[h1]5/10[/h1]
This would’ve been an excellent cRPG if it weren't for a number of unnecessary elements. This is probably the first game I've played for over 90 hours and decided I couldn't continue because it was too irritating. The cRPG aspect itself is excellent and by that I mean the six-person party, the main character and main companions, the storyline, the ancient Roman setting, the turn-based combat, the classes and their skills – all of it works as intended and is great. Unfortunately, even though this is the core of the game, there are other major pillars that the game comprises of, and they are:
[olist]
[*]The Roman legion battles (mini game)
[*]Pacification missions
[*]Sieges
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I'll return to the above three in a moment, but first I want to list several other parts of the game that made me give Rome a negative review. Also, it will be easier to explain some things further down the line.
So the other major drawbacks include:
[list]
[*]The randomness of almost all aspects of the gameplay. Recruits are random, and you MUST add them to your party otherwise you won't be able to complete certain stages of the game. Their skills and equipment are random. Map travel events are random. Crafting is also random! You can't craft the equipment you want because the stats are randomized. The only remedy is rerolling via quick save -> quick load. You're traveling around the map and your companion breaks a leg and becomes useless in combat? Reroll. Want a new sword or armor, but you rolled lousy stats? Reroll. The latter is especially terrible, because trying to equip even a single companion in my party could take me up to an hour. The reason being it took me so long to keep re-loading until the item rolled the stats I wanted. After level two forge, I wanted to upgrade all of my party's equipment, and it literally took me several hours. If it weren't for this moronic crafting design, I could have spent those hours exploring and questing.
[*]Backtracking – various POIs and loot caches are scattered across the map (you guessed it - in random places). You return to them periodically when they become available again. As you conquer new areas, the traversable map expands, and it takes very long to return to these POIs.
[*]Companions and recruits loyalty – this feature kills the RPG concept in this game. Since characters can approve or disapprove of the player's choices, their loyalty can go up or down. If it falls too low, the character may leave the group. This means that in dialogues, you're looking for options that will please companions with low loyalty, rather than choose what you want to choose. And how do you know which line to choose? Yup, quick save -> quick load
[*]Crafting - I've already covered the RNG aspect of crafting, so I’ll skip that here. I will, however, also add that the crafting menu is a mess. There are too many items to choose from, and on top of that, each one has three tiers. When crafting, you always want to go for tier 3 anyway, so the lower tiers are completely redundant.
[*]No character/skills reset. Some skills are simply useless. Building your character on the first playthrough is a bit of a trial-and-error process and it often yields the error.. Resetting skills should be available as a standard feature, but unfortunately, it isn't, so you have to roll with the botched up builds. It’s also worth noting that new higher level recruits are (you guessed it) randomly generated, which also means they have their skill points already distributed. You can't reset their skills either, of course, so you often get recruits with completely useless builds.
[*]The pronunciation of the V sound as a U in Latin phrases is pretentious, to say the least. I understand that the devs wanted to reflect the historical accuracy of how ancient Romans might have pronounced Latin, but the V pronounced as a U sounds rather awkward. Furthermore, some actors pronounce the sound as a V, while others pronounce it as a U. In my opinion it's one of those cases where it’s not worth being so strict on historical accuracy. It’s just too ear-catching and draws too much attention. There's a reason the V pronunciation is most often used in modern takes on Latin in cinema for example.
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Now, back to the three pillars I mentioned earlier: Legion battles, pacification missions and sieges.
Legion battles is a mini-game that isn't particularly difficult or interesting. Mastering the basics is relatively easy and in time it becomes rather boring. It adds no value to the game and might as well have never been introduced to the game at all. Conquest would then simply be reflected by the main party completing main missions.
Pacification missions are relatively easy to medium difficulty skirmishes on small maps. The real difficulty is that you have to resolve these battles using the recruits and not your main party (for whatever stupid reason). I hate being forced out of using my main character. This is exactly why I got to create it, dammit. For me, the pacification missions take away all the fun of playing your well maintained party and are a chore to complete. Fortunately, there weren't many of them, so I was able to stomach it.
What I was not able to stomach for long though, were sieges. They are the paramount of stupidity, and were the final straw for me. They are much more difficult than the pacification missions and require twelve characters. You can do them with less men, but the optimal setup is twelve. Six characters are your main party, and another six are the recruits (yes, the random ones). To complete these missions properly, you need to ensure that the recruits have good equipment and decent enough builds. In order for that to happen, you have to craft that equipment and as I mentioned earlier, this could take up to an hour per character (x12 characters = 12 hours of quick saving -> quick loading). Furthermore, if you didn't recruit all your recruits at the very beginning of the game (when they are low level and level up with your team, so you can assign skills yourself), you're now recruiting characters with random builds that you can't amend because there's no way to reset skills.
I believe that a game is only as good as the number of things you don't like, but are willing to turn a blind eye and keep playing. In Expedition Rome, the devs went a few steps too far, and it seems to me, wanted a little bit of everything in their game. While the core cRPG aspect of the game is still a huge highlight of the title, the rest is an absolute mess.
I have played the previous part of the series, Expeditions Vikings, and, while it was not without its flaws, it never frustrated me or forced me to play the game in a way I didn’t want to play. On the contrary, it was the reason I bought Rome. I wanted more of the same, but improved. Seeing, however, the direction the devs have taken, I’m almost certain I won't buy their next release.
If, like me, you're looking for a decent cRPG where you can focus on the story, (turn-based) combat, and only the main characters, don't buy this game. You're in for a huge disappointment and endless frustration.
