Endzone 2 Review (PC) – In The End(zone)
Endzone 2 is a post-apocalyptic colony sim that aims to build on the foundations that its predecessor first laid out in 2021. Having been in Early Access for just shy of a year, does this sequel emerge from the nuclear fallout bunker ready to take on the world? A question we’ll surely answer as we embark on our quest to reclaim and repopulate the Earth.
As far as colony sims go, Endzone 2 places a heavy emphasis on building up developing layers of resources for your post-catastrophe population. Disasters and ecological events will certainly test your mettle, but this is a game fundamentally based on your ability to manage supply lines and ensure basic necessities. Can you expand and thrive, or will you perish in your attempt to strive?
Zone of The Enders
Endzone 2 has three core modes for you to try your God-hand at. First up is the rather lengthy tutorial, the main survival mode, and a variety of challenge scenarios. In each, you set out from an Endzone with your small population of survivors and a basic handful of resources. The world has been ravaged by global catastrophe, and your peoples are the last remaining bastions of human hope.
Story and narrative are kept to a relative minimum, with the only interactions being with guiding tutorial characters, or from random events. For the most part, this is a minimalist approach that’s all about your own tale of helping your cities grow and thrive… or collapse to the elements. I often like this approach, and it works for a smaller, more focused title like Endzone 2. However, the lack of any real personalities or story stakes caused me to feel a little detached from events going on.
The tutorial is exceptionally detailed and structured, with the trade-off being that it’s ridiculously long. Like 4-5 hours long. Real-time strategy and colony sim games are notorious for having a lot of mechanics and systems to learn, but Endzone 2 is pushing it slightly with the time investment required from the off. It was a bit demoralising spending all that time developing my cities, only to have to start all over again for a “proper” campaign.

Zoning In
Regardless of which mode you’re playing however, the core fundamentals of the base-building and colony management in Endzone 2 are excellent. Just like the first entry, you’re expected to increase your populace, matching their resource needs as you do so. Water, food, materials, electricity, mining, comfort, protective clothing, the lot. As you build up, more processes become automated, but it takes a long time to build to that point.
If you’ve played the first Endzone you’ll know what to expect on this front. Random acid rain or droughts will test your planning and reserves, while raiders will roam the map to disrupt your transport routes. That’s right, Endzone 2 now splits the world map into zones, with new settlements required to conquer the entirety of it. It’s the biggest change to the formula, and one I’m rather mixed on.
For a start, in a typical mode, resources will often be separated by zones, therefore bottlenecking progress. Need iron to move forward in technology? Better hunt around the map, start a whole new colony and plug it with resources to do so. Managing multiple settlements does add to the strategy required to succeed, but it also adds a lot of busy work and micro-management, as well as slowing the pace significantly each time you have to establish a new one.

Stay To The End
I will say though, once I had three settlements up-and-running, each becoming autonomous and booming with industry, Endzone 2 felt great. It’s a strange dichotomy, where the splitting of the map into distinct zones makes the gameplay loop more fragmented, but also more involving at the same time. I think I preferred the first game’s approach overall, but for the theme of repopulating the ravaged Earth, the sequel’s approach does work in its own way too.
The slower pace of this series will likely be off-putting for some, as I found it a frequent occurrence to be waiting on a resource to build up to research the next important knowledge, or to be crisis-managing instead of exploring. Speaking of which, exploration has been revamped, with a stronger focus on player control and input compared to the original.
Vehicles are now directly controllable, and you’ll be doing a lot of directing to say the least. Expeditions are essential to gathering research points and resources around the map. Embarking on one means driving over, manually controlling your settler to interact with points of interest. While I liked the fact that you can’t do everything first time, incentivising return trips with specific items, the system is clunky, to put it mildly.

Don’t Let Me Out Of My Zone
Most of the expedition environments are run down structures or a collection of dilapidated buildings. Typically, this would be a fun excuse to explore and let your curiosity run wild. However, Endzone 2 doesn’t do a great job of making interactable objects more noticeable from the drab biomes they’re based in. More than a handful of times I was completely stuck searching for a code or the last interaction object like I was blind fumbling in a haystack for a microscopic needle.
Given how essential expeditions are to progression in the sequel, this relatively minor issue becomes a real thorn in the pace of any given campaign. Once you get used to this though, it is an interesting additional layer that makes the world feel like more than just a canvas for building, which is nice. Establishing transport routes between settlements is streamlined well and it was one of the less cumbersome trade systems I’ve come across.
Managing raiders and combat scenarios is straightforward too. Enemy vehicles will periodically spawn and patrol the map, locking on to your vessels whenever they come into close proximity. Ensuring your vehicles are equipped with sufficient weaponry is essential, as is providing an adequate garage to repair them. It’s an added wrinkle to gameplay, without becoming too intrusive or obstructive, which I find can often happen in colony sims. Make sure to make your offerings to the raider leaders though, or face the consequences…

The End Is (Not) Nigh
It’s worth mentioning that Endzone 2 has all new structures, visuals and animations included for the second post-apocalyptic outing. While graphically this won’t be one that blows you away or has you spellbound by the amount on-screen at once, it looks good for a smaller project. I particularly like the dynamic geography changes that occur during periods of acid rain or droughts. The terrain will dry out to become a barren wasteland, with a notable shift in colour palette, for instance.
You can follow each individual settler throughout an in-game day and while it’s not as involved as something like Stronghold, it lends a more realistic feel to the game overall. Despite having numerous settlements filled with a bustling populace and industry, Endzone 2 ran superbly well, even with just 8GB of RAM on my rig. It’s quite the feat for it to be so smooth and with a settled framerate, as something like Floodland had my PC gasping for air in comparison.
The new additions do enough to justify a new entry, and while the shift in direction with the world map and expeditions may leave some original fans a little out in the toxic cold of acid rain, I suspect there’s enough good here to sustain the fans through any particular droughts. Endzone 2 isn’t necessarily one of the best colony sims I’ve played, and I do think I enjoyed its predecessor’s approach a smidge more than this one, but it’s a solid and fun sequel that’s worth your time.
Endzone 2 is available now on PC via Steam (review platform).
Developer: Gentlymad Studios
Publisher: Assemble Entertainment
Disclaimer: In order to complete this review, we were provided with a promotional copy of the game. For our full review policy, please go here.
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