Expeditions: Samurai

As somebody who really enjoyed Expeditions: Rome, it hurts that in its current state, I cannot really recommend Expeditions: Samurai. Plenty of other people have hit the nail in the head, though I will remark that I would be okay with the character models as long as they had good portraits, but Tyranny had a similar-ish design with the actual in-game models. I also wish the conversations that you had with your companions were more interesting, as I feel like there are some pretty interesting backgrounds at hand. I also had a weird feeling about the stealth system. I wasn't quite sure that any particular character was actually better at being stealthy than another, but maybe I needed to play around with it more. If they are planning on releasing in Q1 of next year, I feel like there might be some time to do some course corrections, as long as they're truly willing to accept player feedback and work on it. Otherwise, I'm not sure I could really recommend this game over something like Expeditions: Rome.

First game I refunded in many years. I loved Rome. I hoped this would be at least similar... but it is just worse in all aspects. I wouldn't mind the wokeness all that much, but unfortunately everything else is just bad too. There are two things a game needs to do well: Gameplay + UI. If these are not good, nothing can save a game, not even good graphics, unless of course, you just want to bank some money at release and then abandon the game like some bigger studios do. But even the graphics are horrible here. Everything looks blurry and uninspired. Who knows, maybe they turn it around, but I doubt it. It's a shame really, It's a great franchise and smaller studios always have a hard time, but if you produce garbage, it's garbage, and I don't want that.

I am disappointed. The Devs have taken an interesting game series and thrown out everything that made it unique. The missile weapons are now down to maximum range of about 10m, the manoeuvring is firmly based on D and D. Combat is to be won by builds with no room for strategy. It's not a skirmish combat simulation, it's a board game for children.

Sadly, I don't think this is for me even though I enjoyed all the previous games of the series. My main issue is the writing, it's shallow and does not really fit the situation of a ship out of food and near mutiny. I couldn't get immersed in the story and characters and I much more liked the mature tone of the previous entries - maybe I'm just getting old and nostalgic. :) When we reached shore and I had to immediately level up like 6-7 characters I don't even care about I gave up. Refunding it as I don't think this will improve much in early access.

前作Expeditions:Romeが楽しめたので期待を込めての購入だったのですが… 現状、バルダーズゲート3とシャドウタクティクスを足して10で割ったようなプレイ感。 世界感とグラフィックデザインも余り合っておらず、UIはとにかく痒い所だらけで直感的に動かず、どこかチグハグで薄味でコレジャナイ感と細かいストレスが付きまとう。 あれ、前作ってこんなセンス無い感じだったっけ…？ ひとまず、現段階ではオススメできそうにはないです。ローカライズもされてないですしね。

I really want to like this, but it isn't there yet. I wish they had a feedback button or something I could use, but absent that, I went with a review here. Here is a kind of random list of my issues up to the point where I stopped playing. - Highlightable interaction points that you can't actually interact with - Stepping into the shoes of a character with all this reputation and relationship stuff already setup ahead of you starting, but that you learn about awkwardly through interactions, and that also means you are like, treated as if you know who all the crew are but.. you don't. - It is just way too much getting hit with a pile of "life or death" decisions in a row right at the start, especially when you don't know anyone and have barely any context. Maybe this works better if theres some like "brief intro -> *fade to black* "one week later" *make a decision about who lives and who dies* *fade to black* "Two weeks later" *Deal with the next crisis* etc. At least then theres some implication of time passing and not just a pile of crisis all just there rapid firing as you are trying to learn the game. - Real time stealth section in my turn based tactical RPG... and incredibly frustrating at that. I can't tell my crew to stop following me, so I hide behind a box while they get caught. Also clunky with the default run and have to hold shift for a sneak when in a sneak section... and all in in all just... its not a thing I enjoy much in the first place, but also like... I want deep turn based tactical combat, not real time sneak. - Sailors being foul mouthed makes sense I guess, but some of the dialogue does come across as very present day, just rarely am I really sold on the time and setting I guess. It feels a lot more fiction than history. - Art style is better than I expected from screenshots and stuff honestly, but also needs work... it seems like most characters basically look the same except maybe like different hair or something. The logic of the physical models allowing more expressiveness and stuff just kinda feels fake to me as they are not very reactive. Going between a few different poses is not that exciting, you could do 2d portraits where they all look way more unique again and just get a few different facial expressions or something if you want the reaction faces that bad. - UI could use some tooltips. Like I spent a point on "Skill Efficiency". What does that mean? Beats me. - UX generally feels clunky and confusing, things just regularly don't behave as I expect or are annoying, like having to hold escape or spacebar to do so many simple menu things or looting. - No idea how many points in a skill is "good" so I kinda went all in on a skill per character, but then it turns out it isn't party based skills, so all that persuasion on my priest is good for exactly... nothing? Why even let me assign skill points on a character that can't use the skill? - I used Antje's sneak ability while in the bandit shack which makes her look invisible... and then the guy outside unlocks the door, runs into the shack, turns around and one shots her. Cool. - I got to the point where I get interrogated by the important fellow and it says to be careful picking your words, so I was careful, I made sure to have a bit of a spine while being respectful and truthful. And apparently offended him so much I was executed. Game Over. And that is when I decided to stop playing for now. I really hope Early Access leads to a lot of clean up here and we end up with a great game as I really want more expedition games and to see Campfire Cabal succeed. But right now, I just can't recommend the game. I'll happily change this in the future if things get better.

The case for expeditions Samurai. I have just completed the first arc of the game on the Southern Island, playing as a completionist took me 9 hrs but i can easily see it being done in 3 if you are yoloing the main story. Sadly this is all that is in the game at present but this is consistant with the early acess roadmap The Gender roles of this game are ahistorical. Its infantalizing to bypass the issues of having women openly on a 18th century warship. Expeditions Rome handled this flawlessly My suggestions 1) Have the player character find Anje as a stowaway in the stolen water mission with Johans help (so he has something else to do other than be a spoiled rich boy) 2) Have Raina be a rescued slave from a Portugese ship you board in the prolouge as a tutorial. (this also gives a much more compeling reason for the Portugese to be after you even if its just a "red herring" false lead. You could aslo give a choice of freeing Raina stright away making her work for her freedom or reinslaving (To which she could comment "I was born free") 3) Timeskip 6 months to the mutiny and have the sailors be going after the girls Antje because she is seen as an extra mouth to feed and Raina because her "Curse" has caused the crew to consider her a Jonah that brings misfortune to the ship. (Make the decision be about how to treat the mutineers and include a good flogging as an option vs hanging from the yardarm or hardtack and half rations, or have the men draw lots for flogging) 4) Have the Ambassador speak to you in Japanese to at least explain why you can understand everyone. The Expeditions Rome character portriats need to be reintroduced. (I actually don;t mind the anime style in a game set in Japan but it seems like half the fanbase hates them) Why am i praising and positively reviewing a game i have issue with... Well because its still the best historical game out this year and there is clearly effort that went into this game. The World is interesting and detailed and will only get more so with development. People complaining about janky movement need to calm down this will be ironed out over the next year of dev time. So buy this game, we need more character driven Samurai Games.