Expeditions: Samurai

Oddly enough, I like the art style, including the 3D portraits. It’s quite expressive and the dead eye stare is less prominent than what the store page screenshots indicate. The UI art especially is gorgeous though especially coupled with the sound effects when interacting with the interface. Mechanics-wise, I’m not sure I can comment much because of my low playtime, I’ll update this later when I’ve spent more time with the content currently available. It seems similar to the previous Expeditions games, but I don’t have an opinion yet on the newly added mechanics especially the stealth system. And yeah, I can see what people mean when they comment on the Marvel-style banter. Try reading the tooltips in the settings, and you’ll see what I mean. They can be hilarious, but it’s definitely not what I expected from quite a serious and supposedly historical game. On the story and I suppose historical verisimilitude, I couldn’t care less as long as the game is fun. Though I find the reaction of some people who are against the game’s presentation of history can be intensely aggressive and disrespectful. I wish people were more composed and rational when airing out their grievances and that both sides would spend more time discussing, instead of putting each other down because of their differing opinions. The forum currently is not a pleasant place to learn about the game and give feedback to the devs. Anyhow, I’m tentatively recommending the game, and will update the review after I’ve played some more.

[h2] Only buy the Early Access if you are passionate about supporting the studio [/h2] Alright, so I really really loved Rome. 3 playthroughs, even at max difficulty, and this game has the spirit and core of Rome within it. I think releasing this game into early access was an astronomical mistake, because the game releases in march 2027 and there is tons of polish left, but the core of the game is ready to go, and if you've played Rome you see where the polish will come. 19 hours, no crashes. (awesome! but there are definitely some UI bugs) I'm going to avoid critiquing the UI because they say its WIP, but it desperately needs help. The styling of the UI is amazing, but actually using the UI is a constant battle. There is a lot of circulating community feedback at the moment so if they follow through on the community suggestions and their likely internal upgrades planned, the UI will be flawlessly clean to use. I think the controller support for UI at the moment is getting in the way of the MnK UI usage. The UI styling itself is very good, but missing lots of quick and easy ways to able to learn what words mean. There are a healthy variety of weapon traits and weapon rolls already, and their grouped traits make sense compared to the more random chaos of Rome. Great improvement that seems to be based on community feedback. My main gripe is honestly with the Class, Attribute, Traits, and Skills system. If you've played Rome you can forget everything you know when it comes to building characters. [b] Class [/b] Your class skill tree should be fully visible at the start as its rather small (compensated by skill system) This acts more as a foundation to build your character around, rather than the defining pillar [b] Attribute [/b] This is a system that feels like it might catch most players off guard. It functions like a DnD/BG3 Attribute system of Strength, Wisdom, Charisma, etc. Here it is only 4 categories, and the points are fixed after character creation, with no way to change them outside of unique items buffing those attributes points. This is fine at a design level, but the game does not do a very good job telling you this decision is so final. [b] Traits [/b] The trait system is an absolute min-max game, these are 12 traits that allow characters to do certain actions. Unfortunately, the player is heavily restricted because the only options that make sense for yourself (MC) to pick are the dialogue ones, however you have tons of flexibility with your companions to choose how you want to spec them. The reason i say the dialogue ones only make sense for the MC is because only the MC can start dialogue with other people in the world, this leads to you being heavily rewarded for focusing your dialogue traits. This [b] does not [/b] force your character into a support role in combat by any means, only combat skill it nerfs is the points available for surprise attacks, but there are 2-3 companions that are all already greatly suited to be able to be spec'd into surprise attacks because of their traits/perks. [b] Skills [/b] This is where the new system honestly shines, you can transform any character into any sort of vision you have for them? stealthy tanks? very possible. You can equip anyone with just about any perks, the only real restriction to the design growth is that many skills are locked behind certain Trait thresholds. However even though the MC is pushed towards dialogue skill tree. There are some very nice combat perks that aren't just support perks within the skill tree, locked behind these dialogue perks. There is no easy way currently to see what Trait upgrades would unlock what skills without navigating the skill "tree" the skill tree is also definitely not a tree as all skills are unlocked based on traits and main level, very very few are unlocked based on having to have one of the previous skills. Something that shows what your Trait upgrades will unlock for skills would be very useful though. All in all its a system that is honestly beautifully designed, but severely hindered by its UI decisions, so if they improve the UI explanations, it will genuinely be so much more approachable. I think I have 2 hours just piecing together the skills to traits to plan builds in the future. So please, dont buy this game, go play expeditions Rome, and come play this when it releases. As for the "woke" and "artstyle" comments. I didn't feel the "wokeness" or "whitewashing" the historical basis for the character and all the other europeans in japan genuinely exists and expedition games are always about coming to a new land. Sure your character can be gay or bi in romance choices, but it doesn't force it down your throat just leaves the door open, and some companions will reject your advances and others wont, bravo realistic, nothing fancy there and certainly no jarring dinner conversations of "im non-binary" or the like. The artstyle certainly isn't Rome's, but it can certainly helps with performance if the team is constrained by budget and can't afford the time it takes to optimize insanely high resolution textures and models. Honestly with how high-poly the rest of the world appears, I think genuinely the artstyle wouldn't be so complained about if they made the characters had a few more polygons in their heads. The devs sadly took horrible screenshots for the preview posts and don't express the full range of emotions expressed by the characters in dialogue.

"Quaint", and that's about all I have to say about this early access game.

This is a promising Expeditions game, but it needs work. If you liked the expeditions series then you should be happy that the continuity devs at Campfire Cabal have rescued it from the cluster NFT that was the explosion of the old studio. However the game is clearly lower budget than Rome was, with stylised graphics trying to cover up the difference and some rough edges in terms of UI and mechanics. It's currently very cheap on sale for what will be a 40 hour + good Expeditions RPG, so if you are a fan of the series you could preorder it now and wait for launch and you probably won't be disappointed. It's what I did with BG3!

It's bad in every way. Why write about different languages if only English is available after release? A game built around dialogue provides very few clues as to when a particular word is used in accordance with the mechanics. There’s no optimization. Set the shadow preset to high, and the computer tries to fly to Mars. Set it to low, and instead of shadows, there are just black lines on the screen where shadows should be. Not gray, not outlined—just lines. In previous games in this series, the mechanics were revealed gradually; here, everything is thrown at you all at once. And the game doesn’t even pause to explain what’s going on. What do you think of the idea of giving you almost all possible companions right at the start? And when we level up for the first time, it turns into chaos. Every character now has perks, abilities, and skills. And yet, without knowing what I might need, I have to choose either an ability or a skill—or both, if I have enough points to level them up. It’s fine for a demo, but it’s a problem for a game, even in early access.

Поиграл в ранний доступ, и впечатления остались смешанные, но в целом скорее положительные. Планирую играть дальше, потому что по механикам игра меня затянула, но к текущему состоянию и некоторым решениям есть вопросы. Технически проект пока очень сырой. Встречаются баги из серии «жмёшь одно, а срабатывает другое», интерфейс слепой на мой взгляд, в какой-то момент у меня вообще пропало меню по Esc. Для раннего доступа это ожидаемо, но допиливать ещё предстоит много. Графически локации игры приятные, но присутствует заметное «мыло». Если это можно отключить или поправить – будет уже гораздо лучше. По геймплею мне понравилось. Боёвка обычная для серии, а мне такое подходит. Прокачка ощущается гибкой, взяты лучшие элементы предыдущих игр, добавлено своё, в итоге можно собирать разные билды, где к стартовому классу привязаны только личные активные способности и начальная снаряга+выбранные перки, а остальное всё можно настроить под себя. Самый спорный момент для меня – арт-стиль. В трейлерах он мне совсем не понравился, и в игре я всё ещё не могу назвать его удачным. Часть персонажей выглядит как бородатые подростки в стиле условных Fortnite или Sims. Из-за этого иногда сложно понять возраст персонажа или даже пол: одну девушку я сначала принял за юношу. При этом к японским персонажам и некоторым напарникам претензий меньше, они выглядят уместнее. А вот главный герой и Йохан у меня вызывают ощущение этих самых бородатых детей, а хотелось бы, чтобы ГГ был матёрым морским волком. Но неожиданно для себя могу отметить, что понял, зачем был сделан переход на 3d-портреты. Персонажи реагируют на реплики мимикой, хоть и слишком утрированной, а в одном ключевом диалоге, как я понял, нужно считывать реакцию собеседника. Это даёт интересный отыгрыш и делает разговоры более живыми. Однако этот диалог работает слишком жёстко. Например, я хотел отыгрывать дерзкого англичанина, но большинство вариантов приводили к казни и досрочному завершению игры. Не хочется, чтобы такие диалоги с угадыванием эмоций приводили к двум вариантам: продолжение игры или смерть и game over. Хочется больше вариантов и последствий, а не мгновенного тупика. Есть вопросы и к исторической подаче. Серия всегда была сильна вниманием к эпохе и социальным ролям. В Expeditions: Rome, например, женский персонаж или женщина-протагонист обыгрывались через ограничения мира: Юлия Калида притворяется юношей, мир реагирует иначе на женщину-легата, если я правильно помню... Здесь же часть европейских спутников выглядит странно для сеттинга. Например, женщина-врач африканского происхождения на голландском корабле XVI–XVII веков вызывает вопросы. Не обязательно делать персонажей только «удобными», но хочется, чтобы они лучше соответствовали эпохе или были сильнее обоснованы сюжетом. Например, племянница посла или, если уж хочется африканку-девушку – бесправная прислуга у капитана, с которой мы объединяемся, тк всем охота жить, но не врач. Женщина-капитан, которую встречаешь по сюжету, тоже нонсенс. Хотя я и знаю про Энн Бони или Мэри Рид, но это немного другое. Именно из-за того, что это была дикая редкость, их и помнят. И уж точно не в этом регионе, если это не китайские пираты. Развитие региона для европейцев пока не того уровня. К японским напарницам у меня претензий особо нет: женщины-самураи, влиятельные политики и куноити встречались исторически в разной степени редкости, но вполне вписываются в средневековую Японию. В итоге: я планирую играть дальше, потому что по механикам и сюжету меня затянуло. Но арт-стайл я бы всё равно пересмотрел или хотя бы доработал. Понимаю, что полный реализм может быть дорогим, а возврат к обычным 2D-портретам лишит игру перспективной механики с эмоциями (какие же они утрированные...). Но текущие лица и читаемость персонажей – слабое место. Если эмоции введены ради тупиковых диалогов, где большинство веток ведут к смерти и концу игры, то лучше не надо, пусть будут 2d-портреты. Если допилят техническую часть, интерфейс, баланс диалогов и сделают персонажей более внятными визуально, будет очень достойно. А пока это интересный, перспективный, но очень сырой ранний доступ. Поставлю лайк, ведь мне понравилось, и я хочу продолжения, но нюансов и вопросов пока ну оооочень много.

The developers estimated 6-8 hours of content in the current build, but if you play optional side quests I think it could easily take you twice that amount of time. I played on Insane difficulty and found it provided a decent challenge, but I certainly wouldn't mind if they tweaked most combat encounters to be a bit harder. Pros *Fun tactical combat similar to Expeditions: Rome *Likeable companions *Engaging story with choices & consequences *Great character building system. Developers clearly put a lot of thought into the perks *Stealth system- works pretty well, though it is real-time and I'd personally prefer a turn-based stealth system like in Colony Ship. But I still found it good except for the lack of the ability to pause. Cons *Bugs (as expected with Early Access) there are some bugs, though I didn't encounter anything major or gamebreaking *Controls- you have to use right click for movement and most interactions which feels odd. I had a few misclicks where I wanted to attack and moved instead. Also, outside of combat I occasionally found my clicks didn't register and had to click again. *Some of the perks / class abilities need better explanations. The tooltips do not provide enough info on what they do before you take them. I have seen a lot of complaints about the visuals, in particular the character portraits (this game uses 3D models in dialogue). While I think it is a bit of a downgrade from the high quality portraits in Rome, I also think it is not nearly as bad as some people apparently do. In my opinion it looks better in game than it does in screenshots. I also appreciate that it shows characters reactions with facial expressions and the gear the character is wearing. The developers have stated that everything is a work in progress so I expect it will look better in the future. That said, if visuals are really important to you, you need to have realistic expectations. This is not an AAA game, so it's not going to look like one. Overall I've really enjoyed my time with the game and highly recommend it. If you've enjoyed previous Expeditions games I think there's a great chance you'll enjoy this one.