Expeditions: Rome - the final Expeditions game from Logic Artists

[PorkyThePaladin]

On what difficulty level are you playing?

Hard.

Did you craft expendable items for your team? Like poison bombs throwing spears etc they are quite useful in some mission especially when you need to burn something or kill some armored boyo.

The point is not that the combat is difficult or how to overcome it, I am saying it's not a fun combat approach if instead of putting the challenge into the combat system itself, they keep putting it into weird combat handicaps and contrived scenarios.

For instance, right now I am on this "pacification" fight for a new region. So for some strange reason, they won't let you bring your main party (your main character and his companions) to this mission, and instead, you have to use a different party: one of the companions (MC not allowed) and fill the rest of the party with praetorians you just recruited. So they just wasted the hours you spent earlier leveling up and getting familiar with your main characters, and force you to use new characters who suck comparatively. On top of that, I seem to only be able to recruit one Principes from the Praetorian stock, so it's one tank and the rest are squishy rogues/archers/support. In my main party, I have 2 tanks (my MC and Quesos), but again, you can't bring the MC, and for some weird reason, Quesos is the one companion you cannot use for this mission either. Just pure retardation.

The fight starts in this fucking village, with your 6 guys being outnumbered by some ridiculous number of enemies, with constant and seemingly infinite reinforcements, and fucking enemy archers sitting inside some houses on hilltops, with full view of your troops. So no tanks to shield the squishies, overwhelming enemies, and your troops completely exposed to enemy missiles.

I don't mind hard fights, but the way this fight is so obviously contrived to fuck you over and make you jump through hoops just kills all the fun. And it's just one example, almost every combat in the game so far is like this.

 

[Sunri]

On what difficulty level are you playing?

Hard.

Did you craft expendable items for your team? Like poison bombs throwing spears etc they are quite useful in some mission especially when you need to burn something or kill some armored boyo.

The point is not that the combat is difficult or how to overcome it, I am saying it's not a fun combat approach if instead of putting the challenge into the combat system itself, they keep putting it into weird combat handicaps and contrived scenarios.

For instance, right now I am on this "pacification" fight for a new region. So for some strange reason, they won't let you bring your main party (your main character and his companions) to this mission, and instead, you have to use a different party: one of the companions (MC not allowed) and fill the rest of the party with praetorians you just recruited. So they just wasted the hours you spent earlier leveling up and getting familiar with your main characters, and force you to use new characters who suck comparatively. On top of that, I seem to only be able to recruit one Principes from the Praetorian stock, so it's one tank and the rest are squishy rogues/archers/support. In my main party, I have 2 tanks (my MC and Quesos), but again, you can't bring the MC, and for some weird reason, Quesos is the one companion you cannot use for this mission either. Just pure retardation.

The fight starts in this fucking village, with your 6 guys being outnumbered by some ridiculous number of enemies, with constant and seemingly infinite reinforcements, and fucking enemy archers sitting inside some houses on hilltops, with full view of your troops. So no tanks to shield the squishies, overwhelming enemies, and your troops completely exposed to enemy missiles.

I don't mind hard fights, but the way this fight is so obviously contrived to fuck you over and make you jump through hoops just kills all the fun. And it's just one example, almost every combat in the game so far is like this.

In pacification missions, you can only use one person from your main party and pretorians that just how it is I think your preatorians are random so if you want to get different classes you need to reroll them in the recruitment building if you are frustrated now wait for chapter 3 when you will need to kill guys that turn himself invisible every turn and run around lol.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

There can only be so much strategic depth with the game's combat system, so the reliance on tactical gimmicks differing from mission to mission is what keeps the game interesting. Although some of these fights are indeed annoying.

 

[Sunri]

Alright, finished the game in 64 hours.


Went for the all out good boi ending:

Spoiler

- Sided with Zenobia in Greece, had Mithriades executed during the triumph

- Put Cleopatra on the throne in Egypt (collected payment in pussy of course), killed Lunja

- Sided with the Divitiacus in Galia, captured Vercingetorix and brought him to Rome as a slave

- Disbanded my legion after coming back from Gallia and confronted Lurco in the Senate (where I won easily since his own brother, Cleopatra and Vercingetorix testified against him)

- The final confrontation with Lurco claimed lives of Syneros (poisoned while tasting my food) and Julia (volunteered to be executed first during the final showdown, all others survived and lived happily ever after)

- Basically the Republic was saved and went on, Greece and Egypt remained stable, the only slight problem was with the Berbers due to Lunja´s death, but they got crushed by legions and their culture was lost – what a tragedy lmao

- Seems like this is as good an ending as one can get, I guess I could have saved Julia somehow, though I am not sure what I could have done to keep Syneros alive

Honestly I didn’t have this much fun with an RPG in a long time. The game is pretty much a perfect evolution from Conquistador, with the mechanics coming to their own in enjoyable ways. I sure hope that there will be at least one DLC and ideally the series will continue with new devs, but even if this was the final instalment, the series went out on a high note.


The story kept getting better and better and having your choices reflected in the Senate hearing at the end was pretty cool. Having Scaevola defecting to your side in the end (certainly thanks to your sister´s tasty pussy) was a nice move as well. Lurco was a cool villain as were his two main henchmen (the praetorian and the assassin). I really liked Syneros, who was a p. cool character and a certified bro (*scores a critical hit on a female opponent* “You should have stayed home with your family, young woman. Eh I was addressing my opponent, not you Julia.") though all the other main characters were fine.

Combat was fine as well, some of the pacification missions were kinda annoying, but nothing too dramatically bad. I played on Hard and didn’t have much trouble with the fights (the most difficult one being the one you are supposed to lose for story reasons), the sieges (especially the final one in Gallia) were a nice idea.

The anime cat girl is a bit of an enigma to me. I agreed to take her along, but she didn’t join my party (she wasn’t in Gallia), though she got her ending slides even though she just basically showed up in like one or two quests in Egypt. W/E I guess… maybe the devs are cat people.


So yeah, GG. I would say 8/10 is about right. A contender for RPG GOTY 2022 for sure, we will see if anything better actually comes out this year.

This game C&C are pathetic, after reading your post it seems that the most obvious good choices always brings better results.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

For instance, right now I am on this "pacification" fight for a new region. So for some strange reason, they won't let you bring your main party (your main character and his companions) to this mission,

I like how they don't even provide an ingame justification for this. They could have even said something as simple as "oh X needs more experience leading and Y troops need more fighting experience" or some bullshit.
It's completely arbitrary.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

the most obvious good choices always brings better results.

The most obvious good choice is Caesarism, not bowing down to patrician snobs as Parsimonious cook has done.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The most obvious good choice is Caesarism

have you played the game by chance?

 

[Heroic Liberator]

The most obvious good choice is Caesarism

have you played the game by chance?

Caesarism done by the PC, rusty.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

There can only be so much strategic depth with the game's combat system, so the reliance on tactical gimmicks differing from mission to mission is what keeps the game interesting. Although some of these fights are indeed annoying.

Disagree. They had this gimmicky shit in Conquistador, which had the shittier combat, then E: Viking had very little of it, and had a fun combat system, and in Rome it's way worse.

Their base combat system is fine, compared to most RPGs out there, they just needed to make the encounters against tough enemies instead of this Gymnite/Civilian shit, and let you use the combat system tools instead of jumping through retarded handicap hoops.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Their base combat system is fine, compared to most RPGs out there, they just needed to make the encounters against tough enemies instead of this Gymnite/Civilian shit, and let you use the combat system tools instead of jumping through retarded handicap hoops.

So basically you want linear encounters with bullet sponges as it were. That'd get old fast tbh, although I do agree that the game can feel a bit trashmoby at times with all the extra civilians.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Their base combat system is fine, compared to most RPGs out there, they just needed to make the encounters against tough enemies instead of this Gymnite/Civilian shit, and let you use the combat system tools instead of jumping through retarded handicap hoops.

So basically you want linear encounters with bullet sponges as it were. That'd get old fast tbh, although I do agree that the game can feel a bit trashmoby at times with all the extra civilians.

"win in X turns or you fail" just turns it into a puzzle game.
Albeit not quite as bad as e.g., Druidstone, it's still offputting.

There's a lot of battles you can end in one turn because you just have to kill one person and suddenly everyone else flees no matter what.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

"win in X turns or you fail" just turns it into a puzzle game.
Albeit not quite as bad as e.g., Druidstone, it's still offputting.

There's a lot of battles you can end in one turn because you just have to kill one person and suddenly everyone else flees no matter what.

That makes it a balance issue, not a design one. Having alternatives in how to end a particular encounter increases tactical depth.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

"win in X turns or you fail" just turns it into a puzzle game.
Albeit not quite as bad as e.g., Druidstone, it's still offputting.

There's a lot of battles you can end in one turn because you just have to kill one person and suddenly everyone else flees no matter what.

That makes it a balance issue, not a design one. Having alternatives in how to end a particular encounter increases tactical depth.

Doesn't make it any less dumb.
Does the game automatically end if your player character falls in combat?

 

[Thac0]

Combat feels more like Blackguards where every action in every turn is super weighty than it does Viking and Conquistador. Not crazy about it so far.

Can anyone confirm? Blackguards combat is better than Expeditions combat imo. Although oneshotting units is very feasible in both Vikings and Conquistador.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Does the game automatically end if your player character falls in combat?

Only if you let him bleed out and that's a togglable game rule I think.

But anyhow, it's not dumb. It's just not your type of gameplay (hence your earlier comment about it being 'puzzly'). ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[Sunri]

Their base combat system is fine, compared to most RPGs out there, they just needed to make the encounters against tough enemies instead of this Gymnite/Civilian shit, and let you use the combat system tools instead of jumping through retarded handicap hoops.

So basically you want linear encounters with bullet sponges as it were. That'd get old fast tbh, although I do agree that the game can feel a bit trashmoby at times with all the extra civilians.

"win in X turns or you fail" just turns it into a puzzle game.
Albeit not quite as bad as e.g., Druidstone, it's still offputting.

There's a lot of battles you can end in one turn because you just have to kill one person and suddenly everyone else flees no matter what.

After you unlock this skill on veles all battles end in one turn

• Reaper: Every time the character kills an enemy, their Action Point is replenished, all used skills are reset, and movement is fully restored.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

That skill should certainly be nerfed.

 

[notpl]

This whole discussion is stupid since Romans were (and still are) black. Africa begins at the Alps.

 

[jungl]

the fire and water making smoke is nice. The game needs MORE gimicks like pantheon gods giving random boons in fights. super speed or throw a boulder that puts out fires.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

After you unlock this skill on veles all battles end in one turn

• Reaper: Every time the character kills an enemy, their Action Point is replenished, all used skills are reset, and movement is fully restored.

I had the Reaper skill on one of my preatorians, but I dont remember ever using it. I used the Marathon skill (unlimited move until you have to stop) once or twice, but there isnt really need to use these (admitedly OP) skills at all unless you want to. What I used a lot was the "push down" and "warcry" skill (the one that stuns enemies in 2 hex radius) of the Principes. Also the Interrupt skill of archers is p. good, with high level gear you can one shot mooks.

The most obvious good choice is Caesarism, not bowing down to patrician snobs as @Parsimonious cook has done.

Bro I was just fighting for democracy, no bully pls.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Bro I was just fighting for democracy, no bully pls.

Et tu, Parsius? A democracy for honorable men as it were.

 

[Sunri]

That skill should certainly be nerfed.

Combine it with

Born Ready: Grants 30% of max focus at the beginning of combat. Every upgrade adds 30
Sneak Attack: 2-6 Piercing Damage & Generates 1 Focus. Sneak attacks deal +50% damage on your first two turns. Upgrade for 50% more damage
War Horn: Applies Rallied to allies, which gives +25% damage. Upgrade for +1 status effect duration.

And the only enemies that will survive are armored ones, but you will kill all squishes, so they will lose morale anyway I bet you can make even stronger combos, but I wasted a lot of points because I invested in unarmed combat at the beginning damm now I want to replay this trash game only to make some dumb op build

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

Yeah, honestly the builds are pretty weak also. The typical Roman build (Principes) has been turned into a tank, with limited DPS and kinda boring themes. Archers are useful but not like Romans were ever known for their archers, and good luck keeping your Veles/Triari alive on harder difficulty settings, with infinite enemy archer range and focus fire.

So basically you want linear encounters with bullet sponges as it were. That'd get old fast tbh, although I do agree that the game can feel a bit trashmoby at times with all the extra civilians.

Not bullet sponges, enemies using the combat system mechanics against you. Since Viking, shields have been the central core mechanic in these games, so if they just threw a bunch of enemies with shields and archers behind them, that would be good enough. Instead of dealing with infinite trashmob waves and all kinds of handicaps.

The combat in this game is kinda like if you spent years training in martial arts, then went to a tournament to fight, and they told you: "well you gotta fight this one-legged gimp, but while you do it, we will tie both of your arms behind your back, put a blindfold on you, and stick a massive dildo up your ass". So it's not so much that this is hard to do, but rather that it's a very strange (and annoying) way to spend your time.

 

[Sensuki]

The fight starts in this fucking village, with your 6 guys being outnumbered by some ridiculous number of enemies, with constant and seemingly infinite reinforcements, and fucking enemy archers sitting inside some houses on hilltops, with full view of your troops. So no tanks to shield the squishies, overwhelming enemies, and your troops completely exposed to enemy missiles.

I don't mind hard fights, but the way this fight is so obviously contrived to fuck you over and make you jump through hoops just kills all the fun. And it's just one example, almost every combat in the game so far is like this.

That was the first pacification mission from memory. I think I took Syneros, 1 x Princeps, 1 x Triarius, 1 x Veles and 2 x Sagg, I went to the left at the start and worked my way around the map. I think one guy went down and I had to stabilize him but otherwise it was alright once you got out of the starting area where you get sandwiched. I found that one fun, YMMV.

 

[PorkyThePaladin]

I am not saying these are not winnable, I am just saying they are not fun. The fight against Archeus was exactly like this. Overwhelming odds (of trashmobs), the catch (he had so much armor you couldn't do damage to him unless you shred the armor first), the catch #2 (you had very limited means to shred it at that time, and he couldn't be locked down with most builds, and could just run around ignoring attacks of opportunity and take out your backline), so eventually you had to resort to the cheap way the developers intended (bring enemy number down to 5). So it's like instead of focusing on fun combat, you are playing the game of "guess how the developers wanted you to tackle this shit".