of paid DLC and then buying in bulk to get a more worthwhile, cumulative supplement to the base Endless Space 2 experience.

PROS

+ New content
+ Low price
+ Lost Sympony adds some truly excellent new music