How Endless Legend 2 Raises the Tide on Turn-Based Strategy Games

Joe Robinson, Director of Communications, Hooded Horse

Summary

Endless 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 Problem

Endless 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 Waves

Disrupting 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 Tide

As 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.

The post How Endless Legend 2 Raises the Tide on Turn-Based Strategy Games appeared first on Xbox Wire.

Ubisoft Staff Reportedly Raised Concerns About Saudi Arabia Deal for Assassin’s Creed Mirage DLC, as Company Insists it Maintains Creative Control

Ubisoft employees have raised concerns around the company’s partnership with Saudi Arabia to create new Assassin’s Creed Mirage DLC, a fresh report has revealed.

The upcoming content was first reported on back in January by a French financial newspaper, Les Echoes, which stated that the DLC had received funding from Saudi Arabia’s controversial Public Investment Fund (PIF). Ubisoft did not respond to me when asked for comment on that report at the time.

Months later, Ubisoft quietly announced the DLC itself in late August, in a social media post sent out early one Saturday morning. The brief reveal confirmed that the add-on would see Mirage hero Basim visiting AlUla, an ancient site that’s now one of Saudi Arabia’s cultural highlights.

In an internal Q&A shared with Ubisoft staff and published by GameFile, an employee asked if management believed partnering with Saudi Arabia, specifically following the killing and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, would tarnish the company’s image.

Management responded by addressing the fact that Guillemot had recently visited Saudi Arabia as part of a delegation alongside French president Emmanual Macron, but dismissed this as a “classic diplomatic tool for expanding France’s influence and reach around the world” that would help disseminate the country’s values.

As for the origins of the DLC, the management response to the query simply stated Ubisoft did “not comment on rumors.”

Assassin’s Creed Mirage players, we have a surprise coming your way later this year!
📖 New story chapter & missions set in 9th century AlUla
🎮 Gameplay improvements for the base game and the new location
🎁 All for free
Stay tuned! pic.twitter.com/8CjB3MRvfR
— Assassin’s Creed (@assassinscreed) August 23, 2025

Ubisoft management also attempted to draw a distinction between the country’s leader and chairman of the PIF, Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman, and the PIF itself. “The latter’s money is not MBS’s, and talking with partners who do not share our democratic values does not mean abandoning them,” the company’s response reads.

GameFile reports that Guillemot visited Saudi Arabia again last month to speak at the New Global Sport Conference and announce Mirage’s AlUla DLC at the event (something which also explains the unusual timing of the news being made public at the same time, albeit with no mention of Guillemot’s speech).

“We are working with AlUla, which is a UNESCO site, which is not known yet very much,” Guillemote said, announcing the DLC at the Saudi event. “But we are creating content that will be given for free to players that play Mirage, and they will be able to go in that site.

“As you can see, they will be able to play there, to have a story in this environment. I am sure they will love this region, just also because it has been done with specialists [of] archaeology, really people that know what happened then and why it was so important.”

IGN recently asked Ubisoft for more detail on the matter and was told that, as with every Assassin’s Creed game, it had creative control on the proposed content. This title update to Assassin’s Creed Mirage was “made possible thanks to the support of local and international organisations,” Ubisoft added, “through access to experts, historians and resources to ensure the creation of an authentic and accurate setting.”

Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social

Cyberpunk 2077’s latest patch disengages autodrive’s sticky handbrake and gives it a pass to run every red light

CD Projekt have rolled out a fresh Cyberpunk 2077 patch with fixes and tweaks for some of update 2.3’s additions. The most noteworthy is what sounds like a pretty hefty revamp of how the autodrive function goes about conveying your ride from A to B.

If you missed it arriving back in July, update 2.3 was the final set of new stuff CD Projekt plan to add to the first Cyberpunk, a game they’ve been physically unable to stop themselves from delving back into over the past couple of years, despite Cyberpunk 2 having been in the works for a little while now. To be fair, most of its contents were vehicle and photo mode-related, with the autodrive function and similar Delamain taxi system heaflining alongside some new rides.

Embark Studios just launched Season 8 of free-to-download shooter The Finals, introducing new, revamped destruction and improvements to competitive play. But it also added a standard competitive multiplayer feature that — at least at launch — won’t be available on Xbox Series S.

Season 8 introduces quality of life features to “enhance player experience and help strengthen their competitive skills,” including the beta version of the Instant Replay feature — aka a kill cam.

Here’s the official blurb:

A major addition aimed at boosting competitive clarity and supporting skill development. Players can now replay intense gameplay moments linked directly to their opponent’s point of view, making it easier to identify the exact source of eliminations. Instant Replay has been a significant but fulfilling development challenge and is currently in BETA with ongoing improvements.

It’s interesting to note the disclaimer Embark Studios added to the announcement: “this feature will not be compatible with Xbox Series S, PlayStation 4 and certain PC builds at launch.)”

Killcam is a pretty standard FPS feature at this point, indeed it has been a part of, for example, Call of Duty for years. And usually it is available across all platforms the game is on. Again, with Call of Duty, the killcam exists on Xbox Series S, PS4, and all PC builds the game itself can run on.

So it’s surprising to see it miss out for The Finals on these platforms. Clearly, there is a performance issue the developer is still working on, and it mentions this is a problem “at launch,” so hopefully some point soon killcam will be added to all platforms.

In a blog post, Embark Studios explained the challenge it faces adding the Instant Replay feature, calling it “mind-bending tech.”

To be honest, at first and second glance, this was an impossible task. But at Embark we take a challenge seriously. Prototypes for this feature date back to the early days of the project, before The Finals even had a name, trying to prove it possible. What you will see in Season 8 is the result of all that hard work. We had to calculate everything that matters: player movement, environmental destruction, object interactions in a level of data fidelity that’s hard to pull off in a Dynamism Shooter. Then take all that info and quickly reconstruct the moment.

It’s not enabled for everyone by default (especially on systems under 16 GB RAM), but you can toggle it on manually. If you’ve got the horsepower, turn it on, try it, and tell us what you think. We’ll be gathering feedback, polishing performance, and expanding integration throughout the season.

The Instant Replay feature’s omission from Xbox Series S specifically is interesting for another reason. Usually Microsoft insists on feature parity when it comes to games running on Xbox Series X and S. Yes, there are performance differences, as games will inevitably run worse on the less powerful S, but we’re used to feature parity, and a killcam would certainly fall under the feature category as opposed to performance.

The Xbox Series S has caused developers a number of headaches since it went on sale in 2020, but Microsoft has made rare exceptions when it comes to feature parity. For example, Larian was able to launch Baldur’s Gate 3 on Xbox Series X and S with split-screen on the X only, so the blockbuster RPG could come to Microsoft’s console just a few months after PC and PS5.

Xbox boss Phil Spencer has indicated the parity clause is staying put, but it will be interesting to see what the company does as it heads into the next generation.

Meanwhile, The Finals Season 8 adds two new weapons, mouse and keyboard support for console players, detailed match recaps, a fresh Battle Pass, an update to anti-cheat and more.

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Scott Pilgrim EX continues the Netflix show’s rehabilitation of its punchy slacker hero – and might be a good beat ’em up too

One of my favourite pieces of internet television last year was Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, a Netflix anime series that pretends to be just another adaption of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s graphic novels before, rather brilliantly, pirouetting into a warm and sincere (but not overly self-flagellating) study of the original story’s tropeyness. One of the beneficiaries is Pilgrim himself, who’s forced to confront his own immaturity and entitlement: a reckoning that, one suspects, mirrors that of O’Malley himself, not to mention lapsed fans (hello) whose ability to parse these faults needed time to develop.

It’s a growing-up that continues in Scott Pilgrim EX, the 2026-bound sidescrolling action brawler from Tribute Games (a studio packed with devs who worked on Ubisoft’s Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World: The Game). While not a direct continuation of Takes Off, it’s apparently set not that long afterwards, and sees the new, more likable Scott teaming up with friends and foes to biff around demons and fitness bros on the streets of Toronto. I played about thirty minutes at Gamescom, and compared to Ubi’s 2010 beat ‘em up, EX appears to have done some maturing of its own.

Activision has outlined the steps it’s taking to combat Call of Duty cheating on PC, while stressing that there’s no easy solution to the problem.

Call of Duty has a reputation for cheating (it comes with the territory of being such a hugely popular shooter and having a free-to-download battle royale). Cheating is more prevalent on PC (Activision recently confirmed as much, to the point where it said if you believe you’ve died unfairly to a console player, it’s much more likely that they’ve used ‘intel advantage’ than cheats). So, some console players head straight into Call of Duty’s settings to turn off crossplay across the board, just to take the potential for PC cheaters ruining their day out of the equation. Earlier this year, Activision added new console-only crossplay options for regular multiplayer, although PC players who do not cheat said they were being unfairly punished.

Activision, as IGN has reported, has spent millions of dollars in the battle against Call of Duty cheat makers, cheat sellers, and cheat users, with a number of recent high-profile successes. In March, Phantom Overlay announced it was shutting down, with fans reacting in disbelief that such a prominent Call of Duty cheat provider could fall by the wayside. Also in March, IGN reported on four cheat providers that were shut down ahead of the hotly anticipated return of Verdansk to Warzone.

In the run up to Black Ops 7’s November launch, Activision is, like EA for Battlefield 6, employing extra steps to help stop cheating on PC. When Black Ops 7 launches on November 14, PC players will be required to enable both Secure Boot and TPM 2.0. “These hardware-based features will give us a stronger, more trusted foundation for detecting and blocking certain cheats before they can take root,” Activision said in a new blog post.

Other security features will be tested during the Black Ops 7 beta to see how they perform. “These tools are designed to identify and remove cheaters faster, and we’ll be closely monitoring how they respond in real matches,” Activision said. “The full force of our protections will be reserved for launch, when all systems come online together.”

But Activision, as so many other video game companies have done, qualified this work by saying the war on cheaters is a never-ending one.

“We also want to be clear: there’s no one-and-done solution to solving the challenge of cheating. Every major game faces this issue, and cheaters are constantly looking for new ways to exploit systems.

“What matters, and where we’ve seen real improvement, is how quickly we adapt. In Black Ops 6, detections are faster, mitigations are stronger, and enforcement is cutting deeper into the networks that try to harm fair play. With Black Ops 7, hardware protections like Secure Boot and TPM 2.0 will add another layer of defense.”

Elsewhere, Call of Duty will now tell players directly in-game if they’re placed into shadow ban status for Warzone and Multiplayer.

“More than 75% of the LMM [Limited Matchmaking] pool is made up of users who have been brought into the system through parties, so this notification is important to clarify account status,” Activision explained.

“As a reminder, being placed in Limited Matchmaking doesn’t signal that an account is a confirmed cheater. It means an alarm was raised that requires examination.”

Last month, Battlefield 6 developers lamented the need for security measures such as Secure Boot. Speaking to Eurogamer, Battlefield 6 technical director Christian Buhl said: “The fact is I wish we didn’t have to do things like Secure Boot.”

He continued: “It does prevent some players from playing the game. Some people’s PCs can’t handle it and they can’t play; that really sucks. I wish everyone could play the game with low friction and not have to do these sorts of things.”

Still, Buhl sounds pleased with the effectiveness of the likes of Secure Boot, which are “some of the strongest tools in our toolbox to stop cheating.”

“We were pretty happy with how the anti-cheat performed. Obviously I’ll say we can never be perfect, anti-cheat is always a cat-and-mouse game where we’re constantly going back and forth and keeping on top of what the cheaters are doing. But from the beginning this was something we put a high priority on, so when we launch this game we have a really strong anti-cheat program in place.”

Buhl continued: “Again, nothing makes cheating impossible, but enabling Secure Boot and having kernel-level access makes it so much harder to cheat and so much easier for us to find and stop cheating.”

Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.

Dune: Awakening devs apologise for misleading Lost Harvest DLC buyers about the expansion’s scale: “our communication… has not been clear enough”

Tis the season for publishers apologising for screwing up their DLC rollouts, apparently. Even as Paradox Interactive appear crown in hand before Crusader Kings 3 players to say sorry for the buggy Coronations DLC, Funcom are weathering a backlash of their own over communication problems with Dune: Awakening’s new paid Lost Harvest expansion.

“I Have No Words” – Silksong Fans Are Losing Their Minds Over One Bench

“this is the most anger i have ever felt for any game ever”.

Hollow Knight: Silksong is a pretty tough game; we know this, and we’ve discussed it at length already. But there’s one section of the game that is proving to be particularly devious.

Before we go ahead, please note that although this article won’t cover anything related to Silksong’s story, we will be spoiling a key gameplay surprise that you might want to discover for yourself. If you’d like to maintain the mystery, consider coming back at a later date.

Read the full article on nintendolife.com

Football Manager 26 Preorders Are Now Live After Skipping Last Year

After ghosting fans in 2024 by cancelling FM25, Football Manager is finally back in the game. FM26 has a confirmed release date of November 4, 2025, and yes, you can already preorder it.

If obsessing over player stats on your commute sounds like heaven, FM26 Touch also lands on Switch December 4, while FM26 Mobile arrives on Netflix, meaning you can now play Football Manager on the same app you binge Squid Game (yay?).

Where to Preorder Football Manager 26

FM26 is launching on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X|S. FM26 Touch is Switch-only, while FM26 Mobile is Netflix-exclusive. Basically, unless you’re gaming on a toaster, you’ll be able to play.

For now, preorders are open for PC through Steam, Epic Games Store, and Fanatical (Steam key). Console preorders are “coming soon,” which is PR-speak for “sit tight and wait your turn”.

For those on PC, your best option is currently to preorder through Fanatical, which has FM26 down to £40.99 in the UK and $44.99 in the US. That’s 18% off the list price, and a tidy saving if you were almost certainly going to buy the game.

It’s the best discount amongst the bunch, with Epic and Steam currently offering 10% off for those who preorder. It’s also a Steam key, so you can immediately quell those fears of juggling it in any other libraries.

What’s New in FM26

FM26 isn’t just showing up late to the party; it’s arriving with a full makeover. The series is moving to the Unity engine, bringing a big graphical upgrade and more realistic animations. Sports Interactive dropped a Match Day First Look in September, showing off the new tech in action.

Women’s football is finally making its debut too, with major leagues from England, Spain, Germany, France, and the US expected. Tactics are getting deeper as well, with new player roles, more formation tweaks, and control over how your squad plays with or without the ball. Translation: even more ways to yell at your virtual fullbacks for ignoring instructions.

Expect the usual UI polish and quality-of-life updates, but FM26’s real pitch is clear, after a year warming the bench, it wants to be seen as a proper next-gen reboot, not just another spreadsheet simulator with vague grass background.

Other Preorder Guides

Robert Anderson is Senior Commerce Editor and IGN’s resident deals expert on games, collectibles, trading card games, and more. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter/X or Bluesky.

Among Silksong’s secrets is a possible Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 Easter egg

Hollow Knight: Silksong contains what could be a cheeky reference to this year’s prior headline success story from a smaller developer, Sandfall Interactive’s Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. Are you playing Team Cherry’s new metroidvania? Here’s how to find that Easter egg. Beware mild area and equipment spoilers from this point on.

Category: Video Games