Expeditions: Rome Reviews

Very very good game, I'm on my 3rd play through... Like Xcom except in ancient Rome...

This game definitively needs Undo move, loading whole fight just because of misclick is really annoying and not lucky design solution. Ruining experience for me, can't imagine how frustrating would be playing Ironman.

If the most important thing youre here for is the turn-based combat, this is not for you

I have played early iterations of this formula in the tactics genre starting at Expeditions Conquistador and to keep it short the developer Logic Artists have improved many of the systems that I find fun to play but they missed the mark on having those parts make a whole that is fun to play. 1. Total play time for me was about 11 hours because I was forcing myself to play this game because of the I paid for it therefore i should play it mentality. I figured that after about maybe a couple of hours the tutorials would end and I would start having fun in some challenging scenarios but sadly that never happened. 2. The scenarios in this game (at least for the portion i played) are not fun and not challenging. They don't require a lot of thought and often I was just kiting the enemy or figured out that I could skip turns until the AI put itself in a disadvantageous position so that I could strike in a predictable way. Basically the AI is bad and can be easily abused which made the games core mechanic, the tactical battle, not fun to participate in. 3. There are so many systems in this game that just don't need to be here or take too long to bear fruit, for example all of the useless loot that i could modify or upgrade. I mean whats the point if there were not that many meaningfully challenging battles that tested you in a way where you had to upgrade. 4. They are trying to do some sort of thing where you manage your crew and their overall mood but that did not seem to have any bearing as far as i can tell 5. Lastly the goons they give me to throw into battles are just forgettable. Seriously just some of the most uninteresting models and names of randomly generated goons I have seen so far in this genre. There was a point where i had about a dozen in my squad and It became difficult to figure out who to upgrade and focus on. They all just kind of melded into each other in an ambiguous ball of roman goons. Anyways this game is not fun to play and the developer still has yet to hit the mark in this genre since I recall Expeditions: Conquistador having the same issues.

Wonderful game, the story is fiction but adheres to just the right amount of historically accurate elements that satisfy any lover of Roman history during the period of Caesar's rise to fame. The near-accurate pronunciation of classical Latin by the voice actors was also chef's kiss, although some of the voice actors still chose to use anglicised pronunciations so it wasn't as consistent in terms of immersion. I loved the game as I have poured close to 100 hours in 1 single play through on insane difficulty, also my first time playing this kind of turn based RPG, the early missions were brutal but once you get some gears mid and late game becomes a cake walk (aside from 1 unexplained Bullshit mechanic in the final boss fight where when you take down the final boss he somehow revives to full hp, recovers all status, summons 3 elite enemies for absolutely no logical reasoning all the while you can't do anything about it, oh and they get to act first while your team is forced out of position and suffering from attrition from the battle just a few seconds before the final boss went down). However, there are 2 things that bothered me somewhat. One being that apparently the option to romance a companion character cuts out if you haven't made advances in Act II, by the time I was about to finish Act II, I never got the romance quest even though I had completed all the prior requirements, and I continued to spend hours upon hours and going back in saves to try and salvage the situation, the romance quest never appeared, I concluded it probably was because my approval rating with the character I want wasn't high enough but I also didn't want to go back too far in saves so I moved on. And from Act III onwards there was no more mentions of any romance options despite I managed to get the approval rating to max level, that means all the way until the end of the game I never romanced anyone even though they had unwavering loyalty and had completed all heart shaped dialogues, I simply didn't get the chance to despite wanting to. I feel this option was cut out too quickly because without looking up guides people can miss this opportunity too easily, I had no idea something was wrong until I searched it up online, very unfortunate and regretful experience. Second but minor problem I had was the character's portraits seemed to be randomly generated, and for some reason I had A LOT of dark skinned characters, like A LOT. I understand Rome was vast, had various ethnicity and the a quarter of the game spends its time in Africa, but still feels weird when HALF of my recruit-able characters are somehow black, and it just so happened that most of the characters with good traits were also black in my play through. So my party and Legions were comprised almost entirely of black centurions fighting in Asia and Gallia, definitely kinda dampen the immersion a bit. It might be a one-off in my play-through though as I understand the characters are randomly generated.

A small gem that will please players looking for turn by turn tactical combat, simple army combat, party gear and leveling management, and some other role-playing and economical elements. This game has many different endings. I chose the imperial one, which is the closest to actual history.

Great gameplay, great story, great characters, great voice acting. This game reminds me of the golden age of BioWare RPGs, but in a historical setting. If you like tactical turn based combat, companion RPGs, and/or ancient Rome, I highly recommend this game!

Great game. Felt rushed for the ending, but it's pretty good. The scenario battles for each act are pretty nice. Some of the map mechanics can get tedious, but overall I give this a thumbs up

Great, ambitious game that's fun to play - might be the best (and the only?) RPG based in the Ancient times. Time well spent, I definitely recommend if you either like RPGs or the Ancient times - if both, it's a must play for you!

Every Expeditions game is my new favorite game ever made. How could they make a game better than Vikings? I have no idea. Please never stop.