WITWI - Expeditions: Rome, a Grand Campaign-like turn based RPG (Ultrawide Impressions)

Channel:

Healthy Criticism

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Published on February 10, 2022 3:39:40 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkL7cASLQwc

Game:

Expeditions: Rome (2022)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 42:21

124 views

4

Expeditions Rome takes a few of my favourite genres and mashes them together to great success dare I say. Although it is missing some options that I seek in a turn based strategy game, it does not fail to impress in its overall package.

Steam Curator Page:
https://store.steampowered.com/curator/36307721-Healthy-Criticism/?appid=1708091

+Voice acting
+Class system
+Abilities for each class and weapons
+Party management
+Story
+Mini card game built in to sieges
+Mission objectives

-Unable to skip/ Fast forward during enemy and ally moves
-Cannot display enemy danger zone (movement or attack)
-Voiceless protagonist
-Some NPCs are missing avatars
-Walking around camp gets boring
-Cannot quick exit missions, must walk to exit

I want to start the written review by talking about one gameplay mechanic that I was not able to display during my video presentation, and that is the siege mini game. In the end of this review, I talk about the loyalty feature.

When you are attacking or defending a siege, you are presented with the choice of which commander to send into battle, along side some statistics that determine their survival and success rate. During the sieges, there are 4 phases and each phase presents you with 3 choices you need to make that have various effects on either army, or both. Throughout the campaign you will collect more cards that you can use. Some cards are single use only. You can manage your deck in your camp. That is about it for the sieges.

Starting off with what I want to criticise about the game. My main gripe is the inability to make the AI moves take place at a faster pace, a fast forward option if you may. Additionally, you cannot outright skip anything either. You must sit there and watch every single move happen in real time which is a bummer. Games like fire emblem not only allow you to set the battle pace speed, but also skip the enemy moves altogether.

A close second is a personal pet peeve of mine and that is the silent protagonist. This becomes even more of a frustration when allies that are fully voiced also become silent protagonists when you assume control over them in certain missions, such as the gladiator mission. Bestia all of the sudden becomes a mute and I cannot comprehend why.

Continuing with the negatives, a minor gripe I have that breaks the immersion is the fact that often, NPCs are missing avatars. Such issue should only be present in the game's pre-alpha state, not even beta, let alone its release. The developers should have created another set of avatars for non military NPCs and simply cycle through those and reuse them, just like they reuse the army avatars, including my very own.

Traversing through the maps and your camp does get tedious after a while, especially when you realise that you cannot sprint or quick exit a hub you have entered. You must watch your characters slowly jog to the exit points. This only makes looting even more cumbersome.

Pushing the criticisms aside however, I do still think that this is a very strong game that had a lot of heart poured out on it. I do appreciate the immense talent behind the voice acting. I have yet to come across a voice actor that came across as B tier.

I would have preferred the more traditional means of recruiting soldiers to follow you similarly to Fire Emblem games, but I have no complaints about the way you recruit your army in this game. You simply walk over to the war tent and hire your people for a relatively low coin cost too.

I wish to talk about the loyalty feature that this game brings to the table. Throughout the course of the campaign, you will be presented constantly with dialogue choices that will have an effect on your companions. You must choose a balance between greed, disrespect, care and other virtues that your companions carry. The more you lean against your companions, the less loyal they will be towards you, abandoning your side in the end. Furthermore, the more loyal companions seem to be advising you more often on what choices to make, although I have not been able to confirm this feature yet.

To sum up, Expeditions: Rome is a relatively strong game in the genre, despite its shortcomings when it comes to quality of life features. The game allows the player to customise their companions to a great extend, thanks to each weapon bringing unique abilities to the battlefield, in addition to the class abilities. A captivating story also helps to make this game worthy of your consideration.

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