Expeditions: Viking - historical Viking RPG from Logic Artists

[Jack Dandy]

Infinitron kill developer subforums right the fuck now

 

[Barbarian]

No fanboy rage bro, this:

He could have just erased this last paragraph and written "meh, it was good for what it is" instead.

It doesn't spell out "this is a great game and you should get it". The "it has a few issues that need to be patched" theme should be a sidenote in the review, not its main call.

Also "decent writing and production values". Lol, it had both better writing and better production values than turdenera and pocs of faggotry, and both these games were made by arguably large studios running on large budgets. Both games with pretentious and stupid writing added up to shitty gameplay(and both were praised here and consumed in mass). Viking got a simple story written right and the awesome gameplay design of conquistador.

 

[Darth Roxor]

that is fair

yeah, now that I see the 'decent writing' that's just lol on a stick

but still, I think the game lags a fair deal behind Conquistador in a number of ways when it comes to gameplay design, but also has just as many improvements, so it's a bit of a mixed bag - definitely liking it a lot tho

i'll prob post some kind of bigger write-up once i'm done with it

 

[Barbarian]

I remember that I initially thought conquistador was the better game but then changed my mind. They are different beasts really. Conquistador is more of a strategy game than an rpg, and not nearly as story driven. Also, a lot of the good things in conquistador which weren't carried over, they were actually correct changes. The preparation phase with barricades and traps for instance, they mostly make no sense in Viking(except for a few siege and ambush scenes). When something similar was patched in it was hardly useful(I don't remember really using barricades to good effect in vikings, for instance).

Viking has better presentation, beter prodution, better polish and better writing with more c&c. I think they made a move in the right direction to reach a bigger audience. Lack of marketing and a buggy release making it not as much of a success as it deserved was a real shame.

Anyway, the setting they choose next(if they do develop another expeditions game instead of something else) will hopefully help. I still stand by a crusades setting having huge appeal. I personally liked the game despite the viking setting, not because of it.

 

[Barbarian]

Also, someone should finally move this thread to general rpg.

Mercy please.

 

[Safav Hamon]

Conquistadors was meh. Interesting ideas, but subpar execution. Combat and exploration became tedious fast.

Vikings really shines once you travel to Britain and go deeper into the faction questlines.

 

[Infinitron]

Tigranes

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Oh, so I see what happened. This game deserved a glowing review(being better than anything else of similar scope and gameplay style released in the last few years), but this is the tone this dipshit used to review it:

Is Expeditions: Viking a good game? Yes, yes it is. My criticisms are many, but they address the relatively lofty heights to which the game clearly aspires: a turn-based tactical RPG that somehow merges elements of an exploratory, resource-management strategic layer with a quest/story-driven model. The results are ambiguous, and in many ways, I prefer the tightly woven mechanics of Conquistador. But if you were to ask me whether it is worth the money, I would answer, absolutely: it is a game that provides robust turn-based tactical combat, a competently written historical setting, and plenty of entertaining quests. I dearly hope that the Expeditions series continues – and continues to tinker its formula.

This is close to a negative review. He could have just erased this last paragraph and written "meh, it was good for what it is" instead. People who read this and gave it value either didn't play it or left it at their backlist.

ITT, the game shouldn't have been reviewed by a pillars of faggotry fan. These people are unable to recognize incline.

It's almost as if he was reviewing the launch version and you're playing a patched one with many improvements 2 years later.

 

[Infinitron]

Seriously, I tried to get people excited about this game. In the months before release, the subtext of a whole bunch of my newposts was basically "This is a real RPG, not a strategy-type thing like the first game, seriously guys pay attention this is a big deal". People just didn't seem to care. The newsposts barely got any replies. They just weren't feeling it.

Would moving the forum to GRPG have helped? I assume so, but maybe not as much as you think.

 

[Barbarian]

It's almost as if he was reviewing the launch version and you're playing a patched one with many improvements 2 years later.

I played the game at release. Go ahead and check my post history if you doubt it.

And it was already a great game. I personally encountered no significant bugs. Most of the problems were related to balance and that was eliminated by a self-imposed prohibition on crafting(top crafted weapons and armory were easy to access and waaay overpowered).

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

It's almost as if he was reviewing the launch version and you're playing a patched one with many improvements 2 years later.

I played the game at release. Go ahead and check my post history if you doubt it.

And it was already a great game. I personally encountered no significant bugs. Most of the problems were related to balance and that was eliminated by a self-imposed prohibition on crafting(top crafted weapons and armory were easy to access and waaay overpowered).

So step up and write your own review instead of moaning like a goat during castration.

 

[Barbarian]

I always posted about how great this game was when the occasion arrived.

Nobody asked me to do the official codex review on it though.

 

[Tigranes]

Hello I am the dipshit reviewer

Oh, so I see what happened. This game deserved a glowing review(being better than anything else of similar scope and gameplay style released in the last few years), but this is the tone this dipshit used to review it:

Is Expeditions: Viking a good game? Yes, yes it is. My criticisms are many, but they address the relatively lofty heights to which the game clearly aspires: a turn-based tactical RPG that somehow merges elements of an exploratory, resource-management strategic layer with a quest/story-driven model. The results are ambiguous, and in many ways, I prefer the tightly woven mechanics of Conquistador. But if you were to ask me whether it is worth the money, I would answer, absolutely: it is a game that provides robust turn-based tactical combat, a competently written historical setting, and plenty of entertaining quests. I dearly hope that the Expeditions series continues – and continues to tinker its formula.

This is close to a negative review. He could have just erased this last paragraph and written "meh, it was good for what it is" instead. People who read this and gave it value either didn't play it or left it at their backlist.

ITT, the game shouldn't have been reviewed by a pillars of faggotry fan. These people are unable to recognize incline.

I don't think a negative paragraph emphatically states that the game is worth the money and that the series should continue. I was a gushing Conquistador fan, still am, and their next game will be D1P for me; as I said, I "dearly hope" the series continues. But people can read the review and make up their own minds as to whether I was right or wrong.

I certainly do think that both Conquistador and Viking deserved more sales and more Codex approval than they received. Though it was strange - plenty of Codexers seemed to like Conquistador, but Viking never seemed to get anywhere near as much interest during pre-release buildup & launch. And my review took several weeks (can't remember how many) after release to be published, so it happened long after this lukewarm interest had already become established. I can't tell you why that is. As that very paragraph states, I thought it was very much worth the money.

I'm also sorry that I don't share your exact opinions about which games to like and dislike, please mail me your Politburo-approved list of video game tastes so that I may update my neurology accordingly

 

[Strange Fellow]

Lol Infinitron why'd you rename the thread?

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Conquistador is more of a strategy game than an rpg

"This is a real RPG, not a strategy-type thing like the first game, seriously guys pay attention this is a big one"

I never understood this sentiment, Conquistador may not look like it due to some unorthodox design choices and its Oregon Trail-inspired exploration, but it was clearly trying to be a purebred role-playing game, and in my opinion it succeeded handsomely, while as a strategy or tacticool game it certainly sucked.

Viking by trying to unambiguously market itself as an RPG lost much of what made the previous title unique, while repeating many common genre mistakes that Conquistador cleverly avoided (like bloated inventories or the incentive to search in every trash bin like this was fucking NEO Scavenger). It became a more generic game because people can't look past genre conventions and clichés.

 

[BEvers]

Lol Infinitron why'd you rename the thread?

Yeah, it's weird - the old title was perfectly accurate.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Conquistador was a tremendous game while Vikings serves as a proof that sometimes less is more. In trying to be make something ambitious and genre-bending, they lost the tight focus that made Conquistador so great.

 

[Sensuki]

Seriously, I tried to get people excited about this game.

Me too. I think the issue is Logic Artists don't have as big of a grassroots following as other developers here / aren't as popular. People in general are more willing to try popular releases. Could partially be due to the forum thing.

Conquistador was a tremendous game while Vikings serves as a proof that sometimes less is more. In trying to be make something ambitious and genre-bending, they lost the tight focus that made Conquistador so great.

Not untrue, but I wouldn't say Viking is a worse game. In many ways it's a better game overall but less exceptional in specific areas - less peaks, but less valleys.

 

[ArchAngel]

With shame I have to admit I am one of the people that enjoyed Conquistador but never played Vikings. I wanted to but I read that it is very buggy, so I kind of waited and waited and got distracted by other games (I played an unhealthy amount of Path of Exile in last few years).
I will certainly try to fix that mistake once I am done with Pathfinder and next Path of Exile league :D

 

[Safav Hamon]

The codex has a preference for overly ambitious, flawed gems.

Vikings isn't exceptional in one area, but nearly every individual component is good. That's rare for a CRPG.

 

[Tigranes]

Yeah, Viking does everything pretty well, but Conquistadors leaves me with fonder memories, and felt more unique.

It's also - if you loved Conquistadors, and you wanted to see the franchise develop more in a different direction towards that strategic / exploratory / survival layer, then it's bittersweet to get Viking even as you recognise it's a mostly good game. At a personal level, I really hated how the resources/survival mechanisms became utterly meaningless in Viking. At least in your first playthrough, they were a big deal in Conquistador and that synergised well with everything else about the game. With Viking, a bit like Deadfire or Banner Saga, there are numbers there and makework to do but they never really matter, because even as they stayed the same, all the other elements of the game were now pointing towards a different experience.

 

[Mark Richard]

There's some early scenes in the television show Viking where Ragnar and his band grow increasingly desperate as they sail west because for all they know, they're heading into an aquatic wasteland. Expeditions: Viking could've used a touch of that. Not that situation specifically, but that sense of going off the map. Viking provides the theme of exploration through story & dialogue, but doesn't reinforce it through design quite like Conquistador.

Ah well. Viking is a great RPG (also my GOTY 2017, holla Feyd Rautha). I've always found it funny how the perspective switched - now we're the savages out to conquer civilization instead of civilization out to conquer the savages. On the surface anyway. In reality the natives are living in the ruins of an advanced civilization and have no idea how to replicate the technology. So many franchises (AoD, Warhammer 40k) take inspiration from the fall of the Roman Empire, and why not? It's post-apocalyptic gold.

 

[Safav Hamon]

There's some early scenes in the television show Viking where Ragnar and his band grow increasingly desperate as they sail west because for all they know, they're heading into an aquatic wasteland.

Which is nonsense from a historical perspective. That entire show is wildly inaccurate.

 

[RegionalHobo]

i wonder why the expedition games are so underrated.

i think vikings went in a good direction too, having a bigger emphasis in the plot, without removing the '' sandbox '' elements of conquistador.

 

[Sarkile]

I wasn't really too into Conquistador because of the strategy elements. I enjoyed Viking quite a bit as a well done turn based RPG that scratched a Norse itch I wasn't aware I had. I even liked it enough to buy a second copy for a friend to help support Logic Artists, something I normally only do while intoxicated.