Expeditions: Rome - the final Expeditions game from Logic Artists

[Hellion]

The black Praetorians shown above are most likely the result of either modding or a bug, having played the game for over 70 hours (65 of which during its pre-release preview build) I literally haven't encountered a single non-white/non-mediterranean-looking recruitable Praetorian.

Other than that, the game does attempt to tackle certain social issues of ancient Rome using a 2022 mentality (slavery, women and barbarians, mostly), but this mostly adds RP value. You can roleplay a woke General that fights for emancipation and friendly coexistence with barbarians, but you also have the option to be a full-fledged xenophobic, imperium-aspiring slave-beater.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Surprised to see that Viking's all time peak is that low tbh
I was under the impression it was more well known than that. I guess it just hadn't made itself noticed at its launch.

Rather the opposite - it made itself noticed at launch but for the wrong reasons. Viking was in a terrible shape at release, which surely scared off many people for a time (at least it happened to me).

 

[Reinhardt]

friendly coexistence with barbarians

Ended so well for Rome.

 

[Sensuki]

Some of the way into Asia Minor, haven't met the last companion yet though.

So far so good, there's a few traps such as needing to recruit Praetorians before undertaking the pacify missions etc, rocked up to the area the first time without any and had to reload etc. I enjoyed the first Pacify mission, took a couple of gos to get the hang of it but managed to finish without any casualties other than one of the legionaries you were rescuing.

The dark-skinned Praetorian portraits is a bit weird, not entirely sure why they opted to do that - particularly because the portraits were clearly modified from a Roman portrait rather than actually looking good like Bestia, instead they look like prehistoric neanderthals.

As others have said the combat and RPG parts are good, level design in combat is quite good so far. Overland map is definitely a lot like Conquistador without camping, and the text-based events while travelling are still there. Still haven't done much in the way of legion management etc yet.

 

[whydoibother]

The more i see in this thread the more i think about deleting the installation file and ignoring this thread.

Literally letting SJWs tell you what to like, lmao.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The black Praetorians shown above are most likely the result of either modding or a bug, having played the game for over 70 hours (65 of which during its pre-release preview build)

or... it could have just been something added at the last minute to impress game journos

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Is the game any fun outside of the wokeness?

I don't see the "RPG" here unless you consider RPG to be the same as "picking dialogue options." Character building & equipment is about as in-depth as nu-XCOM, which is about the most praise I can give it -- it feels a lot like nu-XCOM except with Roman soldiers.
I got 6 hours in and was finished, just not interested.

 

[Larianshill]

Aftermath of the first act finale.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

The black Praetorians shown above are most likely the result of either modding or a bug, having played the game for over 70 hours (65 of which during its pre-release preview build) I literally haven't encountered a single non-white/non-mediterranean-looking recruitable Praetorian.

This is very interesting, I guess that its down to RNG. On a few occasions the list or recruitable praetorians I got looked like a collection of gangbanger mugshots from a police file. Still, you can easily refresh the list through the camp management, so you definitely dont need to take any niggas if you dont want to. TBH its kinda funny to see that every single rank and file legionnaire you see in the camps is white, but you could put together 100% black command staff and praetorian guard if you wanted to...

 

[Infinitron]

The black Praetorians shown above are most likely the result of either modding or a bug, having played the game for over 70 hours (65 of which during its pre-release preview build)

or... it could have just been something added at the last minute to impress game journos

It was added three days before release: https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/987840/view/3104669524539409999

I strongly suspect that they just used a FaceApp-type algorithm to generate race-modded versions of all the praetorian portraits.

 

[Belegarsson]

It's procedural generation. They should probably tweak the percentages so that the average praetorian is more historically representative (although it would make for some uncomfortable patch notes). I think the black portraits were added very late in development since the original demo release didn't have them. Bestia Tabat is the only actual black NPC in the game, or at least the only one important enough to have a portrait.

I can confirm that I played the review build for over 40 hours and I never saw any black centurion portrait in the recruitment screen. It must have been added in the big patch that got pushed out the day before official launch.

 

[NJClaw]

[...]

Wait... what the fuck is happening in this game?

 

[Larianshill]

Julia is an actual tranny. It's good that this character exposed the wifetard for the tranny chaser he is, I suppose.

 

[Brancaleone]

Full female team incoming

Whoever was in charge of the "stronk wymmin arms" needs a crash course in basic anatomy.

 

[Sunri]

Those catapults during siege did more harm than good for me, I had to lower difficulty for gate section, didn't expect so much trouble after all those easy missions.

 

[Larianshill]

Is this how egyptians looked?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Is this how egyptians looked?

That's clearly a Slavic woman.

 

[Commissar Draco]

OK tried this game rolled a wombyn cause its current year... and... First scene introduced centurio OK, Young Caesar OK, he did fought against pirates and... Kang from Mauretanina cause Maur means he needs to be black Yes? Checked the sources and they claim there were white and also nigger Mauri aka Berbers back then north of Africa so OK not likely and he was ex Gladiator and but why not make it my family slave.... Oh Current Year strikes Again! but then... I was brought to camp and given armor, weapons and command as unmarried Roman Patrician Girl, got some quest to get Caesar back but cause its current year had to pay for it instead of using my char secret weapon, M'Kay rolled Patrician Man, same Kang, same way to complete quests, killed the traitor this time, got special assignment instead of safe tribune desk job, OK it did happened as young Tiberius Gragho was the first on the walls of Carthage and Caesar also fought in first rank if need so, and then mean strange looking Roman Special forces member... OK its special forces archer so maybe it somehow plausible at least she is not front line legionary (coping here). Dialogues are so so aside from bossing plebs around, combat getting boring when on higher difficulty which makes enemies onto HP sponges, game is not as bad as some of you are saying it is but also not something worth paying full price neither.

 

[Reinhardt]

Is this how egyptians looked?

That's clearly a Slavic woman.

No, it's from second chapter, where romans conquer kwanzania. You just dropped game too early.

 

[Larianshill]

I am absolutely infuriated by how your non-story companions don't (seem to) carry over between different acts. You expect me to depend on those schmucks in the pacification missions, but won't let me remember which of those generic names and faces represents which set of abilities and equipment? At least allow me to give them nicknames.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

The artwork is cringe, game looks like nice shit.

 

[Ludwig von Eisenthal]

Hell I'm glad I got my money back. I'll play "A Legionary's Life" instead. It's not as fancy and shiny but at least relatively historical.

 

[Shrimp]

I've been playing the game for about 15 hours, just conquered all of Asia Minor. Based on the amount of unlocked trophies in my camp tent (you get some cosmetic options like alternate colouring schemes, banner icons etc. for progressing through the game) I'd estimate that I'm 30-40% through the game, but I have no idea if this holds up.

I'll reserve my judgement until I have actually finished the game, but so far it feels very railroaded - probably even more than Vikings since there are basically no side missions. The game's almost a visual novel with the occasional tactical battle or legion battle. It feels odd that they actually went with VN-style dialogue figures appearing on both sides of the screen when such a large number of characters you come across just use the default blurred character portrait. Legion battles feel like they were included for the sake of having them; you basically just click the continue button to skip through a handful of interfaces and collect loot at the end.

I'm just playing on normal difficulty which in hindsight might've been a mistake, but the combat encounters have been almost insultingly easy so far. A lot of the encounters don't even require you to directly fight enemies and instead rely on you destroying objects such as wooden crates or taking down a specific enemy commander. In far too many cases this means you can completely ignore most of the enemies on the battlefield and just rush to the objective since all the enemies just rout (which ends the battle) if you kill their leader or destroy their weapon crates.
Before the game's launch I liked the idea of being able to customise weapon skills but unfortunately it turned out that most of them effectively do the exact same thing and are tied to your weapon of choice rather than being something you actually can switch around. This tied with some rather underwhelming skill tree upgrades (so far) has made the combat a rather boring and unenjoyable process so far, but to be fair that can easily just be the result of me not playing on a higher difficulty setting. I think there's a chance that some of the character builds you can make might become more fun once you get access to some more passive upgrades, but I'll have to wait and see if that's the case.

One final source of annoyance that I almost forgot to mention is the random events that happen while you're travelling. I've found that in almost all scenarios you should just pick the option that lets you avoid interacting with whatever it is you came across. Some times it might result in some lost resources or companions having their relations decreased (neither of which seem to matter at all anyway) but picking the other option almost always results in a character getting injured which, in the worst case scenario, means they become incapacitated and can't participate in battles. The most extreme example was a random event that saw my own character get severely crippled from a random event which required one hundred hours to heal. In this time all I could do was position myself in a camp and hit the 3X fast forward button while sending my legion out to collect random resources in the vicinity.

Overall it's a pretty mediocre experience so far although at the very least it's entertaining enough to make me continue playing. I'm hoping things will take a turn for the better, but so far it feels like a one-and-done kind of deal since the game doesn't appear to have much replay value.

 

[Aarwolf]

Yesterday I decided to start my new adventure as a roman legate:

I am about 10 hours in, finished Lesbos and first mission in Asia Minor (Mysia). Story is ok so far, companions are decently written and voiced (the first four, I didn't encounter the fifth one yet), combat is very good, albeit strongly nuxcomish.

I like visiuals, I like that missions have different goals to achieve (rescue some VIP, destroy X things, don't kill boss but incapacitate him and so on), I don't know what to think about battles though, they seem to random to me, but I shall see.

Overall good game, 8/10 so far.

Ah, the one last thing - to all esteemed codexers enraged by strong women and homosexuals in game. What could you expect other than this from a game that starts at fucking Lesbos of all places in ancient Greece?

 

[Tyranicon]

I'll reserve my judgement until I have actually finished the game, but so far it feels very railroaded - probably even more than Vikings since there are basically no side missions.

(....)

It feels odd that they actually went with VN-style dialogue figures appearing on both sides of the screen when such a large number of characters you come across just use the default blurred character portrait.

Yeah that was my impression from the demo as well, although at the time I just assumed it was because they wanted a linear story mission to showcase.

As for the large amount of silhouettes, I'm assuming that the artist/art team just ran out of time. It would be smarter to have a set of random npc portraits (with swappable features) than just a silhouette. It's jarring.