Expeditions: Rome

Rome is a good-adjacent game, of the sort that fills the time but leaves few memories. And boy does it fill the time: clunky mecanics that take over the story aspects for half the game in dreaded, repetitive conquest maps. If you're here for CRPG content and storylines and narratives, you'll be as frustrated as I was slogging through these parts trying to reach the next story content. It picks up (kind of) in the third part of the game, which introduces a dose of tongue-in-cheek humorous references that at least brighten the repetitive mecanics. It also helps that by then you should have hoarded enough RSS not to need to micromanage your armies. You can just steamroll the enemies and rush it. Ironically, where the game shines is the last part. Where things finally feel urgent and dense and like the stakes do matter, as do your choices. If you have time to spare and the money, try it, I guess. But I can't say it scratched any itch I had. If anything, it sent me back to the previous franchise iteration which I then played twice, in a row, so there's that.

Expeditions Rome is half RPG and half tactical combat game with pretty accurate (with alterations in mind) historical setting and a lot of realism. Both halves are actually really good. On RPG side, dialogues are well written with good voiceacting to boot, characters feel distinct, realistic, with personalities, views on things and quests. Choices you make in game have consequences and it's reflected in multiple endings. On tactical side, it shines even brighter: combat system is at Divinity: Original Sin 2's level, with interactive environment, fumes, fires, acids, traps and so on (no spells though :-). Map layout is usually excellent too; you can make a combat a lot easier when you plan it properly beforehand. Final battles feel semi - epic, and are quite original. Characters have distinct classes and builds inside them, which you can mix and match. No class nor skill is useless, which is great too. Enemies are quite capable. Unique items are awesome. Combat system is very good and extra action system is fun to work with. Game was bug-free for me and felt well optimised. This game is long, really long. It has 3 chapters filled with quest combat, accidental combat, pacification combat and legion battles. Don't get me wrong, you're getting your money's worth here, which is good, but it also wears you down a little bit. On the weaker side: game forces you to use your B-team on pacification missions for no good reason and it's irritating as all get out. It forces you to switch gear, ranks and develop a second team consisting of people you don't care about whatsoever. Your squad moves a bit slow, crosses cliffs very slow and uses ladders incredibly slow. Enemy combat speed should be set to 2 immmediately, default speed is unbearable. And strategic layer, with legion combat mini-game, is mediocre (still better than in Pathfinder:WotR though). Overall, I had a lot of fun with this game, and I am rating it 8.5/10. If you like RPGs or tactical games, you should get it.

The largest issue with Expeditions: Rome is that it is filled to the brim with "almost but not quite" game design decisions. How about an rpg/strategy hybrid where you can run your own Roman legion and explore a re-imagined ancient Rome? Great - but if your legions don't defeat your enemies by an arbitrary percentage they're going to lose experience when you win battles. (yes, really) You can equip your own personal squad with era appropriate weapons and equipment! But their effectiveness is based entirely on random rpg attributes so good luck getting decent gear. Maybe you can compensate with crafting? Sure, but you have to grind your way through the first quarter of the game before you can reasonably get crafting up and running - and it will still be random. (and tedious!) Well at least you can build up a small squad of carefully curated soldiers centered on your protaganist - at least they will eventually have pretty solid gear after that early game annoyance. Until you're forced as part of game mechanics to deploy poorly equipped and trained troops outside of your "main party" for incredibly annoying story reasons. (and you will have to do this repeatedly) This game frustrates me to no end. It has all the hallmarks of what could be a great game (lore, cohesive story, solid tactical gameplay) but its like no one play-tested for quality of life issues at all. Every time you get settled into a game session where it seems like you can lean back and enjoy yourself the game throws another annoying mechanic your way that seems to exist only to annoy the player. Buy it on a steep discount if at all.

I've played all the games in the Expeditions series and I consider myself a fan. I like the Rome setting and lore behind it. Gameplay is the same tactical turn-based combat with free map exploration in-between. There is plenty of room for role-playing, even when some of dialogue options seem weird. The normal party combat is the same as in the rest of the series. You can experiment a lot with lineups and balance out your party abilities. I like it. The new big feature is the ability to control an army. You can capture outposts by pitching battles. The battle system is unintuitive and weird at best. After winning a couple of them I simply selected random cards and skipped the chore. As long as you have greater numbers, your army should win. This army system is also my main turn-off from the game. Every now and then the enemy army will attack on of the outposts you've captured and that means that you have to stop your advance and go back to defend. No matter if you win or not, you will lose a lot of soldiers, which will force you to wait until your numbers replenish before attacking another enemy outpost. I was stuck in a loop because of that. I couldn't replenish enough troops for an attack, because I was constantly attacked at other outposts. Extremely infuriating mechanic. Supporting characters are boring and generally uninteresting. Unfortunately it clashes with your ability to role-play. I hate flat characters with weak motivations, especially in a text based RPG. Overall, a decent game, but it's a pass for me. I couldn't finish it because of the constant frustrations with the army system and weak supporting characters. Maybe I'll return to it in a month or two. Expeditions Viking will remain as the best one in the series for me.

Even though the game has a slow and tidious beginning, towards the end of act I it opens up and you notice that decisions matter and as such, you start to become immersed in the story and the characters. The grind is also just mostly at the beginning and as boring as it is, the quests and story are great enough for me to absolutely love this. It took me circa 60-65h to complete the game, recommended to everyone as the combat are fairly easy (but satisfying) and thus there isn't such an annoying learning curve as i.e in the pathfinder series.