Game News Expeditions: Rome demo now available

[Infinitron]

Tags: Expeditions: Rome; Logic Artists; THQ Nordic

So it turns out that THQ Nordic's exciting announcement for Expeditions: Rome was the release of a free playable demo today. Nice! Now why couldn't they have led with that news instead of the silly Twitch extension? The demo consists of the game's first four hours, where the player character will take part in the Roman conquest of the Greek island of Lesbos. THQ Nordic put together a new trailer showcasing some of those locations. A bunch of streamers will also get to play with the game's Twitch integration this weekend, and there's a trailer for that as well.

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The Expeditions: Rome demo is available on Steam now and will apparently remain available indefinitely. Check it out and post your impressions. Savegames will be compatible with the final release, so that's cool.

 

[Sensuki]

I'll give it a bit of a go today and write what I think

 

[Jrpgfan]

I started downloading the demo here and it's 23,7GB. I sure wasn't expecting such size for a 4 hour demo. Unless they put the full game with "blocked" content.

 

[Sensuki]

Unreal engine instead of Unity, 100% designed for xbone instead of PC, performance in menus is pretty bad

edit: so far it seems like anyone who ever performance tested this game ran their machine with vsync on, I have i7 4GHz and 1060 GTX and I barely get 60 FPS (again, xbone)

 

[FreshCorpse]

Almost didn't see this because you've pinned some vote on ancient RPGs that no one cares about and it's not obvious there is any more news.

Nice, downloading this.

 

[Sensuki]

Game seems to take place when Julius Caesar and Pompey Magnus were young (eg before Rome TV series).

Have fixed the performance a bit by reducing some settings. Runs okay now, not as good as Viking though.

So far the game is definitely an Expeditions game and it feels like a bit of a mix of Viking and Conquistador with some new things, and quite a bit of simplification. A lot of the character system has been extremely simplified. Non-combat skills and character attributes seem to have been removed. You choose one perk out of three, and a class, and then combat skills. In the previous games, attribute choice affected secondary attributes (such as Base Melee Damage or Base Ranged Accuracy) now you just get a default value for those.

Overland map is more like Conquistador. There is no minimap in the game levels, and looting containers / searching for things in the level seems to have been removed as well (at least, as far as I can tell). There are obvious UI elements for objectives, and you can loot items from dead bodies at the end of combat, seems to have moved more towards a loot everything, rather than searching bodies. Devs were criticized for looting experience in Viking being too over the top with containers, unfortunately rather than try and find a happy medium it appears they've mostly removed it.

Most battles so far in the demo have felt a bit more like Conquistador, you're not trying to kill everyone but survive long enough to complete an objective usually. I've been playing on Insane difficulty and I've had to reload most fights a few times, mostly just to figure out how to not fail in the first few turns (eg one fight the best strat seemed to be to hide in an alley between two warehouses for 5-6 turns to space out when enemies were able to target my chars, and then make a dash into the warehouse later in the battle to complete the kill quota before being overrun). Another one you've got to set fire to some ships. There's absolutely no way you'll kill all the enemies on Insane, so I had one guy just 'hide' at the first ship ready to go until everyone else 'snuck' around near the second ship and then set it on fire, and then the next turn sent someone else to run past an enemy, cop an AoO and set the next one on fire, end battle cue cutscene.

'Standard' attacks have been removed and you now must use an attack 'skill' (essentially a special attack) all the time. I'm indifferent to it. One downside is you can't just click on an enemy to attack you've got to click the UI and select the attack that you want. It does make you stop and think about which one you want to use just in case you have a habit of mistakenly auto attacking (not a problem I had really).

The Full VO has been fine, some of the VO is a bit meh, some is alright. As stated in the dev diaries rather than use a text interstitial to describe something going on as in previous games eg "The ship catches fire and you run as fast as you can down the boardwalk", they've used animation budget to do in level cutscenes and they're pretty seamless with the gameplay rather than being a "recording" like The Witcher 1/2 or KotOR 1/2.

The intro includes one Total War type UI battle, you're given options part way through the battle similar to Banner Saga, with the option to just auto-resolve.

Haven't finished the demo just I think there's another quest or two to go, will finish it tomorrow most likely.

 

[elverkongen]

• Ugly UI almost as bad as Solasta
• Uninteresting
  
• Dialogue choices that you don't have the "background" for is still displayed despite you not being able to select it
• Ass combat
  
• Follows the age old trope of giving Romans British accents. Come on, if a fucking German television series on Netflix can do it right then anyone should be able to

 

[razvedchiki]

i used 2 greek fire jars to kill the mobs in the ship mission, when they were clustered together the fire burned them all.
that leaves 2 more to burn the ships.

 

[Arvennios]

Overland map is more like Conquistador. There is no minimap in the game levels, and looting containers / searching for things in the level seems to have been removed as well (at least, as far as I can tell). There are obvious UI elements for objectives, and you can loot items from dead bodies at the end of combat, seems to have moved more towards a loot everything, rather than searching bodies. Devs were criticized for looting experience in Viking being too over the top with containers, unfortunately rather than try and find a happy medium it appears they've mostly removed it.

Lootable containers are still available and exploration (the very little there is) is rewarded, just press the "V" key and they will be highlighted from now on, along with all objects that you can interact with, for some strange reason the option is turned off by default and they're easy to miss.

Archers aren't as deadly as in the previous games (in the first maps at least, they might get better as the AI acquires better equipment/skills later on), but they're harder to reach and use height to their advantage, yes, you can climb ladders and it's nice to have more verticality, too bad you can't kill enemies with fall damage by knocking them off heights as it's the case in some tactical J-RPGs, interaction with the environment seems to be pretty bare bone so far, not much you can use to your advantage aside from flammable jars, let's hope they improve on this later on.

Combat is faster and a lot more fluid, since enemies/party members are rather squishy and your character(s) get the chance to act a second time and even more (until they run out of skills) if they kill weak enemies. As it had been said before, there is no "initiative/speed" and you can move your characters and attack enemies in any order you wish, acting and using abilities in optimal order is essential to ensure a positive outcome on the battlefield. Maps are bigger in general so far, but it doesn't translate necessarily into longer battles, in fact, they're worryingly short if you stick to objectives (See spoiler below). You have other soldiers/NPCs fighting by your side independently and enemy reinforcements continually pouring in, to reinforce immersion and the impression that you're leading an army and not merely a band of adventurers.

Game is pretty as fuck as far as isometric games go on max settings, the maps are very detailed and colorful, it's very solid from a technical standpoint, also pretty stable, not a single freeze, crash to desk or bug encountered so far, everything works as intended.

Spoiler

The map to subdue/kill Archelaeus can be finished in a single turn, not doing so will result into a longer and much more complicated battle.

 

[Infinitron]

let's hope they improve on this later on

The game is out in a month, this is what you're getting. Unless you mean in a post-launch update but I doubt it.

 

[Sensuki]

Lootable containers are still available and exploration (the very little there is) is rewarded, just press the "V" key and they will be highlighted from now on, along with all objects that you can interact with, for some strange reason the option is turned off by default and they're easy to miss.

Ah ok, cheers. I really dislike the controls design in this, everything is key based - obviously so they can port it to console. Hold down this key to select this, etc

Combat is faster simply due to the fact that similar to Colony Ship RPG, Logic Artists have decided to go back to low numbers, and I'm not sure if there's much if any numbers bloat. 17HP might be the highest HP I've seen on an enemy so far. Your attacks are typically doing single digit damage. I like this trend as lower numbers are easier to balance and it prevents HP bloat.

Due to the higher number of enemies I've turned the combat speed up to 150% for now (it just speeds up enemy turns) just because you have to wait so long for 20 enemies turns to finish. I didn't need to do this in Viking, but I think I might have in Conquistador once on the mainland.

Archers and shield users were the ones to look out for in Viking and they still 'feel' the same without being as OP. Long range damage appears to have been nerfed a bit but they can still KO/kill a lower HP party member in two shots if you're not careful. A shield user still takes much longer to take down. I haven't been able to land a successful knock down on a shield user yet, they've resisted it - but you can throw a Pilum (consumable) to disable a shield. In Viking, Archers were often positioned in place that you couldn't get to until everyone else was dead, but the map design often meant you could hide from them easily enough. So far in this they get free shots at you and you can't really do anything about it in some of the levels, going for them would probably mean failing the objective on insane. I've had to reload fights simply because two archers shooting from elevation decided to attack the same character in the same turn, and then when they didn't, I was able to win the fight.

But yeah the AI is still pretty bad, and they've just gone with the fact that because the AI is bad, they can add more enemies to make it harder. It's also possible the AI is deliberately tuned bad to make larger battles possible.

 

[FreshCorpse]

I found the performance to be pretty good. It looks great on high, at 1440p, on my RX 580 which is not a particularly recent card.

I haven't played any of the previous games in the series and found the objective-focused combat "interesting". Having the opposing force retreat after you've killed N of M of them feels reasonable and realistic. Having 15 mobs give up after you've rushed the objective without killing anyone...less so. My demo got stuck after the ship burning objective completed, which gave it a semi-natural end anyway.

I am vaguely aware that there were many complaints about the ethnicity/gender of some of the companions and I agree that in the end it feels somewhat anachronistic and very tokenistic. It doesn't help that I didn't find either of the non-white male companions particularly sympathetic but of course I only gave it a few hours.

Combat feels reasonably good I just worry that with the high mob count and large maps that in reality that there is going to be a lot of watching people run around. Tactical stuff feels decent and relatively well developed however.

The art direction is pretty boss, clearly done with a lot of love.

I think doing a Roman game is really cool though and I may just get it for love of the setting alone. They seem to have done a really good job capturing the setting and even though I am more interested in Greeks than Romans I can appreciate the fidelity they are getting (with various compromises...because it's still a computer game at the end of the day).

Some screenshots:

 

[Sensuki]

OK finished it, just had one final battle to go.

Turns out I was wrong about looting as pointed out earlier, I've missed every container apart from some bodies in the game due to not knowing about the object highlight key being V.

The demo content is on the rails, even more so than the intoduction in Conquistador and Viking. There's a sequence of events in both I think that are on the rails, however then it opens up a bit. I think that's where the demo ends, and it felt like a 'longer' sequence of events than in Viking and Conquistador, possibly due to the objective based combat. There's not really enough C&C in the dialogue to comment on but there are a handful of choices that might have consequences later. Similar to the Viking intro (Eg kill Gunnarr or don't kill him etc).

The intro companions are an old man with a staff, a centurion guy, an edgy female sneaky archer type and a nubian gladiator (think Juba from Gladiator movie except edgy). So far I think I prefer the starting cast from Viking. The VO and personality of Asleifr, Nefja and Ketil and Gunarr had a bit more variety. Will see how it pans out.

Overall impression is that I like it but as with the first two games, my initial impression is that it's not objectively better or worse to play than Conquistador or Viking, it's different but it still feels the same - it's an Expeditions game for sure. Feels the most similar to Viking overall but you can definitely tell where they've gone back to Conquistador in some areas. There are some things that are definitely better than both games (mostly production value etc). I don't think the simplified character system is 'better' but I can see why they've done it and it doesn't really affect the gameplay. Removing the attributes means that you can't gimp yourself and you can't gain an optimization advantage - the balance is the balance and it's more about how you play rather than what you pick. To me that's fine, however I don't think it's like 'the answer' to that character system problem.

There were definitely times where I felt like I really could have used a specific skill, eg Ranging shot. You get it automatically in Conquistador and Viking but it's a skill you have to pick in this, and I didn't spec it because see the need for it until a particular battle (due to the terrain style) and then I was like damn I wish I had this.

Can't say whether the new minigame type stuff is any good. You get to do one UI army battle and none of the war camp management stuff yet. Won't be able to judge until some way into the release.

Overall I think if you liked both games, you'll like this one too. It's an Expeditions game, undoubtedly. Much higher production value than Viking, but it still looks and feels like a game from the series. If you only liked Conquistador or only liked Viking, it depends on what you liked about it as to whether you'd like this one too. A lot of people liked the survival type camping system from Conquistador, and the text-based adventures. Those aren't present here either. I'd say it's closer to the gameplay feel of Viking, with some elements of Conquistador, and some new things too. Yes it has a simplified character system and it has console friendly UI design, but I'm optimistic that I'll enjoy the full game as I did the demo.

Combat map design is better than both previous games so far. Most of the time in Viking the combat design is worked inside the BG style level where you'd explore and do dialogue, in this it's more mission-specific like Conquistador.

A little disappointed about the combat AI being kind of rudimentary as with the first two games, but it does feel 'familiar'. Combat is sort of like the Viking fleshed out combat system in Conquistador style combat missions.

 

[Sensuki]

Spoiler

The map to subdue/kill Archelaeus can be finished in a single turn, not doing so will result into a longer and much more complicated battle.

Spoiler

Which option did you take to get in? I did the assault the city one and I don't think it's possible to finish it in one turn on Insane Difficulty. The devs give you an obvious tip on how to resolve the battle consistently throughout the battle that involves camera panning and ambient text, after a couple of reloads I figured out the tip and yep it worked

I found the performance to be pretty good. It looks great on high, at 1440p, on my RX 580 which is not a particularly recent card.

I've got a 4GHz i7 CPU and a 1060 GTX, and a 120Hz monitor. I played Viking on a HD7970 Radeon and got mostly over 90 FPS, I've upgraded my card since then and in Rome I get 60-95 FPS depending on what I'm looking at, and the menu FPS is low 40-50 (bug?). The Unreal engine is supposed to run better than Unity, too.

 

[cvv]

Combat is sort of like the Viking fleshed out combat system in Conquistador style combat missions.

Interesting.

Also bad. Viking's BG-style world is better.

 

[Sensuki]

Played through again as a female character, picked a different class and chose some of the different choices in the levels, and used the V key to find loot - the better armor and weapons makes a bit of a difference, went from needing a few reloads to going through first time on most fights.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

Lesbos.

 

[luj1]

• Ugly UI almost as bad as Solasta
• Uninteresting
  
• Dialogue choices that you don't have the "background" for is still displayed despite you not being able to select it
• Ass combat
  
• Follows the age old trope of giving Romans British accents. Come on, if a fucking German television series on Netflix can do it right then anyone should be able to

Its the same pattern with every new sequel


more voice acting
more cinematic bullshit
cut on content
cut on gameplay
more cosmetics and fancy effect
dialogue gets worse and worse



Their first game is still their best one

 

[Tyranicon]

dialogue gets worse and worse

Shit writing is probably to be expected in any modern RPG, I don't even bother to read half the shit these new writers put in. It's like they all graduated from the same school of not taking risks or having interesting ideas.

Looks like RPGs are just purely combat simulators now, which I suppose is the way the codex likes it anyways.

 

[cvv]

Writing in Conquistador and Viking was excellent.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

didn't find anything about vikings fun, don't understand why it's so loved

 

[V_K]

The Unreal engine is supposed to run better than Unity, too.

Um, this is just certifiably wrong.

 

[Wassersäufer]

Got a fair amount of crashing and ran into two gamebreaking bugs so far. Gameplay is simplified but combat seems a bit more balanced.