ZEPHON Steam Charts & Stats

I'm a massive Endless series fan, and one of my favourite things about the Endless games are the quests and the writing. Zephon has the solid foundations of Gladius when it comes to its mechanics and combat, so it's already in a great place there. But what has me hooked on this game isn't the gameplay so much as the lore. I think Zephon may now be my favourite 4X game when it comes to quests, lore and overall writing. It's simply a joy to slowly piece together what's going on in this post apocalyptic world. With so many leaders to play, with each one having a main story quest with multiple endings. With tidbits of lore scattered all over, I'm confident that by the time I've consumed all this the game will have been worth the cost of entry. I can already tell however that I'm going to sorely miss the faction diversity of Gladius. But when I'm playing Gladius I know I'll also very much be missing the neutral factions and diplomacy in Zephon. Funny thing is, all the unit / faction mechanics from Gladius make a return in some form in Zephon. From units that play more hit and run like Eldar, to single city leaders similar to Space Marines. If you can grab it during a sale, it's an easy thumbs up for me.

I am picky as HELL in just about everything in life. And with that taken into account, I can fully and utterly say that this game is amazing. And kudos from drawing from SM Civ:BE's three affinities and expanding beautifully upon it with such twists. Seriously, that's like cocaine for a world-building-lover like myself. And the potential this game shows is astronomical. We got our fantasy stellaris with Age of Wonders 4 (Go Dreadnought Imperium! lol). Now, thanks to games like this, it's looking more and more like we'll soon get our grimdark land sci-fi stellaris too. For non-grimdark, maybe Age of Wonders: Planetfall can help inspire a new gen of them, cause that game was amazing, even with its rough edges. It only needed more DLC and patches to be truly amazing, cause the foundation and core ideas were drool-inducing lol. Knowing this game might fill in the shoes of the grimdark land sci-fi so well brings joy to my heart, extasi to my brain, and... no, my body's not affected but almost! I hope the devs keep growing this amazing game. I was worried at the beginning of its release that the devs were just gonna abandon it but I was glad they didn't. Turns out they were taking cautious steps towards More. Financing was lacking at the beginning, obviously. Supporter DLC gave it up. But they used the resources it gave them wisely, and kept going, little update after little update, and then boom! The first DLC expansion arrived. New units, new leaders, new points. And then more little patches! And more DLC! Speed is picking up but quality doesn't seem to drop. I am an OC efficiency afficionado and can blatantly declare I made a good investment on this game and its additional paid content. To anyone who might be willing to read all this yapping, and has not purchased yet: BUY THE DAMN THING ALREADY! Hardly you'll regret it, this ♥♥♥♥ GOOOOOOD!!!" LOL

Ive tried to find a good 4X strategy game to get into. Stellaris, Total War, CIV, Age of Empires. None had the same approachability as this. The mechanics are very new user friendly, play time doesnt require an insane amount of time, and overall,. it was fun and a great stepping stone to getting into strategy games.

I am a veteran player of Gladius. In my opinion Zephon is a great improvement and it's very nice to play. I really enjoyed the "end of the world" event, that makes the matches not too long. If you enjoyed Gladius I strongly believe you will have a lot of fun with Zephon.

Moving a unit consumes all movement points regardless of the distance actually traveled. This is an "intentional design choice" meant to "increase tension by-" blah blah blah One of the biggest problems with random things in games is that ninety nine times out of a hundred its a pass/fail thing that opens no new play opportunities when you fail. You either get the thing or you don't. You find the thing or you don't. You convince the person or you don't. In TTRPGs this can be interesting because you have a DM that can dynamically alter the entire plot on the fly. In video games it just means less content, so its just the devs doing a bunch of work to make the game less fun- not that most people have realized this yet. That doesn't mean randomness has no place in a game. You just have to treat it as a mechanic to be engaged with instead of this weird check thing where you have to know all the numbers to hit before you reach X or Y part. Of course, making a series of gambles is only interesting when you can employ strategy to mitigate risk, which modern devs still haven't figured this out on a conceptual level, so your ability to do so is often incredibly basic and unengaging. They generally have to work really hard to make the game *around* the mechanics more fun to counteract how unfun the mechanic is. Think lootershooters or diablo clones and grinding. Now exploration in 4x games is gambling. Worse, its *mandatory* gambling. Punishing players for doing something they *have* to do is bad game design, and 4x games are snowbally, so mitigating swing is even harder. Its why no one really likes Civilization-likes anymore and are moving towards Grand Strategy type games like Stellaris, because they mitigate the issues inherent to 4x strategy games a whole lot better by shrugging and saying "yeah ♥♥♥♥♥ unequal, lets make it fun anyway or just make it not matter" instead of competing over who can miss the point the hardest. You can't have such a bad spawn in Stellaris that you effectively brick outside of extremely specific starting scenarios like starting right next to a genocidal faction as a pacifist. It's already a risk in a 4x title to move units into territory where you don't have vision for obvious reasons. There's also opportunity cost because you never know when you're bolting towards more empty desert and away from important things like strategic control points or resources that you don't know exist. It's actually one of the biggest *flaws* of 4x titles because so much of your ability to compete is down to your spawn and whether or not you get lucky with exploration. Nerfing movement is nerfing risk mitigation in a game genre that is only fun when you can mitigate risk. Upon further review, its clear the game is missing other basic QoL features for things like unit and city management. I'm sure that's also an 'intentional' and 'deliberate' choice as well. It's doubling down on what makes a 4x bad instead of trying to figure out how to shore up the weaknesses. Worse still, they're *smug* about it too. Notice no one is praising the actual mechanics in the reviews, that's because the only thing good about the game is the atmosphere/lore/storytelling. Well I guess the art and sound are pretty good too. The point I'm getting at, is you should not play this game if you want a good 4x game. It's a terrible 4x game. That's why I'm giving it a negative review. This game should not have been a 4x game. It should have been a narrative driven strategy/tactics hybrid with a simplified strategic layer, a tactical layer, and a 'send these dudes out to a location and then make decisions about what they do when they're there' mechanic. Would have been much simpler. But then again, these are the devs for Gladius and I'm certain this game was made because they had the infrastructure and desire to build another grimdark 4x game.

Seems very unpolished. Some examples: All diplomacy starts by asking if you want to listen to the offer instead of just showing the offer. A completely pointless extra click Many units have action they can perform after ended move. However the game will move on to the next unit unless there is an attack avaible, forcing you to constantly go back and find your previous unit on the map to execture the necessary order. There is sort of lack of direction in the game. First playthough I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing, but won anyway. Diplomacy is seemingly random. Had close allies suddenly declare war, but still claim to be close friends.

Criminally undiscovered strategy game. This game is downstream of a unique take on 4x which the developer previously explored in Warhammer Gladius, a strategy game where ALL the combat is taking place each turn on the strategic layer. It wastes very little strategic space, moves quickly, and is a great deal of fun. The world, aesthetic, and soundtrack are campy but well-realized. The one more turn energy is extremely strong, turns fly by, and the game has a way of creeping up on you, building a little at a time until you realize the conflict you are in is actually amazing and the game has you hooked. There are different ways to build out your game strategy among basically three overlapping tech trees further supported by the passives of your faction leader. One game might have you basically orbital dropping space marines, the next might be heavy armor, hovercraft, or operational dominance. It is an excellent flavor to be the underdog in a world gone to hell slowly becoming a force in it, and the event system and war in heaven concluding the game gives you space to flex your muscles and open your wings. Zephon is a goofy, awesome romp through the apocalypse packed full of monsters and awesome laser guns wrapped up in a very agile 4x game. It's different, it's fun, it's a spectacle, it's worth the money and the time. Easy recommend.

This is by far one of my favorite 4x games, only outcompeted by games like Total war and Stellaris for their own respective "styles". Rest assured though, unlike either of them, this game does not need the DLC to be enjoyable. Let me get into that. If you were interested at all by Gladius, then get this game. As much as i am a die hard warhammer fan i cannot state enough how much of an upgrade this game is, most especially for this; **THE DLC ISNT IMPORTANT** Crazy damn concept but you dont need to shell out extra money if you want the experience to not be shallow and lacking, as free patches come right along side and the base game on it's own still has an incredibly amount for you to toy with. The flow of the game into the later stages fixes alot of problems i had with Gladius as a whole including in unit control, general use for having actual diversity of units, and a fix for the problem id call "slowdown" in 4x games where the size of the map and the location of two player's bases make them have to wait multiple turns just for their armies to even see eachother, and upwards of 10 or more turns before a newly created unit actually sees combat. The fix to this is an increasing number of alternative means of transportation, movement blocker clearing, flat out teleportation, and more. If you have 8 units of end game infantry to get on the other side of the map, you can get them there and damn quick. As for the art, the theming, the music and the writing? ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ Phenomenal. Far and away the quests in this game and the choices actually captivate me in a way both Stellaris and Total war never can do, besides flashy cinematics for the latter. Everything has depth here, flavor and spice to every detail that i cannot help but adore. I would easily buy more spin-off games or even other forms of media set in this world, as it intrigues me in a way id put as being similar to fallout or SCP. Basically, Gameplay:10/10 Art: 9/10 Music:6.5/10 Writing:8.5/10 Worldbuilding: 12/10 Steam, make this game more popular than Gladius and my soul is yours

Love this game, it's a lot of fun. Just a warning to anyone with 13th or 14th Gen CPU Intel processor. The game constantly crashes. They said make sure your bios is up to date. It is. The devs have stated it it unfixable. Over 600 steam games and this is the only game that crashes ALL THE TIME. Unfortunately will not buy anymore of their products.

TLDR Ratng: 65/100 This is not a bad game but it has some flaws that makes me not willing to recommend it. I would probably go for a "mixed" review if there were any on Steam. Positives: - The game is not difficult to play. Some 4X require a lot of investment to navigate but on this one you just complete the tutorial and you are good to go. Neutral: - The game doesn't offer much. If you compare the complexity even with 10+ year old 4x games (like CIV5), this is much much easier. If you compare it with something more modern (like Stellaris with all DLCs), this is basically child's play. This is not necesarily a negative. Some people might enjoy the simplicity. But I feel a good amount of players would expect a bit more features / mechanics in the game. Negatives: - My biggest negative point - and the main reason I marked this as "not recommended" - is because the game is balanced around DLCs. If you buy all the DLCs, you are fine. But I personally judge it's a bad practice to force players to buy the DLCs to get a balanced game. Balance should be in base game. DLCs for new classes, rulers, scenarios, campaigns...etc. Not balance. For example, Close Wave research tech is locked behind a DLC. This affects your population growth (which is pretty much a fixed number assuming you have enough housing). Your population is your main limitation in your economy and production. A feature that boost your economy and production - and it is mentioned in almost every guide- should not be behind a DCLs. - The game is overall very very slow. I have thousands of hours in 4x games (CIV games, Stellaris, AO4 ..etc). I am not unfamiliar with the level of patience and pace of such games. But this to slow even for me. You have to spam a lot of units early - otherwise you will get ran over by neutrals. And most units move 1 tile over difficult terrain (which is more than half the map) and 2 tiles on a flat terrain. What is worse that they do like 2.6 damage on a 52 health enemy. Fighting is absolute slog. I ended up with like 25 units of moving 1-2 tiles across the map to complete a basic objective. And even end-game units do like 6 damage so you need several of them to even deal with basic neutral. You won't lose the fight but it takes forever to do anything. On the final fight it took me 31 turns to reach the enemies. And I had the last units in the tech treee. I was already bored when I started the fight. It felt like a chore. - The UI is not difficult to use. But it just lacks some basic information. For example, there is no information on how damage is calculated. Why is a unit with 16 damage and 8 armor penetration doing 4 damage on a 2 armor enemy? Most games have a breakdown to let the player know what affects the damage. What's worst that shooting the second time, it does double the damage. Or even less that the first time. It feels like the entire damage calculation is put through a dice at the end. This is pretty fundamental information that should be present. If the balance around DLCs changes and maybe the speed of the game is addressed a little bit, then I will change my recommendation. As it is, I cannot recommend it.