Expeditions: Viking

A more detailed video review can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwKjrITB0JA If you liked [i]Expeditions: Conquistador[/i], you will definitely like [i]Viking[/i]. It got rid of some of the not-so-polished strategy components of its predecessor, and instead chose to focus on the RPG and turn-based tactics aspects, and it's better for it. The writing kept the same charm, while also having more interesting characters to interact with. Sure, the companions are somewhere in-between being stereotypes and characters with depth, but it's still an improvement. The combat itself is pretty well thought out, in particular when you consider that the skill tree encourages synergies between the abilities of your vikings. The battle arenas are well thought out, which is pretty impressive since they're dynamic and laid out in the place where you make contact with your enemies most of the time. Admittedly, the game's more forgiving than [i]Conquistador[/i], but it's also more satisfying to play, less cheesing necessary. Despite some of its quirks, it's definitely a RPG worth playing.

After 50 hours into iron man mode, I am finally trapped in a dead end loop because of the one save game slot limitation in iron man. Before facing Skule Skullcleaver, one of the final enemies(?), I decided to first go back to Skjern to heal my team. As I tried to enter the world map, the game made an auto save and then gave me the "Game Over" screen. Reloading now will always lead to the "Game Over" screen without any chance to interfere. Thank you devs for ruining my experience, a well earned negative review.

I played this game a few years and rage quit after a particularly annoying fight involving a few archers before completing Logic Artists' more recent title Expeditions: Rome and then giving this game another go and completing it on the default difficulty in Iron Man mode. I would definitely recommend it to fans of turn based CRPGs like Owlcat's or Larian's stuff, but be aware that this game is quite challenging and you need to understand the mechanics well in order to enjoy it. This game certainly feels a bit more of a lower budget than Expedtions: Rome as well but it ran smoothly for me and without any bugs that I can recall. Basically, you play the role of the son or daughter of the deceased leader of a Danish viking clan circa 800AD and you have to assume leadership of your clan before travelling to Britain to either trade, conquer or forge alliances with the kingdoms there in order to build up your clan's strength for an eventual final showdown with a rival. You will travel with about a dozen different companions, with some of these being custom mercenaries which you will create yourself. Entering a new area from the overland map or engaging in the turn based battles has you picking up to 5 companions of your choice to join you. There are no character classes in this game, but each character typically slots into a specific role, depending on their attributes, skills and gear. Most characters will generally be skalds, healers, archers, or weapon and shield/spear/two handed warriors. So what's good about this game? - The combat system is nicely designed and offers a good challenge. You have to think tactically and use your party's skills to complement each other. - Innovative camping system that I would love to see other CRPGs using as well. - Decent plot and writing. - Some pleasant ambient music while travelling around the towns etc. - It's a somewhat older title so you should be able to run it on potato PCs without any problems. - My gameplay experience was completely bug free! Some of the loading screens can take a while, though. And what's not so good about this game? - Some really strange design decisions. You can't rest in any settlements or even anywhere on the overland map, but instead have to find a specific camping area and set up camp there. Thankfully these are all over the place, but some are occupied which means you have to defeat the current occupants in battle if you want to rest there. - You can't tell what the date and time except when you're on the overland map, where you have to hover the mouse over the main timeline bar at the top of screen to see the date and hover over the dots of your party's travel route to see the current time. All really fiddly when this info could have been displayed clearly on the screen somewhere instead. - Annoying random events that hinder more than help you like a companion getting an injury with no chance to avoid it. - Equally annoying combat mechanics. There is no proper initiative system, so it seems most fights are scripted to have the enemies go first during a 'surprise round', even if your party can clearly see them first. In this case, all you can do is move your characters into position before the enemies take their turn. This can be painful when you're up against a group with a large amount of archers, as often there will not be enough spots where you can take cover, and enemy archers seem to be really accurate with their shots. Once combat is underway, it's virtually mandatory to have at 1 companion with the "demoralize" skill, which reduces enemy ranged attack hit chances by half if they fail to resist it. - Melee attacks all hit automatically for some strange reason, so you can't really play the game as an agile dodging sort of character like you would in a D&D game. If you want to be a tanky frontliner character, using a shield (which gives you a chance to block attacks and absorbs damage) and wearing heavy armour is really the only option open to you. - Loot is very limited and most stuff you find will be crafting components. It's annoying to fight a horde of heavily armed and armoured enemies and get almost nothing off their corpses except a few coins and a handful of crafting components. Smiths in towns typically don't sell you any armour or weapons but will either sell you crafting components or else can craft gear for you but you still have to supply the materials needed AND pay for it on top of that. Consequently it's utterly pointless to buy any crafted gear from smiths as you can just have someone from your group craft weapons or armour for you free of charge in camp if their crafting skills are high enough. - The ending was fine but seemed a little anticlimactic. The final fight was a bit easy and I would have preferred a better explanation regarding what happened to your character and their companions, like in the Owlcat games, for example. I guess they probably were limited by budget though. Solid 7/10 from me otherwise. I haven't played their first title Expeditions: Conquistador yet, but I would recommend playing Expeditions: Viking before Expeditions: Rome if you plan to play them both, as Rome is the superior game.

Not a very fun experience. I have not played the other Expeditions games, but Expeditions: Viking starts out strong and falls off really quickly. Dialogue options, different weapons and a big skill tree all seem alluring and the story seems interesting until you get to the end of the Prologue. I played on Hard, which was decently challenging until then, but the ensuing battles just 90 minutes in robbed me of any desire to play. This is mostly due to the bafflingly stupid "Surprise Action" feature - for some reason, enemies often get to attack first while you can only move. When you face 6 or 7 enemies at a time, many of your own party members fall before you can even do anything, especially with enemy ranged characters, who always seem to hit. While there are options to adjust the difficulty to your liking, I feel like that shouldn't be necessary as long as there are fair fights, but nothing about this is fair. The breaking point for me was when, at the end of the prologue, you have to defend a bridge and ensure enemies don't reach a point past the bridge. Aside from the three enemy rangers pelting you while you only have two spaces to move across on the bridge, and enemy melee units blocking your way, I managed to actually almost win this by sheer luck and some cover positioning. However, in the battle, an enemy ranger somehow made its way past my units. With a bit of a space advantage, there was nothing I could do to catch up with him as he was always one step ahead. My character could charge, but he was one space too far to do that, and I could stun him, but again, he was too far away. He made it past the bridge and my reward was a nice "DEFEAT" screen after almost a dozen tries when I thought I finally figured it out. Could I have parked a character further up to block part of the bridge? Sure, if the three enemy rangers wouldn't have killed half my team before I even made it past the bridge. There are some other things that annoyed me about the game. Your ranged units never hit, and how could they, with 50 % or less hit chance which quickly goes down to FIVE percent? Sure, at some point you can probably skill them so high that they hit a lot more consistently, but at the beginning, they are damn near useless while enemy rangers are, as mentioned, almost infallible. Blocking is also very weird; if you have a shield, you have a chance to block, but it seems to be so low that it never triggers. Among this pile of low percentages, frustrating mission designs and punishing encounters, there is a good foundation here. An interesting story background, serviceable graphic design, good music and choices in dialogue. But man, am I so over hexagonal combat with percent hit chances that never work out in your favour. I should learn my lesson already. If you play this on the easiest difficulty, perhaps you can have some fun with it by overpowering enemies, but I was looking for a fair challenge and got only frustration. At least it was early in the game...

Great game, has a bit of a learning curve but once you get the hang of it the game is very satisfying. The combat is fun, the story is engaing and the writing superlative. I loved the soundtrack and the stoic feel of the game, and while it may have been on the shorter side for an RPG it was just right for me and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It's a good game. It has its faults and awkwardness, especially in cutscene animation, but it's great. Honestly, archers are overpowered. Slingers are completely useless, so are rogues. Even building dual wielding berserkers, spearmen or more traditional shielded warriors is useless until max level in sword and shield. everything is defeated by archers.

баланс никакой ,да же самый лютый бомж раскатает гг без проблем

I wouldn’t mind the time limit if the game was more intuitive with my goals. I’m constantly googling solutions and it’s usually “oh you gotta do this thing that you’d never think to do, then it’ll work.” That’s a lot of wasted time for a game with a time limit. I can’t really wrap my head around the point of it in the first place. I’m having a good time for the most part, I like the settings, attention to detail, but I honestly get a headache trying to navigate the quests and quest triggers.