Review RPG Codex Review: Expeditions: Conquistador

[Psquit]

Gee alot of fucking bitching...

 

[AN4RCHID]

I think the thing about this game is the felt difficulty between (1) when you have a healthy and well leveled party, and (2) when you screw up and your best guy dies or you get 3-4 injuries, is very big.

Exactly. Some minor screw ups or just bad luck can leave you very boned. [SPOILER for Hispaniola] After the fight with Esteban I had a couple wounded soldiers, but plenty of medicine and rations so I decided to finish the amulet quest while I was in the mountains. On my way to the corpses, I walked into a fight between two rebel groups. I made it through the fight with another wounded or two. No biggy, still should have been able to make it back to town to buy more supplies. At the quest marker I had to fight some natives. Then my fucking slaves turned on me, and at this point basically all my good fighters are out of comission, so I was fucked. Then fucking Esteban ambushed me and kidnapped one of my fucking men >:O I barely limped back to town, one of my soldiers died, another was kidnapped and I assume sacrificed, I had lost all my treasure and I don't think the governor even rewarded me for the quest and the Amulet quest only had a reward of like 800, which was not even enough for medicine to heal my whole party. I shouldn't have taken the detour to finish the Amulet quest, I guess? But shit, I didn't count on being attacked four fucking times on my way home.

This game has a weird difficulty curve where it gets exponentially harder every time something goes wrong. I think it should have resting in towns, and more significant rewards for quests. It doesn't make sense that you can only heal party members out in the jungle, are there no doctors in town? The governor really won't put me up for the night, he makes me sleep in the snake-infested wilderness? The villages should be a safe place to recover before setting out on the next journey. That would mitigate the death spiral when something gets fucked up, give you a chance to get back on your feet. And quests should have decent rewards at the end of the quest, not just in the middle, because half the time all the gold you find gets stolen or lost before you even have the chance to do anything with it. Or the random events should be less fucking annoying, and give me the chance to mitigate or prevent loss with good planning and/or stat checks.

 

[Tigranes]

Yeah, resting / healing in town would be good if combined with more difficult battles, so that it's more difficult in general but the death spiral isn't as extreme. I don't know how you'd prevent abuse of town resting, though, except for an equally arbitrary limit like one town rest every couple of weeks.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Yeah, resting / healing in town would be good if combined with more difficult battles, so that it's more difficult in general but the death spiral isn't as extreme. I don't know how you'd prevent abuse of town resting, though, except for an equally arbitrary limit like one town rest every couple of weeks.

Yep, The Myth of Sisyphus for game designers.

I suppose you could go the Dark Souls route, have very forgiving rest areas, but then require the player to travel a really long way between them. With respawning/random events, rest spamming would not accomplish much.

 

[EG]

See? All this negativity and discussion at ways to improve on the current base has forced me to play the damn thing.

 

[Metro]

People complaining about this game would probably kick Kate Upton* out of bed because her knees are too bony.

*

Spoiler

Bee and Jaesun substitute Brad Pitt or David Beckham.

 

[commie]

How come Grunker collects the brofists and not Ironyuri?

 

[toro]

How come Grunker collects the brofists and not Ironyuri?

faggots

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Yeah, resting / healing in town would be good if combined with more difficult battles, so that it's more difficult in general but the death spiral isn't as extreme. I don't know how you'd prevent abuse of town resting, though, except for an equally arbitrary limit like one town rest every couple of weeks.

How about simply implementing a better health system? IE: Make it take weeks to heal those wounds, like it actually would?

 

[Haba]

Yeah, resting / healing in town would be good if combined with more difficult battles, so that it's more difficult in general but the death spiral isn't as extreme. I don't know how you'd prevent abuse of town resting, though, except for an equally arbitrary limit like one town rest every couple of weeks.

How about simply implementing a better health system? IE: Make it take weeks to heal those wounds, like it actually would?

That'd mean a complete rebalancing of the whole game. So eh.

 

[Metro]

Make it so if you die in-game you die in real life.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Yeah, resting / healing in town would be good if combined with more difficult battles, so that it's more difficult in general but the death spiral isn't as extreme. I don't know how you'd prevent abuse of town resting, though, except for an equally arbitrary limit like one town rest every couple of weeks.

How about simply implementing a better health system? IE: Make it take weeks to heal those wounds, like it actually would?

Longer recovery times is a good idea, but I think you would have to a) let wounded soldiers fight with debuffs, b) drastically cut down on medicine required, like one or two per day per character, max, and c) minor - moderate wounds should gradually heal on their own but with a risk of infection if untreated, it's stupid how every little scratch means CERTAIN DEATH if you don't have medicine.

 

[Liston]

minor - moderate wounds should gradually heal on their own but with a risk of infection if untreated, it's stupid how every little scratch means CERTAIN DEATH if you don't have medicine.

There is a chance that condition will improve without treatment as well as worsen with treatment. Although the chance is pretty low so it's essentially there just for flavor, at least I never found it useful to take into consideration when making decisions.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Alright, looks like I'm getting this badass game.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

Started playing today - was almost put off by the obscuring jungle and the camera - seriously why not something like HoMM 3 map and movement?
But then camped, did some fights and quests - good stuff. Especially the writing does not dissapoint.

Technically - my gfx card and/or cpu are doing waaay too much for this kind of game. Strange.

 

[Galdred]

I expected to enjoy the game for its combat, but I find it pretty repetitive, and lacking options. The setting and explorations are brillant though, if only they were not using the dumbest camera system ever...
I end up having to rotate my viewpoint a lot in order to "exploit" the longer diagonals of my screen in order to see what is ahead. It gets old pretty fast. The difficulty is weird indeed. It is trivially easy when things go smoothly, but it is very slippery as soon as something goes wrong.

 

[HiddenX]

Expeditions: Conquistador Review

briefly and succinctly by GhanBuriGhan

 

[Broseph]

Make it so if you die in-game you die in real life.

MCA will teleport outside your house with a sniper rifle and blow your brains out.

 

[skyst]

I finished the game this weekend. Definitely solid, enjoyed the writing. Steam said I got ~35 hours out of it, well worth the $20 spent.

 

[Tolknaz]

Never thought i would see the day, but watch review is actually better.

 

[villain of the story]

I expected to enjoy the game for its combat, but I find it pretty repetitive, and lacking options. The setting and explorations are brillant though, if only they were not using the dumbest camera system ever...
I end up having to rotate my viewpoint a lot in order to "exploit" the longer diagonals of my screen in order to see what is ahead. It gets old pretty fast. The difficulty is weird indeed. It is trivially easy when things go smoothly, but it is very slippery as soon as something goes wrong.

Oooh but don't you know; they did it that way for IMMERSHUN and REALISM while completely ignoring how different aspect ratios completely shit on their retarded idea of IMMERSHUN and REALISM by fucking the camera.

Avonaeon

 

[Avonaeon]

We understand that it's frustrating to some people and while we may tweak the camera some more, considering those criticisms, it's not gonna change in any drastic sort of way.
If you feel that's still not enough, you can try typing in "vontrier" in the console to release the camera.

 

[AN4RCHID]

We understand that it's frustrating to some people and while we may tweak the camera some more, considering those criticisms, it's not gonna change in any drastic sort of way.
If you feel that's still not enough, you can try typing in "vontrier" in the console to release the camera.

game is instantly a lot better, thanks.

 

[A user named cat]

lol the downward spiral of this thread

 

[villain of the story]

We understand that it's frustrating to some people and while we may tweak the camera some more, considering those criticisms, it's not gonna change in any drastic sort of way.
If you feel that's still not enough, you can try typing in "vontrier" in the console to release the camera.

game is instantly a lot better, thanks.

Indeed.

But you do realise, Avonaeon that aspect ratios completely negate your dreamy idea of "immersion" by limiting LOS by restricting panning distance, making the travel map a horrible game of rotation, right? I'm not expecting a drastic change at this point but simply hoping that you see your mistake and don't repeat it in the future.