I think this might need a second opinion
If you write one and it's on par with your usual stuff, I don't see why not. Might be interesting to have two opinions on the same site.
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Review RPG Codex Review: Expeditions: Conquistador
- Thread starter Grunker
- Start date
If you write one and it's on par with your usual stuff, I don't see why not. Might be interesting to have two opinions on the same site.
Mantiis
Cipher
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2006
- Messages
- 1,786
The score needs to be altered to make it more obvious that it is a joke score as there will definitely be people that look at that score and not read the article. I looked at it and decided to read the article to find out why the game was so bad.
No I am not very bright.
ironyuri
Guest
I think this might need a second opinion
Alright review overall, but for everything I agree with, there's something I don't, and I believe a few very key aspects were either omitted or downplayed. The review was very storyfaggy overall, methinks.
More than 2000 words (upwards 50% of the total review) on gameplay: resource management, crafting, and combat and the review was "very storyfaggy." Yep. You should never have come back from the dead, Roxor.
Also, you don't get to review a game you pirated.
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 99,586
I think what Roxor means is that it was overly descriptive.
Oi, I didn't mean it in a bad way. What I meant was that in my view it focused more on the setting and narrative than on other thingies and stuffies, nya.
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 99,586
Or maybe not.
I think that's the problem most have people have with it though.
I think that's the problem most have people have with it though.
ironyuri
Guest
News flash: Setting and Narrative in games perform a mechanical function either by putting actions within a narrative context or by linking action to narrative.
Exploration the overland map in a game like E:C is done in the context of a party of Conquistadors discovering and charting as yet (to them) uncharted
territory. You can't talk about one without the other, you gigantic potato retard.
Hah. The once thread in one thousand where Roxor isn't shouting and raging and is instead being all laid back and seeking compromise and ironyuri just goes rambo
ironyuri
Guest
Hah. The once thread in one thousand where Roxor isn't shouting and raging and is instead being all laid back and seeking compromise and ironyuri just goes rambo
I was actually hesitant about allowing you to edit the review because I had come, in the aftermath of the Fallout 1 thread, to assume you were some kind of down syndrome de-evolving man-ape.
Has the edginess been increased now? This is what the Codex requires right? Edginess and posturing.
i don't understand you ironyuri
my down syndrome is blocking me
(how fitting that I introduced that smiley)
my down syndrome is blocking me
(how fitting that I introduced that smiley)
Stakhanov
Augur
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2010
- Messages
- 157
Seems like the problem with the review is that it doesn't fulfil Codex expectations of what a review should be (slanted towards the negative). But ironyuri's choice not to discuss some of the flawed aspects of Expeditions was perhaps because it simply detracts from the main argument - that he feels it is an excellent game and people should play it. And from what I've played of E:C so far I have to agree.
Metro
Arcane
- Joined
- Aug 27, 2009
- Messages
- 27,792
People are never satisfied. I guess they want the good ol' days when VD was giving eight out of ten Doritos to Gothic 3: http://www.rpgcodex.net/content.php?id=137
i've completed the game 16,000 times in the past 24 hours and it is no longer challenging, this shit review doesn't take that into account. don't waste time with this turn based turd when you can just play Baldur's Gate the finest rpg of our generation again
EG
Nullified
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2011
- Messages
- 4,264
Juggie
Augur
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2010
- Messages
- 105
I don't understand why this game gets so much praise around here. I played through the Hispanola island and a large part of the next campaign (fully explored the land, did pretty much all the sidequests, pimped out the fort), but it got really boring and tedious for me. I've played on some sort of medium difficulty I guess (maxed out AI, 4% crits, highest injuries, normal damage, no random death, normal resources).
First of all, the combat is way too simple. I mean you'll fully understand the system after 2 fights and there's hardly anything added later on except new items and few abilities. Neither the items nor abilities change the way you play dramatically in any way. The items are few and hardly interesting (mostly traps and grenade-likes). As for the abilities - it takes a while to level up and get some active abilities at the beginning of the game, so early on there's hardly any tactical choice except for positioning. Even later on when I had several units with 2 or 3 skills available most of the time I just used the scout's sneak and feign to get extra flanking damage. Positioning seems to be the core mechanic of the combat. Pretty much the whole combat revolves around it - traps, grenades, flanking, attacks of opportunity, barricades, cover, range penalties, etc. Now this isn't wrong in any way. I despise games with menu combat (i.e. Pokemon) that don't handle positions in any way. The problem here is that there's hardly anything else to consider during the combat. Combat stats include damage, armor (multiplicative damage reduction), accuracy for the ranged weapons, crit chance and multiplier, movement range and endurance (HP). Building a complex system over such a small set of stats is not very viable. AI is not too bad, which is natural in such a simple combat system, but it's not great either. When I played the Hispanola island for the first time I rushed the main quest and the encounters seemed quite challenging, because I was facing superior forces in pretty much every fight. After I finished the main quest I realized that I couldn't do some of the side quests so I loaded an old save and did all the side quests before proceeding with the main quest and I completely ROFLSTOMPED all the fights without using any items where I had some problems previously. When you face opponents of equal strength to yours there's hardly any challenge at all. The mushroom fight is a complete joke without using any items and this shows that the AI is lacking.
I encountered 3 types of victory conditions: defeat all enemies, survive for 10 turns and get to an escape zone. I won each fight by killing everything. Survival for set time without killing the enemies just didn't seem realistic. The damage dealt by the enemies was way too high, which meant you had to kill some of them. Usually after you killed some of them you could just finish them off. The escape encounters were probably meant to be played without killing the enemies, but it just seemed too tedious and killing them all took a while, but was much simpler.
The 5 classes are all quite useful outside of combat, but in combat they seem quite imbalanced. Most of the time you're able to use 6 characters, sometimes fewer. Scholars seemed like a waste of slot since their support capabilities were too weak - using another soldier or scout seemed more reasonable. The hunters also seemed inferior to melee classes, but still usable. Melee did more damage and had guaranteed hits. Soldiers and scouts seemed about equally strong. They both had advantages and disadvantages and were useful in some way. The doctors were OK as soon as they reached level 2, but since outhealing the damage taken from enemies and playing defensively didn't seem viable in any way, they were just support.
Character progression and customization is lackluster as well. Leveling up gives you an opportunity to customize your characters in 2 ways. First you pick a perk which affects the character in combat. Most of the perks are either very situational, too random or just plain weak, therefore the customization has very small impact on the actual combat performance of the character. The skills are hardly interesting - after one level up you end up with 9 out of 10 points in the primary skill of the class. So unless you picked wrong classes at the start you'll want to max out the primary skill (which you'll reach at level 3) and then put the remaining points into arbitrary skill (hunting). You can also (un)assign equipment to melee weapons, ranged weapons and armor of any character at any point. Since it's dynamic and you can move it as you like, it's hardly any strategic choice (well, you need to assign it in some reasonable way before combat). Also it only affects the damage of the weapons and damage reduction of the armor. There are also several weapon types, but the only difference is that some deal extra damage, some have higher crit chances and some provide a chance to block (25% extra DR) and the chars are locked to one specific kind of weapon unless you spend a perk on getting a new proficiency (major waste if you ask me).
The camping and resource management seemed like an OK feature at the beginning of the game, but after a while it just became boring and tedious. Again, it's very simple and there's hardly any choice. You'll understand how to do it optimally after a couple of nights and then you'll wish there was a good automation tool (there's one and it's passable, but it could use some settings). The only case where the whole camping system could provide any challenge is when you have several soldiers wounded, but since the wounds only disable the soldiers, it doesn't really add much to the depth of the system except for decreasing your effective character pool (making it "harder" for a while). Healing and injury is only based on scripted events and incapacitation in combat and apart from days needed to recover and chance of degradation, there's nothing to it. HP management is per battle only. The invention system is way too simple again, crafting as well. There's not much involved with managing the resources. Obtaining them is usually quite random and most can be traded - the basic 4 can be exchanged in any way and some of the crafting materials can be bought for treasures in Hispanola (during the next campaign you can only buy finished traps). The "perishable" resources just need to be processed, again nothing special about it. When playing with the difficulty option set to normal for the amount of resources found you'll still get shittons of them. I tried playing with fewer for a while and it seemed that I couldn't sustain my army which would limit exploration. This would introduce some sort of need to manage the resources well, but I prefer the ability to explore all the available content. Also apart from using the resources for something useful, there's also a chance that niggers will steal some of your resources. This mechanic is OK and can be partially countered, but it's random and it might get frustrating if they keep stealing shit you're running low on and is hard to obtain in your current situation.
What I really had high hopes for was the character personality traits system. This seemed like a much better version of alignment systems used in most RPGs, which would force you to choose options compatible with the type of party you had. The problem with it was that there weren't that many characters to choose from and all had 3 traits so you had to take some that had conflicting personalities and sometimes when you were presented with choice, any option would offend someone. This didn't really matter in the end as it was really easy to keep high morale especially when you started promoting characters to level 3 and higher. Also the morale of a character only affected their crit chance (and even this was just slight), so it was mostly just a buffer you had to keep from depleting. So the whole system became kind of pointless in the end.
Overall I would say the game has potential, but it's WAAAAY too simple to be taken seriously. If they added more depth to all the systems it could be a decent strategic thing with some char progression and customization and some choices (call it an RPG if you want). Personally I feel that currently you will have seen everything the game has to offer after ~20 minutes of playing it, so if the setting and the art don't mean much to you, it'll feel like a tedious exercise of the same shit for the remaining part of the game.
First of all, the combat is way too simple. I mean you'll fully understand the system after 2 fights and there's hardly anything added later on except new items and few abilities. Neither the items nor abilities change the way you play dramatically in any way. The items are few and hardly interesting (mostly traps and grenade-likes). As for the abilities - it takes a while to level up and get some active abilities at the beginning of the game, so early on there's hardly any tactical choice except for positioning. Even later on when I had several units with 2 or 3 skills available most of the time I just used the scout's sneak and feign to get extra flanking damage. Positioning seems to be the core mechanic of the combat. Pretty much the whole combat revolves around it - traps, grenades, flanking, attacks of opportunity, barricades, cover, range penalties, etc. Now this isn't wrong in any way. I despise games with menu combat (i.e. Pokemon) that don't handle positions in any way. The problem here is that there's hardly anything else to consider during the combat. Combat stats include damage, armor (multiplicative damage reduction), accuracy for the ranged weapons, crit chance and multiplier, movement range and endurance (HP). Building a complex system over such a small set of stats is not very viable. AI is not too bad, which is natural in such a simple combat system, but it's not great either. When I played the Hispanola island for the first time I rushed the main quest and the encounters seemed quite challenging, because I was facing superior forces in pretty much every fight. After I finished the main quest I realized that I couldn't do some of the side quests so I loaded an old save and did all the side quests before proceeding with the main quest and I completely ROFLSTOMPED all the fights without using any items where I had some problems previously. When you face opponents of equal strength to yours there's hardly any challenge at all. The mushroom fight is a complete joke without using any items and this shows that the AI is lacking.
I encountered 3 types of victory conditions: defeat all enemies, survive for 10 turns and get to an escape zone. I won each fight by killing everything. Survival for set time without killing the enemies just didn't seem realistic. The damage dealt by the enemies was way too high, which meant you had to kill some of them. Usually after you killed some of them you could just finish them off. The escape encounters were probably meant to be played without killing the enemies, but it just seemed too tedious and killing them all took a while, but was much simpler.
The 5 classes are all quite useful outside of combat, but in combat they seem quite imbalanced. Most of the time you're able to use 6 characters, sometimes fewer. Scholars seemed like a waste of slot since their support capabilities were too weak - using another soldier or scout seemed more reasonable. The hunters also seemed inferior to melee classes, but still usable. Melee did more damage and had guaranteed hits. Soldiers and scouts seemed about equally strong. They both had advantages and disadvantages and were useful in some way. The doctors were OK as soon as they reached level 2, but since outhealing the damage taken from enemies and playing defensively didn't seem viable in any way, they were just support.
Character progression and customization is lackluster as well. Leveling up gives you an opportunity to customize your characters in 2 ways. First you pick a perk which affects the character in combat. Most of the perks are either very situational, too random or just plain weak, therefore the customization has very small impact on the actual combat performance of the character. The skills are hardly interesting - after one level up you end up with 9 out of 10 points in the primary skill of the class. So unless you picked wrong classes at the start you'll want to max out the primary skill (which you'll reach at level 3) and then put the remaining points into arbitrary skill (hunting). You can also (un)assign equipment to melee weapons, ranged weapons and armor of any character at any point. Since it's dynamic and you can move it as you like, it's hardly any strategic choice (well, you need to assign it in some reasonable way before combat). Also it only affects the damage of the weapons and damage reduction of the armor. There are also several weapon types, but the only difference is that some deal extra damage, some have higher crit chances and some provide a chance to block (25% extra DR) and the chars are locked to one specific kind of weapon unless you spend a perk on getting a new proficiency (major waste if you ask me).
The camping and resource management seemed like an OK feature at the beginning of the game, but after a while it just became boring and tedious. Again, it's very simple and there's hardly any choice. You'll understand how to do it optimally after a couple of nights and then you'll wish there was a good automation tool (there's one and it's passable, but it could use some settings). The only case where the whole camping system could provide any challenge is when you have several soldiers wounded, but since the wounds only disable the soldiers, it doesn't really add much to the depth of the system except for decreasing your effective character pool (making it "harder" for a while). Healing and injury is only based on scripted events and incapacitation in combat and apart from days needed to recover and chance of degradation, there's nothing to it. HP management is per battle only. The invention system is way too simple again, crafting as well. There's not much involved with managing the resources. Obtaining them is usually quite random and most can be traded - the basic 4 can be exchanged in any way and some of the crafting materials can be bought for treasures in Hispanola (during the next campaign you can only buy finished traps). The "perishable" resources just need to be processed, again nothing special about it. When playing with the difficulty option set to normal for the amount of resources found you'll still get shittons of them. I tried playing with fewer for a while and it seemed that I couldn't sustain my army which would limit exploration. This would introduce some sort of need to manage the resources well, but I prefer the ability to explore all the available content. Also apart from using the resources for something useful, there's also a chance that niggers will steal some of your resources. This mechanic is OK and can be partially countered, but it's random and it might get frustrating if they keep stealing shit you're running low on and is hard to obtain in your current situation.
What I really had high hopes for was the character personality traits system. This seemed like a much better version of alignment systems used in most RPGs, which would force you to choose options compatible with the type of party you had. The problem with it was that there weren't that many characters to choose from and all had 3 traits so you had to take some that had conflicting personalities and sometimes when you were presented with choice, any option would offend someone. This didn't really matter in the end as it was really easy to keep high morale especially when you started promoting characters to level 3 and higher. Also the morale of a character only affected their crit chance (and even this was just slight), so it was mostly just a buffer you had to keep from depleting. So the whole system became kind of pointless in the end.
Overall I would say the game has potential, but it's WAAAAY too simple to be taken seriously. If they added more depth to all the systems it could be a decent strategic thing with some char progression and customization and some choices (call it an RPG if you want). Personally I feel that currently you will have seen everything the game has to offer after ~20 minutes of playing it, so if the setting and the art don't mean much to you, it'll feel like a tedious exercise of the same shit for the remaining part of the game.
Juggie
Augur
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2010
- Messages
- 105
The thing is I don't hate the game. I love these kind of strategy/RPG things and when I backed it I saw much potential and I still see it, but I feel it's not realized.
Also I didn't mention what I liked about the game, but I felt it was necessary to focus on the flaws since most people are already aware of its strengths and there has been way too much circle jerking around the game.
Also I didn't mention what I liked about the game, but I felt it was necessary to focus on the flaws since most people are already aware of its strengths and there has been way too much circle jerking around the game.
ironyuri
Guest
Grunker Infinitron
Delete my review and replace it with Juggie 's, it's the review hipster Codex deserves.
In fact, replace it with a Baldur's Gate 1 retrospective which reveals that BG1 is the best RPG ever and Fallout, JA2 and all other turn based games are shit anyway. Welcome to Codex 2013. Skyway was right, and so on, and so forth.
(I'm not actually joking. Delete my fucking review, you no longer have permission to reproduce my text.)
Delete my review and replace it with Juggie 's, it's the review hipster Codex deserves.
In fact, replace it with a Baldur's Gate 1 retrospective which reveals that BG1 is the best RPG ever and Fallout, JA2 and all other turn based games are shit anyway. Welcome to Codex 2013. Skyway was right, and so on, and so forth.
(I'm not actually joking. Delete my fucking review, you no longer have permission to reproduce my text.)
villain of the story
Arcane
My main problem with the game at this point is that they removed a few very cool abilities that were present in the betas and it has detracted from the game.
And the fucking camera! Travel map is a huge steaming pile of shit. They should have implemented fog of war while letting you pan the camera as far as you wanted and follow a more sensible design philosophy to prevent camera LOS being obstructed with trees. Also should have used parallel projection instead of perspective.
And the fucking camera! Travel map is a huge steaming pile of shit. They should have implemented fog of war while letting you pan the camera as far as you wanted and follow a more sensible design philosophy to prevent camera LOS being obstructed with trees. Also should have used parallel projection instead of perspective.
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