Endless Legend (4X game by Amplitude) - Update: Out now

Well, AI tweaks are 'on the way', so I'm guessing just to make the current single player not a complete pushover, they went with the hilarious multiplier route for now.

Factions with strong ranged units tend to dominate though, because the AI isn't smart enough not to throw everything at a chokepoint region that you can pretty much dictate.

edit: As an aside, this makes questlines that include a "colonize a region" step pretty annoying because everything is taken up by Turn 50 or so. At this point I pretty much pre-colonize a region with intention to salt and rebuild for the Ardent Mages quest where you have to found a city with 10 Science. You can't exactly bumrush the quest either because it's after a step where you need 5 (!) pacified minor faction villages in regions you control.
 
Got this during the sale and my brief thoughts from having played it a few hours:

CarbonatedFalcon said:
So in case there was anybody on the fence about Endless Legend in the last hour, I've been playing it.

It's an absolutely beautiful game. Graphics, UI, music, oh man the music. Pretty much love everything about it except the combat. The combat has been pretty lame and I'll probably end up auto-resolving most of the time. (Not that it's necessarily any worse than Civ combat which is similar to the auto-resolve option).

But I've never been huge on combat in 4X games anyway - always been more into city managing/exploration, which is great here. Lots of interesting ruins/anomalies/resources to take advantage of.

The factions themselves ooze with personality and from what I understand can have quite different playstyles. Been playing as the Vaulters this first game. And of course you can create your own faction like in Gal Civ or several other 4Xs (takes on the appearance of a base faction, but you set the attributes).

There's also minor factions to deal with which are like a combination of city-states and barbarians.

Quest system is pretty cool, each faction follows a different main questline that pushes you to complete certain objectives, and adds a bit of story that you don't really get in Civ, (at least Civ V and earlier entries - Beyond Earth apparently has something but it's not as deep?)

I think that covers most of it (might have forgotten one or two things), so yeah - fun game, if you're even remotely interested in it/4Xes and don't mind a mediocre combat system, I'd definitely recommend.
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I like it a lot so far aside from the combat. Much more than I did Endless Space. It's pretty awesome. Though I might have to go back and give Endless Space another go. And I've got Dungeon of the Endless to play too!

My one complaint is that the Mezari bonus faction is just a skin for the Vaulters. I guess I could make my own custom faction with them and it'd be cool, but I was extremely disappointed/confused when I booted up a test game and it was the Vaulters cutscene, and the tooltips for some Mezari/Vaulters tech refer to the Vaulters specifically. Not too much effort put in there, which is a shame.
 
That was the case with the Sheridyn faction in Endless Space, but they turned them into a full seperate faction over time. They do support their games well over time.
 
Can anyone clarify something about minor factions for me?

There's pacification, then assimilation for minor factions. What exactly does pacification offer vs. the more obvious benefits of assimilation? It's not entirely clear what benefits you get, it just says "will provide its benefits to the empire controlling the region". Apparently you get an extra worker or something? But that's it? And is there any difference between the minor factions when they're just pacified?

Wiki isn't the most complete.
 
i think when they are pacified they wont produce roving armies and give plus 1 worker to your city per village and when you assimilate them you get whatever bonus they give (like 5% food per village) on your entire empire.
 
EPzveMy.jpg
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Not shown (entirely): I'm Vaulters, so I already know the technology. Endless Legend pls. Should be better checks for this.


Also, peace + map exchange with the Drakken is OP. Dat map hacks yo.
 
LurkerPrime said:
RPS have named Endless Legend their game of the year. A real curveball, because they also awarded it 4X of the year.. Far as I'm aware, RPS doesn't give a game two awards so this is a real break from tradition for them; they must really adore the game.

Congrats to AMPLITUDE. I hope they continue making cool stuff...
and that they'll make good combat one day!
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Perhaps RPS gave Endless Legend such rewards so they have more visibility? This year we have Age of Wonders 3 as well, yet its Endless Legend who received it. While the former's quality is unquestionable, the latter's also have many interesting ideas that Amplitude bring to the fantasy 4X games, but despite that, it hardly have any attention either from the press or the general gaming community (as shown by the lack of Neogaf OT).
 
Shengar said:
Perhaps RPS gave Endless Legend such rewards so they have more visibility? This year we have Age of Wonders 3 as well, yet its Endless Legend who received it. While the former's quality is unquestionable, the latter's also have many interesting ideas that Amplitude bring to the fantasy 4X games, but despite that, it hardly have any attention either from the press or the general gaming community (as shown by the lack of Neogaf OT).
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It's funny how beloved it is between my friends, but how the excitement seems more of a quiet one. Very strange indeed.
 
Shengar said:
Perhaps RPS gave Endless Legend such rewards so they have more visibility? This year we have Age of Wonders 3 as well, yet its Endless Legend who received it. While the former's quality is unquestionable, the latter's also have many interesting ideas that Amplitude bring to the fantasy 4X games, but despite that, it hardly have any attention either from the press or the general gaming community (as shown by the lack of Neogaf OT).
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EL was an Early Access release by a small, largely unproven developer. It's also a 4X strategy title (double niche). I don't think it's low profile should surprise anyone, honestly.


I'm still baffled that RPS swoons over this game so much - its once again proving that presentation rules above all. Half of their praise for the game is its (admittedly) good presentation, but when it comes to EL's mechanics they make the game's flaws into ambitious new features, with the
deeply flawed
combat brazenly near the forefront of it all.

RPS has their points but they're taking it too far. I get that the enchanting, fresh nature of the setting and set-up is appealing, but letting it blind you to the game's flaws is something RPS should be beyond by now.
 
I'd like to bring up an interesting phenomenon that's cropped up in the last couple of years which I call the 'indie fallacy'.

A lot of people are drawn to 'indie' games partially because they're 'niche', 'not mainstream', etc. Granted, games like Shovel Knight, Fez, Bastion, etc are legitimately good games, and no one can deny that not having shareholders to answer to means a small team can focus on making a very tailored (experimental, even) experience that they want to make.

However, the fallacy comes about that just because there are many examples of indie darlings that are mega successful, that people start to assume success/visibility/exposure/etc is proportional to the quality of the game. This is hardly the case. Much like everything from music to viral videos on Youtube, a lot of it has to do with simply being in the right place at the right time to capitalize on something that resonates with people.

EL/DotE are hardly the only examples of gems that silently live out their lives in obscurity. Heck, we aren't even talking about "critically acclaimed, commercial bombs", I'm talking about "what acclaim lol".

Just my two cents.

edit: Another two cents. Easier way to sum it up is "there's just way too many good games fighting for attention".
 
Even with Endless Legend not getting a lot of coverage, I believe the game is selling very well. Recently, Amplitude posted on their site the following news regarding the Endless series:

Dear players,

We have reached a milestone: Amplitude Studios sold 1 million Endless games. This includes Endless Space, Endless Space: Disharmony, Endless Legend and Dungeon of the Endless. Actually, well over a million.

I believe they did found an audience that identify with their games and are invested in the games universe.
 
LurkerPrime said:
EL was an Early Access release by a small, largely unproven developer. It's also a 4X strategy title (double niche). I don't think it's low profile should surprise anyone, honestly.


I'm still baffled that RPS swoons over this game so much - its once again proving that presentation rules above all. Half of their praise for the game is its (admittedly) good presentation, but when it comes to EL's mechanics they make the game's flaws into ambitious new features, with the
deeply flawed
combat brazenly near the forefront of it all.

RPS has their points but they're taking it too far. I get that the enchanting, fresh nature of the setting and set-up is appealing, but letting it blind you to the game's flaws is something RPS should be beyond by now.
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I'm with you a little on this as well. EL is a good Civ type game - but I'd say that's about it. For me Dungeon of the Endless is much more interesting mechanically, and a whole lot more fun to play.
 
Anybody else get relatively frequent crashes? Only seems to happen if a game has gone on awhile, but I've had something like 3 crashes now in the past couple days. Really annoying.
 
CarbonatedFalcon said:
Anybody else get relatively frequent crashes? Only seems to happen if a game has gone on awhile, but I've had something like 3 crashes now in the past couple days. Really annoying.
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I used to have even more frequent crashes than that. The work around suggested by a dev on the official forums was to set the game executable to 32 bit. Do this by right clicking the game in your steam library > properties > betas > and from the beta drop down menu "32 bit content for 64 bit users".
 
ameratsu said:
I used to have even more frequent crashes than that. The work around suggested by a dev on the official forums was to set the game executable to 32 bit. Do this by right clicking the game in your steam library > properties > betas > and from the beta drop down menu "32 bit content for 64 bit users".
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Are they the same kind of crashes, even now? They happened enough to me to get me to stop playing, waiting for a patch... which knocked me out of playing it entirely.

I don't know why but CTDs in strategy games drive me crazy - far moreso than in other types of games.
 
CarbonatedFalcon said:
Anybody else get relatively frequent crashes? Only seems to happen if a game has gone on awhile, but I've had something like 3 crashes now in the past couple days. Really annoying.
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It was crashing quite often for me, but hasn't done so once since I switched to the 32-bit version:

- Right-click on “Endless Legend” in your Steam Library
- Select “Properties”
- Go to the “Betas” tab
- Select the “32-bit” branch

Hopefully this helps!
 
oipic said:
It was crashing quite often for me, but hasn't done so once since I switched to the 32-bit version:

- Right-click on “Endless Legend” in your Steam Library
- Select “Properties”
- Go to the “Betas” tab
- Select the “32-bit” branch

Hopefully this helps!
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man really hope they fix that proper since am getting the crashes too
 
How's the storytelling aspect of this game? I don't mean necessarily the default narrative selection that they give you, but rather the dynamic story that develops from your cumulative civ design and scenario progress? Does it result in memorable and complicated tales? I've actually already bought it on sale, but I'm still looking for a 4x style game that allows for imaginative and entertaining folklore creation on a broad, history-spanning scale.
 
Is there any reason to do combat manually in this game? I've just been doing auto combat and it kind of makes me sad.
 
Hastati said:
How's the storytelling aspect of this game? I don't mean necessarily the default narrative selection that they give you, but rather the dynamic story that develops from your cumulative civ design and scenario progress? Does it result in memorable and complicated tales? I've actually already bought it on sale, but I'm still looking for a 4x style game that allows for imaginative and entertaining folklore creation on a broad, history-spanning scale.
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E0C1841781E85EBFB6E088A80B05B5A589E1B1E7
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These guys always end up the assholes that I completely wipe out in my playthroughs lol.

But to answer your question, I'm not sure. What exactly are you looking for? There aren't really any scenarios per-se, and while each faction has a main questline, the side quests that you pick up are randomly generated and self-contained little things.

Skab said:
Is there any reason to do combat manually in this game? I've just been doing auto combat and it kind of makes me sad.
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Most of the time, no. You might want to micromanage melee units when fighting ranged units though.
 
Yeah I've found manual combat to even be a detriment at times. Mayybeee if you have support units that heal/buff/debuff and it's close, but so long as you have a superior force, it's not worth it at all.
 
Ok, I have had very little time to try this out since grabbing it from Steam so I understand that this is a very stupid question...

I have created a settler and they are currently garrisoned in my city. How do I get them to leave the city? I select them and then I can't figure out how to get them to move...

Thanks.
 
Haven't played in a month or so, so forgive me if I'm misremembering this or confusing it with something similar, but don't you have to escort settlers? If you combine a military unit to the Settler to create a 2-unit army, does that allow you to move it?
 
UCBooties said:
Ok, I have had very little time to try this out since grabbing it from Steam so I understand that this is a very stupid question...

I have created a settler and they are currently garrisoned in my city. How do I get them to leave the city? I select them and then I can't figure out how to get them to move...

Thanks.
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There should be a panel on the bottom for units when you've selected them and you want the option that says "New Army". That'll pop them out and let you move them.

And while this doesn't really apply to settlers, note that each individual army has a dust upkeep cost associated with it, so the fewer armies you have, even if they're loaded up with units, will be cheaper than the same amount of units spread across a bunch of 1-unit armies.

While most of the game is fairly intuitive, especially if you're familiar with the genre, there is a manual if you click the manual button on the Steam page in your library that answers quite a few questions. The tutorial is pretty barebones.
Toodles said:
Haven't played in a month or so, so forgive me if I'm misremembering this or confusing it with something similar, but don't you have to escort settlers? If you combine a military unit to the Settler to create a 2-unit army, does that allow you to move it?
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No. They can go out on their own, though it may not always be wise to do so, especially since they have minimal attack/defense (at least the base model.) You can upgrade the settler model with new weapons/armor, but I haven't found any reason to do so.

FF Seraphim said:
Been looking for a game like this. Is there a demo I can try out?
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No demo, but I would suggest watching some let's plays to get a good idea. This one is pretty good. And this guy was apparently a playtester for the game. Has a bunch of videos for most/all the different factions (though some are from the early access portion and the exact mechanics may have changed significantly since).
 
CarbonatedFalcon said:
There should be a panel on the bottom for units when you've selected them and you want the option that says "New Army". That'll pop them out and let you move them.

And while this doesn't really apply to settlers, note that each individual army has a dust upkeep cost associated with it, so the fewer armies you have, even if they're loaded up with units, will be cheaper than the same amount of units spread across a bunch of 1-unit armies.

While most of the game is fairly intuitive, especially if you're familiar with the genre, there is a manual if you click the manual button on the Steam page in your library that answers quite a few questions. The tutorial is pretty barebones.


No. They can go out on their own, though it may not always be wise to do so, especially since they have minimal attack/defense (at least the base model.) You can upgrade the settler model with new weapons/armor, but I haven't found any reason to do so.



No demo, but I would suggest watching some let's plays to get a good idea. This one is pretty good. And this guy was apparently a playtester for the game. Has a bunch of videos for most/all the different factions (though some are from the early access portion and the exact mechanics may have changed significantly since).
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Thanks for the vid links dig the first one as the guy isnt trying to put on some sort of act, but more is actually explaining the game like a normal human being.
 
As someone who is a huge fan of the strategy genre (Civ 5, EU4, CK2 & Rome 2 all have a huge amount of playtime from me) is this game worth the $25 it's currently asking for on Steam?
 
KorrZ said:
As someone who is a huge fan of the strategy genre (Civ 5, EU4, CK2 & Rome 2 all have a huge amount of playtime from me) is this game worth the $25 it's currently asking for on Steam?
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Yes but I would wait until the last day of the sale to see if it gets an encore. It was already a daily so you missed out on that.
 
KorrZ said:
As someone who is a huge fan of the strategy genre (Civ 5, EU4, CK2 & Rome 2 all have a huge amount of playtime from me) is this game worth the $25 it's currently asking for on Steam?
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I think so, but it's no perfect snowflake by any means. Endless Legend is a game that is very strong where it excels and pretty weak where it missed the mark. The real game breaker is just how much you are pining for something new and fresh-EL is full of new ideas and while some of them turned out better than others, you can't deny the game's boldness-that's what RPS was talking to when they praise it.

If you want a more even game like this, there is Age of Wonders w/ it's newer DLC. That's a more well rounded game, but without some of the highs of EL and certainly a much more conventional 4x than EL is.
 
CarbonatedFalcon said:
Yes but I would wait until the last day of the sale to see if it gets an encore. It was already a daily so you missed out on that.
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Damn. I glossed right over it because I didn't really know what this game was until I saw it mentioned on Angry Joe's Top 10.

Fragamemnon said:
I think so, but it's no perfect snowflake by any means. Endless Legend is a game that is very strong where it excels and pretty weak where it missed the mark. The real game breaker is just how much you are pining for something new and fresh-EL is full of new ideas and while some of them turned out better than others, you can't deny the game's boldness-that's what RPS was talking to when they praise it.

If you want a more even game like this, there is Age of Wonders w/ it's newer DLC. That's a more well rounded game, but without some of the highs of EL and certainly a much more conventional 4x than EL is.
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Hmm, interesting.. Could you expand a little on some of the things that you feel it's weak at? If you wouldn't mind.
 
KorrZ said:
Hmm, interesting.. Could you expand a little on some of the things that you feel it's weak at? If you wouldn't mind.
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CONS:
- The combat in the game ranges from irritating to just plain bad.
- Warfare in the game is pretty uneven and driven heavily by momentum, once a stackwipe happens the losing empire is more or less going to get wrecked hardcore.
- District-based expansion and happiness system makes sense, but is not intuitive for new players and results in homogeneous cities.
- After a certain point in the early to mid game, terrain stops being really relevant unless it is some monster anomaly and most all cities eventually do the same thing, there is no real region or specialization to be had, because the tech progression system heavily penalizes diverse city specialization as an unintended side effect.
- The game's basic economic structure breaks down as the game progresses, you wind up awash in gold and perma-boosting luxury goods. There's no real scarcity at the later stages of the game and the power of production is greatly diminished for it.

The above might be harsh, and it might not matter to some people, but I think these criticisms are pretty fair.
 
Fragamemnon said:
CONS:
- The combat in the game ranges from irritating to just plain bad.
- Warfare in the game is pretty uneven and driven heavily by momentum, once a stackwipe happens the losing empire is more or less going to get wrecked hardcore.
- District-based expansion and happiness system makes sense, but is not intuitive for new players and results in homogeneous cities.
- After a certain point in the early to mid game, terrain stops being really relevant unless it is some monster anomaly and most all cities eventually do the same thing, there is no real region or specialization to be had, because the tech progression system heavily penalizes diverse city specialization as an unintended side effect.
- The game's basic economic structure breaks down as the game progresses, you wind up awash in gold and perma-boosting luxury goods. There's no real scarcity at the later stages of the game and the power of production is greatly diminished for it.

The above might be harsh, and it might not matter to some people, but I think these criticisms are pretty fair.
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Thanks for the input, I appreciate it. I'm going to wait to see if it pops back up on the Steam sale and probably pick it up. Most of those issues don't sound too game breaking to me.
 
Endless Legend is in the encore for the Steam sale, so now is the time to pick it up. You'll almost certainly get your value out of it before it drops any lower in price at another sale.
 
Finished my first game finally. Got really boring near the end. No one was attacking me (everyone was "terrified" of my armies - the whole 2 of them) so I just spammed improvements on my cities and won a score victory. In the future I'll probably adjust victory settings because it was kind of a dumb way to win. Difficulty too. But I think every 4X really sort of devolves when you get to end-game - they're best when there's still territory to explore and expand into (and there still were empty regions in my game.)

Also got stuck on the main quest line because it required you to have 3 points in a final tier talent on a hero of your race, and I didn't build them out that way to begin with.

I'd try multiplayer maybe but it seems pretty fucking dead.

More on my mind but that's all I can remember specifically. Definitely some things that could be worked on with the game.
 
so i started my first game as the space vaulters. there is a village of daemons in my region that i can't kill at all.

Is there anything I can do?

Only 25 turns in, so restarting is fine.

I will say the game is beautiful, from the graphics, to the UI, to the general design of everything. Very refreshing coming from Civ.
 
phazedplasma said:
so i started my first game as the space vaulters. there is a village of daemons in my region that i can't kill at all.

Is there anything I can do?

Only 25 turns in, so restarting is fine.

I will say the game is beautiful, from the graphics, to the UI, to the general design of everything. Very refreshing coming from Civ.
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You can research the tech that lets your parley with them - it's in the first tier of research. Basically you go talk to them and it'll give you a quest, if you complete the quest the village will join your empire.
 
KorrZ said:
As someone who is a huge fan of the strategy genre (Civ 5, EU4, CK2 & Rome 2 all have a huge amount of playtime from me) is this game worth the $25 it's currently asking for on Steam?
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If I had to pick one game: my first pick would be Age of Wonders III.
My second pick would be Sorcerer King (in EA right now but about 75% done, should be finished in March)
This would be my third pick at best. I just find the game a little clunky and poor UI- which is kinda unforgivable now.
 
I couldn't find an OT or community thread for this game, so...

I'm finally getting a chance to play EL. I'm playing the Vaulters and getting my ass handed to me by the necrodrones. Not only do they have strong defense and high damage/attack, but they move six per combat round which means they can get past my tanks quickly and decimate my archers. As if that wasn't enough, they also spit poison/plague stuff which does damage-per-turn. They seem really overpowered, and no matter what type of unit I throw at them, they all fare badly. Is there any strategy that's useful for countering them?

Aside from that, I'm mostly enjoying the game. Things like a city's happiness rating are hard to understand; I'm sure there's an internal system for what modifies this, but there's not really any charts and graphs to get a handle on my empire.

A continued annoyance is also the overly-common serious bugs and crashes. Every 20-50 turns I'll get either a crash-to-desktop, or a screen saying a serious error has occurred with the game state. I would have hoped by now (by the game's first expansion being released) that these bugs would be mostly solved. I'm playing the OS X version; perhaps the Windows version is more stable.
 
Really unfortunate to hear that they haven't ironed out stability yet. As I mentioned before, it's the one biggest thing holding me back from returning to the game. Aside from the Endless Legend / Dungeon of the Endless event a while back I haven't done anything with it since last year.

Stability should be of paramount importance, doubly so for strategy games. Hopefully they can get it patched up soon.
 
eyeball_kid said:
I'm playing the OS X version; perhaps the Windows version is more stable.
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This is of no help to you, I know (sorry!), but yeah - the Windows version has been rock-solid for me since opting-in to use the 32-bit version. I was suffering crashes to the desktop every 20-odd turns with the 64-bit code. Dual-boot Windows, perhaps? :)
 
So yesterday Amplitude released a fairly large free update called The Forges of Creation, adding a new hero, items, Steam Workshop support, compatibility with a 3rd-party map editor, and a ton of fixes, especially focusing on AI improvements:
The Forges of Creation update introduces the notion of "Faction Personality" leveraging better the assymetrical gameplay of each faction and focusing on the relations between them. It also features a lot of AI improvements in all the different game mechanics:
Military: The AI will choose more wisely its fights, army composition, equipments for its units and better manage colonists. It will also have a better handling of targets in fights and armies during siege battles.
Research: The AI will make better evaluations of unit models, minor faction slots, naval units and faction specific technologies.
Economy:The AI will be a better colonizer, optimize Trade Routes, manage better resources and adapt their grand strategy depending on their current scores.
Diplomacy: The AI will be able to make assymetrical evaluations and will be less manipulable while being able to take advantage of market values.
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They've also released a paid DLC for (currently 25% off) $1.49 called The Lost Tales, a set of 20 quests that add lore for the minor factions. As well there's a new soundtrack DLC featuring 7 new tracks by FlyByNo, currently 25% off for $2.24.

Anyone tried any of these yet?
 
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