Renowned Explorers: International Society Reviews

No action confirmation = game ending misclicks. Forfeit Encounter: Why is it called 'Forfiet ENCOUNTER' when its actually “End the Campaign”? Feels like a horrendous miscommunication Contextual help is well implemented, but the tutorial cut off halfway through. Fortunately the campaign map is pretty basic, so I could play that fine. Novel Gameplay: The three damage types is initially intriguing, but are quickly revealed to be a flat attempt at novelty, when in reality is just a 'types for types sake' system that can be found in a huge number of other games. It has no perceivable bearing on the wider game; My characters aren't shaped by it, the world isn't shaped by it beyond some numbers being a little different and some flavour text referencing it. Otherwise it kind of just copies the typical roguelike campaign format with no apparent embellishments. And my least favourite part; Kill-taxing: I'm being killed just for playing, perhaps so that I have to rack up playtime so it seems like I'm enjoying the game? No thanks. I'm racking in essentially maximum incomes, then I get my run cancelled by an overpowered enemy party, which to my perception was very much not a realistic opponent to face. It's a basic difficulty ramping error and leaves me feeling that the design studio is out of its comfort zone in this game, and/or has not been very diligent in their playtesting cycles for the game. For context, this encounter was the first encounter on the second mission, for which I was very well equipped, and I was only able to overcome one of the 7 enemies before my team fell. I suspect I could have used aggression, but what is the point of the game if I'm visiting a tribe, fighting to help them, earning their respect, then going into their village and immediately murdering them all because they were too friendly? It makes me think the developers don't understand their own game. I think this studio overall has some blindspots in their design. Primarily, I think they aren't conscious enough of demanding too much of the player's time. Reus was a really good game, but becomes a slog after a while. I've heard godhood becomes flat after 2 hours, and Explorers here already feels dull after just 2 hours or so. Perhaps they're not focusing enough on specific strengths, or finding what they're good at. I like the ambition and exploration design, but I also want to play enjoyable games.

Perfect balance brain work and click and chill

So, there are wild and badly telegraphed stat point gates. You won't know if you're ready to try the next star level of expedition until you try it, and then you'll either do okay or get instantly flattened right out of the gate and lose your run because your numbers needed to be 80% higher. Also, the game sorta requires the two paid dlc to have a decent spread of content and *any* meta-progression, and even then this isn't really a title with much meta-progression in it. Those two things out of the way, this is a gem. It's a weird gem, and if you don't instantly click with its board-game-y flow and TTRPG-y combat you'll have a bad time, but I think it's neat. The basic premise is that you live in a world where exploring is a cool thing to do and fortunately lots of other cultures exist to be explored. You don't *just* kill other people and take their stuff for the british museum, though. You can wheedle and neg people in order to take their stuff---sometimes during the same combat. There's a strange flow to fights in this, where the three diplomacy types (peaceful, mean, sword) have a rocks paper scissors and you and your enemies each have a main type based on which you've used the most during the fight, which determines a passive effect on all stats. This in turn interacts with different characters having different skill levels in the different types of diplomacy, and your main type at the end of each fight determining that fight's outcome in the story. It's not hard to play, but it's surprisingly intricate in terms of how you have to build strategies around it to maximize your outcome. Similarly, there's a whole macroeconomics metagame in between expeditions where you leverage your resources for bonuses that let you leverage more resources. By all rights, this *should* make the game really clunky, but it isn't. A decent run is a couple hours long, and it feels breezy the whole time. I think if people have issues with this game, they'll be over how sharp the difficulty spikes are between star levels. I had monomaniacally built for combat, was in the endgame after clearing a four star expedition, went into a five star expedition, got into a two star combat (which should be insanely low at that point,) and instantly party wiped. However, I also don't think this is a barrier to enjoying the game. If anything here sounds interesting to you, get this one + dlc on sale. At 60% off of higher I think it's a very safe purchase. If you already like complex board games, go for it at full price.

A very creative and innovative game, though it starts to feel repetitive sooner than expected. Even so, i recommend it for any hidden gem hunter.

It's hard to know when to review games like this, made to be replayed a lot. But I feel like I have a good grasp on the game at this point, so here goes nothing. The game is very charming. From the characters, to their animations and the sound design is all very cute. The world is based around that era in time where Europe was going around the world and exploring places... minus the, you know, not so nice stuff. Very romanticised, but it's not like it's making any statements with it. I enjoyed all the characters, as shallow as they can feel at first, I was surprised a few times where the character themselves changed interactions that I've done many times before. Gameplay wise, it's a lot of reading. You build up skills as you go, and you use those skills in events that can vary a lot depending on what your team is good at (one run might have a really good scientist, another might be a guy that is really strong). Events are decided on a wheel, with percentage calculated based on the character spinning's skills. This can result in rewards, penalties and sometimes a fight. When in combat it's a turn based strategy game I suppose. It's very simple. You control 3 characters of your choice and attack the enemies. Every character has a physical attack (aggressive), and two mental attacks (devious and friendly), the latter two giving buffs and debuffs depending on the attack itself. They also get two additional abilities on levelling up, that lean more into the characters play style, but really you could have a group of friendly characters going around punching people if you want it. I have yet to find a group that hasn't worked in some way yet. Overall, I have had a very positive experience with the game, but I can see some people finding it a bit repetitive at times, since you will be re-reading the same dialogue a lot. But I am over 25hrs in and I'm still finding new interactions and events that you can only get with certain characters, or if done in the correct order on the map you're in. I do wish there were more places to explore too. 3 levels to choose from per exploration stage can get pretty samey.

Okay so is a 'good' game. I enjoyed it for the 8 hours I played it. However, replayability is low. On sale it's worth it, but once you get the grasp of it the mechanics its soon over with the fun.

Realized this game existed through reviewing the old reviews left by the late reviewer TotalBiscuit, and am glad I did as this game is a total banger that allows for massive amounts of replayability. Playing as different characters handling various situations in an incredibly varied number of ways is amazing, and this blows the Curious Expedition series out of the water in terms of complexity.

I wish I could give this a "neutral" score. It's an interesting step in understanding Abbey Games' development as a studio. Renowned Explorers is a roguelike with tactical battles and a strategic layer. Think FTL but instead of real-time with pause battles with a ship you have turn based battles with a three person squad. The interesting part of Renowned Explorers is that on the strategic layer, you can upgrade the rewards you get on each expedition, creating a snowball effect where, for example, the study tokens you acquire from research nodes are re-invested into research, so that they give more research points. The problem is, to the extent these upgrades relate back to the expeditions it's usually through a +2 increment to a stat here or there. So they don't feel satisfyingly chunky. It's sort of like a turn-based clicker with a tacked-on tactical battle part. The battles themselves are simple. There are three styles of fighting - aggressive, devious, and friendly, and there is a certain amount of "rock paper scissors" with tradeoffs between what will be easiest to win the fight, and what will get the most rewards. But for the most part there is not enough of a fundamental difference between the attack types. They all deal damage against a particular type of weakness and apply a change to attack or defence. I want more about changing enemy states, moving them around, more interesting synergies between different types of attack etc. The music is also annoying. I almost always play games with their intended music because even ok music works well in the intended context. Renowned Explorers' music is both domineering and uncertain of the kind of emotion it wants to convey. It's not particularly jolly or tense or dramatic. It just feels brash. Which contrasts with the general aesthetics which are nice and pleasant and cohesive. They clearly had interesting ideas. I believe that with a tactical battle layer that had more diverse enemies and more differentiated attacks could have been an engaging roguelike. And if the investments on the strategic home layer were made more discreet and chunky, rather than an accumulation of very small changes. And perhaps if major random changes through the campaign encouraged the player to reconsider their build rather than spend the entire game focused on one path to maximising their points. RE:IS is a great archeological site, because of how it contrasts with Reus 2. Reus 2 has more distinct kinds of synergies which gives interesting build variety, and the new unlocks on a planet create exactly the kinds of changes that I mention which encourage changing their strategy part-way through a game. There are more chunky decisions to be had. So, overall this is a "no" as a game but it would be a "yes" to check out if you are interested in seeing how a studio iterates.