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!
