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.
I tried to play the master edition with patch v 2.0.3.7 for about 6-8 hours and while other people say its short, I wasn't even able to get to the end because of all the bugs. NPCs get stuck often; enemies too (which sucks when you have to dispose of them all and you cannot reach them); loading a game occasionally breaks some script; the combat is tedious and not enjoyable at all, especially if you want to go the non-lethal way; the engine performs badly in all aspects (long loading times, mediocre to poor graphics, inconsistent performance etc.). The only good thing about the game are all the conversation branches and therefore big re-playability, but make no mistake - there is nothing revolutionary about the dialogue or quest system, they just gave it a lot of time and care. And apparently forgot about the rest of the game. Which is sad, because no matter the various ways you can play, I couldn't force myself to finish it even once (and yes, I do like similar "chatty" RPGs). I cannot help but feel that if they made it as a text adventure with occasional drawings, or use some simple free engine as rpg maker or whatnot, it would be best for the game. Unless there is a ton of patches out by the time you read this, stay away. The goodies beneath the filth are not worth the pain that is playing this game. Two stars for trying.
