Expeditions: Viking - Preview @ BigBossBattle

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Expeditions: Viking – The Old World’s the New New.

I managed, at the recent PC Gamer Weekender, to get some time with Logic Artists’ Expeditions: Viking, the second outing in the series, following on from 2013’s Expeditions: Conquistador.

Expeditions: Conquistador was a strange title, combining a hex-based, turn-based combat system built around small skirmishes with a resource system that tied into an over-world map. Players pushed deeper into the tribal reaches of the pre-conquest new world, trading and making alliances to advance the story, support their travelling party,  and, well, get rich or die trying.

The game featured over thirty companions; named, skilled, and placed on a moral compass that could see you coming to blows with them if your behaviours really irked them. There was also a danger of mutiny, should you fail at the semi luck-based camping sections as you travelled the winding paths of Mexico (following an extended tutorial on the island of Hispaniola). Conversation with your allies felt, somewhat incidental, and although the characters each had their own traits -racists despise natives, religious folk unsure why you’re letting off sinners, etc- the conversation with them felt over-written and disconnected from the game world; taking place in it’s own, heavy interface.

Conquistador’s combat scale, six of your units vs the enemy, was wonderful, a return to halcyon days of tactical games like Jagged Alliance & Fallout: Tactics, albeit trapped on a hex-based grid – very similar to Might and Magic. At the time, actually, M&M was the only major title/series that dabbled with that scale of combat, so Conquistador’s rather simple class system was entirely bearable, even if it did feel a little unfinished and shallow as the game went on. Of course, many more games of the sort came along in the years to follow -Banner Saga, Blackguards, Battle Brothers, and a few that didn’t start with B- and pushed focus moreso onto unique feeling heroes, and have really pushed the subgenre along further while the game was experiencing it’s Autumn years.

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Thanks Farflame!