Expeditions: Samurai

This is really tragic. The "Expeditions" series of games is amazing, janky in its infancy with Conquistador, but the writing and worldbuilding drew me in, I still remember parts of it fondly. Vikings had a lot of flaws but still gave you a sufficiently well done Viking experience, with alternate history takes on Events, memorable characters and interesting systems. We can argue about if it was actually that good but there is no denying it still had charm. Then Rome. Rome was the peak. Gorgeous 2D portraits that had character, a gripping story with twists and turns, meeting Cleopatra for the first time, playing through a woman's perspective in ancient Rome, facing all her hardships and still eventually making it all the way to Empress with the help of your unique, charismatic and colorful retinue of well-written characters. This is not it. In fact, I would say this is as far from their roots as they could have possibly gotten while still claiming to be an "Expeditions" title. The gorgeous art of portraits was traded for cartoony looking clay figures that are so androgynous at times that only voiceover will let you know if you are speaking to a man or a woman. I don't care much that there is a "black woman Sawbones" or "women on a ship" in general, but what I do miss is the charm. I won't speak at length about the writing of characters, suffice to say it is dissatisfying, but I wanna talk about the baffling decisions made in other parts of the game: The UI is terrible, there is no party overview, so if I wanna switch to a specific party member, I have to either cycle through them or back out, select them, open the screen again. Why? Rome had them all on the side of the screen, convenient and easy to access. Why can I put points into dialogue related stats for my companions when they have no ability to use them in my stead? Why is stealth killing governed by a stat? It was dumb in Assassin's Creed, it is dumb here. Companions get you detected all the time, better leave them behind until you have to call them back. Most of all... the art style. It was a mistake, it looks terrible. I could probably get over it, but I don't want to, the game doesn't MAKE me want to. Maybe if the rest was GREAT, but it just simply is not. I mentioned it before, but it looks like playing with clay figures that you dressed up in plastic armor. I feel sad and disappointed coming to this after Rome.

Expeditions: Samurai is such a strange departure from the other Expeditions games. With such a rich setting in history to build from, I can't understand the choice to have the player play as a group of non-Japanese characters. Worse yet, a group of characters that do not feel like they even fit the cultures they're supposed to be from, they all seem like modern cosplayers. The gameplay feels worse than Vikings, a huge step down from Rome. The art style is incredibly offputting. Samurai doesn't have the same realistic gritty vibe of Vikings or Rome, which is strange for a game set during one of the most brutal periods of Japanese history.

Holy DEI Batman. Previous Expedition games at least pretended to write believable characters. This one doesn’t even bother—it just dives headfirst into clown world. Character creation: black, white, indian. Asians aren't invited. First dialogue you get is a black female pirate doctor. Crew and dialogue are perfectly 50/50 female. First Samurai you meet in free roam is a butch woman in full heavy battle armor hauling a nodachi. Nine party members. One actual Samurai. In a game called Expeditions: Samurai. The commitment to keeping you as far from playing a Samurai as possible is almost impressive. Graphically it’s a blurry, washed-out Fortnite cosplay with low-res models, textures and haze filters. The world is empty, flat, and dead—most NPCs just stand there like mannequins. Low budget Embracer euroslop. Buy this if you want to play a pirate in a Samurai game.

I cant quite recommend the game in its current state. Expeditions: Rome was my entry to the series - excellent game, a bit of a hidden gem. With Samurai they appear to have made a few backward steps in my view. The art style is a downgrade for me. The historical accuracy.... in Rome you could play as a female Legate, but the world would react very differently due to how unusual it was. Here though, we seem to have female Samurai all over the place without anyone batting an eyelid. I dont say that from the aggressive incel mindset of hating female leads but rather just preferring more historical accuracy. The other big gripe is the controls. Hopefully this will be fixed during EA, but right now they are clunky and seem optimised for controller rather than M&K. Further, I get a weird bug every couple of hours where half the keyboard keystrokes just no longer register, and I am unable to access the game menu to even save. I considered refunding the game after 2 hours, but decided to give the benefit of the doubt and keep it, and I am sure it will improve through early access. And honestly, for £17 right now I am not expecting a AAA game. Fans of the series will probably still enjoy what this has to offer so far.

As a mega fan of Expeditions: Rome I can say after only a couple hours Samurai feels very familiar when playing, and that’s a good thing. It looks and feels like an early access game, but nothing stands out that concerns me whether it will be fixed by release. The only thing that is a true negative for me so far are the character models and portraits. And to be honest I can get over how goofy the models look. Over time I imagine after kitting yourself and your companions with proper gear it won’t look quite so ridiculous. But the portraits are so cartoonish looking that I hope they hire an artist and redo them from scratch. Still I definitely recommend this game to fans of Expeditions: Rome. You will feel right at home and I trust the story will be good as it goes on, it’s too early to judge. **I would also like to add I am playing on a laptop and it runs flawlessly so far. No FPS dips, no glitches. Looks good

To rehash what everyone else is saying correctly : Rome was VASTLY superior to this in almost every conceivable direction. The UI is the worst part of the entire game, but something I haven't seen anyone say that bothers me is that all the classes feel the exact same. You can just get ability points to make everyone wear the same armour and same weapons. No class distinction beyond billy basics that become less useful as the game goes on. I enjoyed that you could pick several classes in the last game and then go down distinct paths, so you could have multiples of the same class that all behaved differently. In this that just isn't the case at all. I hope that changes. Oh, and why do I start the game babysitting a literal boat load of people I don't care about AT ALL, and then have to drag them around Japan sorting out all their skills and listening to their drivel? Can I at least meet them on the road or something? I don't want to start with, what is it? seven companions at the start? Feh. Oh, then you meet the next companion who shows up and you say "hey come join me" and he goes "oh yeah totes" then you have another fool with nothing interesting to say, more gear to sort and piles of stats to dish. You have managed to make the companions a burden, the classes uninteresting, Japan dull and the UI the actual antagonist of the story.

A huge downgrade from prior titles. At an hour and a half I got sick of the constant quips and Marvel style banter and applied for a refund.

I will give this a try later, but at the moment, I absolutely hate the direction this game is going. Having played the other expeditions and adored them, it's shocking that I dislike this so much. Too much garbage sneaking around and everything you do is wrong.