izigame.me

It can be a fun experience with friends, for a while. But unfortunately Endless Dungeon ended up being disappointingly shallow, with a core game-play loop that gets old pretty fast. I bought it on release but decided to leave it alone for a good while, hoping that in time, it might eventually become a little bit more fleshed out and interesting. A year or so later, I think its dead. The developers seem to have abandoned updating it. I can only assume that sales didn't meet their expectations.
I was a pretty big fan of the first game, so I'd been following its development with some interest and in fairness it certainly looks the part visually and it runs well, but that's about the only stand-out positive that it has going for it.
There just isn't a great deal of depth, variety or replay-ability here. It's essentially a co-op party game, at its most fun when you're running around trying to juggle waves and put out fires with a friend. I think the biggest departure from the previous game is the fact that I never really found myself having to think particularly carefully about managing resources, tinkering with the various combinations of different towers, or pondering which upgrades and items that I should use to get the most of my latest run, which was the bread and butter of the first game.
Perhaps it was presumptuous of me to assume that it would be of a similar style to the original, but Dungeons of the Endless was a really unique and interesting tower defence with a great atmosphere. Through its music, art-style and world building, it did a really good job of conveying the pulse-pounding feeling of being trapped in a hostile, semi-derelict environment deep in space, but this was interspersed with some surprisingly meditative and calming moments where the player could relax and ponder their next move. Unfortunately, much of the world-building and general vibe from the previous game has been noticeably excised from the sequel, with everything given a much brighter, more upbeat and more colourful feel. The difference is so jarring that I can only assume that the developers made a conscious decision to try and broaden the game's appeal. Single-player also takes a back seat, giving the game an almost mandatory co-op 'horde-shooter-management' feel, for want of a better description.
It's not a terrible experience by any means but I'd hesitate to call it a real sequel. If you're going to make one (and perhaps this is something Endless Dungeon was never really intended to be), it's probably a good idea to make sure that the people responsible for delivering it are at least fans of the original and that they understood why people liked it.
Perhaps I'm being unfair and they had a good reason for trying to take it in such a different direction (live-service, mass market appeal, need i say more?). I can certainly see what they were trying to do by placing such a heavy emphasis on co-op and simplifying the tower defence aspect of the game... but it just didn't click for me, or with a lot of other people it seems.