If Endless Space is free to keep, you could always set it aside for a day you feel like playing a 4X game. Well, provided that it’s consoles. Dungeon of the Endless will also always get my recommendation, if it’s free for the weekend on consoles.

I don’t think I’ve played a 4X game before—it’s mainly the lore that makes me want to try these games. What’s the genre like?

This is probably take some time to explain. 4X got its name from its core four tenants: -Explore -Expand -Exploit -Exterminate You know how XCOM has you command an organization? A 4X game puts you in charge of an empire, race, or other type of large faction in a turn based world/galaxy/universe. In Endless Space this has you as a sort of nebulous governing body while Endless Space 2 (and Legends) gives you a leader character who you play as. Typically you start with either a single planet in a galaxy, a town, or a group of people who can start a civilization. Here, you start your empire (or whatever you want to have). You can choose what gets researched, what upgrades are built, and what places produce what things (including units). Along the way you should probably try to build a few units to see what else is out there and to deal with potential threats. Soon you can build more towns, or colonize more planets, which also means obtaining more resources. Eventually you’ll meet other governments that are doing the same, and you can interact with them in a variety of ways. That being said, you’ll often have to prepare to war with one group or another. While you are officially competing with the other factions, there are multiple ways to win. There’s diplomatic victories, mercantile victories, wonder-based victories (wonders being creations that can only exist once a playthrough), military victories, or having the most points by the time the game ends from a turn limit. I guess the TL:DR is that you micromanage a whole empire, sometimes as a specific person, in an effort to achieve the most of something that no other empire can do.

Oh, like the Civilization games? I’ve played one of those. Inwas really, [i]really[/i] bad it. :p

I tend to only play those games on the easiest difficulties for that reason, yet apparently 4X ai can be awfully dumb, at least in terms of building up a military.