Expeditions: Viking

Buuuuugs! Bugs buggity bugging bugs! The game is frigging AWESOME, immersive to the point I spent the last two days engrossed, but oh Lord Odin Allfather, the BUGS! The newest one, introduced by a hotfix of all things, makes the game unplayable. The screen just goes black upon entering certain locations, and thats it. Game over until they release another hotfix, because all the autosaves die at that point, too. Next time, I'll be waiting with buying games from those devs a couple months. I'll still get support them, but not serve as unpaid QA. This game, awesome as it is, should still be in beta. The one star rating will change to a five star rating when they finally fix this game up to a playable state. This sort of shenanigans SHOULD NOT be tolerated by paying customers.

Let's clear up 3 things you might read about elsewhere: Timer - yes, there is a time limit to finish the game. THE TIMER WILL NOT LIMIT YOU IN ANY WAY. I have completed the game, as in finished every possible quest, within half of the allocated time without having to optimize my play too much around it. Time is used solely as a resource for building your town, which is (sadly) very unimportant part of the game. Bugs - I finished 1.05 version of the game and did not encounter any game-breaking bugs, the game crashed on me only once. Bad combat - a lot of older reviews will complain about getting killed on the first round of combat before having the chance to do anything. This was addressed in 1.05, combat is now OK. Expeditions: Viking is a story-driven RPG with turn-based squad-based combat. You will get to turn the course of the story through dialogues which are quite well written, the story branches a lot based on your choices. Your companions react to your choices not just by their dialogue lines, but it also modifies their stats. My biggest issue was that the individual quest were rather inconsistent in terms of immersion - at some points, I felt really "in it" and could relate to the characters, at other points, things just didn't make sense, mainly towards the end of the game as it gets unnecessarily epic and your small group is overthrowing kingdoms for breakfast, while I think it would serve the setting better to keep the story more low-key. A few times I felt like obvious solutions to quests are missing and instead I am given weird and unnatural choices. So the content is well designed, but feels like it could have been more refined, given more time. The combat is not overly complicated and got a bit easy once I got the hang of it even though I played on the hardest difficulty. A lot of things could be re-balanced to make it more challenging and interesting and the AI is not the brightest, but it was engaging and fun to play thorough the whole game anyway.

This game impressed me in ways that I honestly was not expecting. I'd played Exp: Conquistadors previously, but Vikings is a superior game on almost every level. A lot of the systems and mechanics have been refined. Combat is just as tactical and engaging, but with more depth and options. The game places itself much more heavily in the RPG genre, and I think it's better for it. But what amazed me most of all, was the intelligence and maturity with which the game's writing approached its premise and subject matter. It would've been SO tempting for the creative team to lean in to the power fantasy of playing as a Viking: "hey, wanna play as a Viking brute? Violence! Murder! Mayhem! hurhur lolz!" We know from history that the Vikings could be extremely violent, but the game doesn't try to play this up in order to seem more edgy and cool: instead, it treats its subject matter respectfully and intelligently. Pillaging and raping are acknowledged as aspects of this time period, but the game neither shies away from this fact nor glorifies it. I appreciated that. We need more games with that mindset approach.

I've played all the way through twice (on Steam, that's why it doesn't show here), and I love this game. I nominated it for PC Game of the Year. TL;DR great story, clever turn-based combat, roleplaying mentality encourages emotional investment. Reasons to love it: Brilliant storyline: Roleplay as the new chief securing his village, and cross the seas for plunder, allies, or conquest. Several different ways to win (be over 100 in either power or wealth to win that path). Companions provide storyline and several can be recruited or killed based on player choices. It was such an immersive role-playing experience that I thought about how my character would rule post-game for several days afterward. Clever combat: Turn-based, hex-based. Simply beefing up on equipment won't guarantee victory, neither will focusing on only one type of combatant (my main beef with Conquistador was that ranged combat was useless and the best path to tactical victory was through melee-strong classes. Not the case in Vikings, a balanced team is necessary to adapt to different challenges. Crafting/Building: Crafting your own items, and seeing my warriors parade around in new equipment, let me see my wealth progression for peniless raiderer to shiny conqueror. Building up my home base had compelling choices, several of which were mutually exclusive and oriented me towards one victory path or the other. Cons: No expansion, I wanted to play more. Several of my initial complaints have been fixed (was extremely buggy at release, now it runs smoothly), now your initial position in combat isn't as influenced by how your party was walking around beforehand. The compaign does force you down a few main victory paths, so it's not quite as open-world as I would have liked. Overall: get this game! Especially if on an amazing sale. Get Conquistador as well, this is a great developer. I'm excited to see where they send an Expedition game next!

Old-school RPG with innovations, set in the dark ages. Important: this is an RPG, not a survival or tactical game. A clan leader, who has to prove her worthiness, finds herself entangled in conflict, in Fistful of dollars fashion between saxons, picts and norse over in Britain. PRO - This is among the best representation of dark ages I have ever seen. A bit gritty, but folks are not portrayed dumb, and there are quite a few merry moments. - campaign structure is very nice. Can work for all parties until a break point. Similar to New Vegas or Deadfire. - reacitivity is very good. Tailor made responses instead of relationship counters - there is a (leisure!) time limit in the game. Elegant solution for rest spamming - roleplay as you want, the game doesn't force morality on you. Acting like a pillager, mercenary or a trader all work. Greedy choices often worth a considering, consequences never feel "evil tax", but are there - multiple solutions to quests, fights can be avoided. Pacifist playthrough not possible, due to the initial setup. A diplomat-support main character is viable tho. - choices matter in this game - companions provide background and minimal banter. No Bioware whiners :) - partial voiceover, nice for replays - low key plot, not saving the world - the battle system is very good. You can jump in instantly, and you add more complex team combinations during the game. CONTRA - loading times at select places are very bad (ie. Ribe) - it would be nice to have a compass on city maps. Easy to get lost when entering and exiting a building changes the orientation without notice - the AI never gives up. It means you have to chase the hopeless bandits around the map - minimum ability point spend to unlock ability tier: a tax for the player who knows what is needed for the team. Ie. you cannot create an artisan hireling, because to unlock talents you need to spend surplus points. Not very nice. One of the best CRPGs of the last ten years. Well done!