Review RPG Codex Review: Expeditions: Conquistador

[Mrowak]

Grunker

Did you just... pull down the review?

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/homepage-is-borked.83742/

Oh, silly me.

 

[evdk]

Grunker

Did you just... pull down the review?

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/homepage-is-borked.83742/

That probably wouldn't remove the link from OP.

Disregard that, I suck cocks.

 

[Alex_Steel]

Not even the server can handle so much incline. I guess the administration must include some kind of fee to fully read them, kinda like a science journal.

 

[Kane]

posting on page 5 of a cRPG review comment thread that contains 90% butthurt by walking avatars of the dunning-kruger effect.

 

[Kane]

Incoming wall of shit posters with single image posts.

 

[AN4RCHID]

Just started playing today, about to head to the mountains. So far I'm really liking it. The setting especially is great; it's obvious a lot of work went into making the world feel alive and it really pays off.

I have to concur with Villain of The Story that the world map camera, and actually just the camera in general, is a big annoyance. Fog of War would have made this game a lot more enjoyable.

Juggie makes some good points about the combat, but even though it's relatively simple I'm having fun with it.

My biggest criticism would be that equipment and supplies should have been more detailed. I found putting points into armor and weapons pretty unsatisfying. It's too abstract, and too much of a gradual process. When you add equipment to armor, it only decreases damage resistance by 1%. It's such a small change that you can't even really notice that your guys are getting any better. It also removes one of the staples of an RPG: loot. Finding treasure chests, looting fallen enemies, and bartering with merchants isn't that exciting if everything you find is just some quantity of generic 'resources'. Finding a new item should be rewarding, but in Expedition: Conquistador it's not really. For example, it would have been fun to discover a golden idol and then make the long trek back to the port city to sell it for 1000's of gold doubloons, but instead you just find 'valuables' and that's that. Having a real inventory also would have allowed encumbrance mechanics, which would work really well with the setting and existing survival systems. Will you carry the 100 pounds of gold that you found in the temple, even if it could mean getting stuck in the jungle for another 2 days, possibly running out of food? Decisions like that could make resource management more interesting. Speaking of resource management, hunting was a little too generous, I felt. You shouldn't be able to survive in the wilderness indefinitely. To be fair, I'm playing on normal, idk if rations are harder to come by on the higher difficulties. On a related note, followers should get sick. Maybe this happens later in the game or on hard mode or something, but it seems like disease would be one of the biggest dangers for explorers in a foreign continent.

Complaints aside, it's a really good game. I hope Expedition 2 takes the formula and refines and enhances it. There's ton of potential here for sure.

 

[tuluse]

There is random events were followers get sick, but unless you're already in a touch situation it doesn't have a big effect. Hunting is a random chance thing, you will often not get enough and need to eat your rations, but it's never really *that* hard.

 

[AN4RCHID]

There is random events were followers get sick, but unless you're already in a touch situation it doesn't have a big effect. Hunting is a random chance thing, you will often not get enough and need to eat your rations, but it's never really *that* hard.

Yeah, sometimes you don't get enough, but then a lot of times you have surplus meat and you can make new rations. So far I'm usually ending a trip with more resources than when I started. I haven't seen the sickness event yet.

Is there any mod support for this game? A handful of small changes could do wonders.

 

[Hoodoo]

Will you carry the 100 pounds of gold that you found in the temple, even if it could mean getting stuck in the jungle for another 2 days, possibly running out of food? Decisions like that could make resource management more interesting.

This is a good idea. And I agree with what you say about eqipment, which was way too abstracted for my tastes, although im not sure what you could do about it. Redoing the stats/skill-tree for your characters maybe would be the best option - Get an especially good haul back to the settlement? Bonus exp per how much you decide to "send home" to reflect your good fortune and seeming cohesion of your party. ++in str / agi instead of dumping into armour etc which is abstracted instead as a perishable bonus: Large starting bonuses to stats/dmg/dmg reduct but decreases over time as it is used and suffers the jungle and the elements. Would serve nice towards a risk/reward type thing as your party becomes more ragged the longer they stay in the jungle but the rewards go up as you venture further than any other into indian territory, which could bring you a bigger haul, which would mean more advancement for you party. Smithy could even be an interesting addition as classes go.

My 2 cents incase any developers are reading - I hate most of your game. The combat is average. The 6 player limit is bogus. Your travel map sucks so much. Player traits are mostly arbitrary. Tweaking could be done to almost every mechanic in the game to make it better - but, it works together somehow and I've never larped explorers better. Played 24 hours or so of this mebbe and didnt get past Hispaniola because I gave-up on my shitty computer , but while it wasnt crashing and I wasnt lagging I had a lot of fun. You guys werent far off from making a great game and for a debut thats pretty good. Learn from your mistakes and be circlejerked here for years to come.

 

[Bruticis]

Grunker Infinitron

Delete my review and replace it with Juggie 's, it's the review hipster Codex deserves.

In fact, replace it with a Baldur's Gate 1 retrospective which reveals that BG1 is the best RPG ever and Fallout, JA2 and all other turn based games are shit anyway. Welcome to Codex 2013. Skyway was right, and so on, and so forth.

(I'm not actually joking. Delete my fucking review, you no longer have permission to reproduce my text.)

Nice! Newfag kodex kills another good poster. Not much longer now, only 4chan shit posters shall remain. You can alll brofist harvest those witty 4chan images and talk about the good old days of gaming (Fallout: New Vegas).

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Take it down. I withdraw your right to use any of my reviews on the RPG Codex. You have some nerve thinking you can use my review.

Technically, any content you made for the Codex was purely for the Codex to use as it saw fit. There was no "By the way, if you don't like the feedback you receive we'll pull the content" clause in your employment contract. Demanding your content be taken down when you agreed to provide it for free, knowing full well the nature of the Codex, would be akin to an employee demanding any work they did during their tenure at a company be given back to them and never used again just because someone didn't like it. Sorry, the work you did was on the understanding that the resulting product is something the site gets to use - whether people like it or not.

If you disagree, you get your lawyers and I'll get mine and they can do lunch.

 

[Western]

I'm having a relatively easy time past Hispaniola, but I'm on the middle tier of difficulty. Once a couple patches come out I'll give it a hardcore run maxing out most difficulty options, I think the tedium tends to set in once the challenge falls away.

 

[Brotherman Bill]

Grunker Infinitron

Delete my review and replace it with Juggie 's, it's the review hipster Codex deserves.

In fact, replace it with a Baldur's Gate 1 retrospective which reveals that BG1 is the best RPG ever and Fallout, JA2 and all other turn based games are shit anyway. Welcome to Codex 2013. Skyway was right, and so on, and so forth.

(I'm not actually joking. Delete my fucking review, you no longer have permission to reproduce my text.)

Nice! Newfag kodex kills another good poster. Not much longer now, only 4chan shit posters shall remain. You can alll brofist harvest those witty 4chan images and talk about the good old days of gaming (Fallout: New Vegas).

Wait, what? Who's being killed? IronYuri? For not being able to take well thought out criticism on the codex?
I'd say that's less being killed and more like he couldn't stand the weather (though likely he's just trawlan).

Also, just to up the drama a bit, can you please stop being such a fucking joke bruticisis? You are like Skyway 2.0, except skywayism stopped being cool a looooooooooong time ago and where pre-top ten list skyway had at least a thin layer of hardcore creds, you yourself start out with the biggest steam whore + biggest Xbox whore on the codex achievement. You can single handedly incline the codex if you just stop posting, so pls ask DU to nuke your account and take up permanent residence in the steam group where we can't see you.

 

[Bruticis]

Grunker Infinitron

Delete my review and replace it with Juggie 's, it's the review hipster Codex deserves.

In fact, replace it with a Baldur's Gate 1 retrospective which reveals that BG1 is the best RPG ever and Fallout, JA2 and all other turn based games are shit anyway. Welcome to Codex 2013. Skyway was right, and so on, and so forth.

(I'm not actually joking. Delete my fucking review, you no longer have permission to reproduce my text.)

Nice! Newfag kodex kills another good poster. Not much longer now, only 4chan shit posters shall remain. You can alll brofist harvest those witty 4chan images and talk about the good old days of gaming (Fallout: New Vegas).

Wait, what? Who's being killed? IronYuri? For not being able to take well thought out criticism on the codex?
I'd say that's less being killed and more like he couldn't stand the weather (though likely he's just trawlan).

Also, just to up the drama a bit, can you please stop being such a fucking joke bruticisis? You are like Skyway 2.0, except skywayism stopped being cool a looooooooooong time ago and where pre-top ten list skyway had at least a thin layer of hardcore creds, you yourself start out with the biggest steam whore + biggest Xbox whore on the codex achievement. You can single handedly incline the codex if you just stop posting, so pls ask DU to nuke your account and take up permanent residence in the steam group where we can't see you.

No.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Got the game yesterday and so far have mixed feelings about it. I got it mostly for the combat, but after playing the game I think it's my least favorite aspect of the game. As has been mentioned before, equipping your characters feels shitty and arbitrary instead of feeling like real progression, most traits are pretty binary and others are so much more superior compared to others you'd be an idiot to not take them always and the combat itself feels a bit flat and one dimensional. I would've liked to see such things as grappling, pinning down, crouching etc.
The CYOA elements are enjoyable, though, and I love the setting they went with. Great visuals, good music and satisfying sound effects.

 

[MicoSelva]

Nice review, ironyuri. The game is very good for what it is (low-budget strategy/RPG hybrid), but I don't see it as one of the fully-fledged incline RPG that the crowd-funding is supposed to bring us and am expecting more from the big players. However, it is worth noting that the exploration aspect is really great .

Best-spent $18 this year so far.

 

[Disgruntled]

This game really gets me excited for a sequel. So much is done right using simple and straightforward design and most of the shortcomings look like they are down to budget/time constraints. Id almost say those constraints is what allowed the practical balance mechanisms to exist and be refined in such a manner.

I wish I could spell out how to improve it, but I think it comes down to adding more content and variety.
Perhaps expanding the in-combat party size, pushing more choices in specialization during camping, more branching with each class, risking smaller scouting expeditions into thicker jungle where carts cannot traverse (in map rather than event dialogue) etc...
Right now everything is a bit too formulaic even on the most difficult level but I can understand why it occurred with the utilitarian resource system.

Finally a fixed campaign map as suggested before, with fog of war and more work on making it feel intimidating.

The game is a fantastic first effort (i think its their first? havent checked). Keep the ground work and add to it for whatever comes next.

Its at this point so many potential greats have deviated to go for the console audience... but we have room for one sequel of pure incline right?

 

[Infinitron]

It is their first game, unless you count The Nameless Mod for Deus Ex.

 

[thesisko]

Pity that judging from their forum responses, their main takeaway from the feedback seems to be "the game is too difficult".

 

[HiddenX]

On the Watch everyone who played the game already says: "Play on insane if you want a little challenge"

 

[thesisko]

On the Watch everyone who played the game already says: "Play on insane if you want a little challenge"

Yeah, I don't know where the developers got the impression that "everybody complains that the game is insanely difficult".
I haven't seen many complaints about the difficulty on forums or in the mainstream reviews.

Seems to me most complaints are rather about the limited encounter variety and the game getting too easy half-way through. I worry abut the quality of their future games when they brush aside those complaints because they think the game is already too difficult for most people.

 

[Darth Roxor]

It's way too easy even on insane

 

[Tigranes]

I'm in Mexico now on Insane Ironman and I'm pleased with the difficulty. If you are very careful and do things right everything is eminently beatable, the moment you screw up (e.g. let some meat spoil, lose a couple men in a fight) it can quickly become hell. That to me is a very good balance - though we shall see, even that is getting easier and easier as you level up.

I think the thing about this game is the felt difficulty between (1) when you have a healthy and well leveled party, and (2) when you screw up and your best guy dies or you get 3-4 injuries, is very big.

 

[Mortmal]

Pity that judging from their forum responses, their main takeaway from the feedback seems to be "the game is too difficult".

I hope you are wrong, if they take only that feedback into account and lower the diffilculty in their next game i will have no interest in playing it . Its hard like a 90's game,wich in my opinion doesnt mean chess master level . It get even quite easier when you have your full team equiped plus a few extra oil lantern and barricades.

 

[Kattze]

I'm in Mexico now on Insane Ironman and I'm pleased with the difficulty. If you are very careful and do things right everything is eminently beatable, the moment you screw up (e.g. let some meat spoil, lose a couple men in a fight) it can quickly become hell. That to me is a very good balance - though we shall see, even that is getting easier and easier as you level up.

I think the thing about this game is the felt difficulty between (1) when you have a healthy and well leveled party, and (2) when you screw up and your best guy dies or you get 3-4 injuries, is very big.

When I lost one of my Hunters (Veteran) and after a slew of poisoned party members, everything went to shit. And before that all was going well.