Expeditions: Rome Preliminary Review: Think of a civilization that built roads for years to move its armies from one city to another faster. I’m not talking about simple dirt roads. They broke rocks for years to obtain stones of appropriate sizes, and then they built magnificent roads by combining those stones in an orderly manner with perfect engineering. Moreover, they imagined this thousands of years ago and put it into practice. I’m talking about the civilization that invented pavement engineering. I’m talking about the Roman Empire, which provided safe trade routes and perfect social development within the empire thanks to these roads. Who wouldn’t want to live in those times and be a Legatus?
Expeditions: Rome preview
In 2013 Expeditions: Conquistador and Logic Artists, which experienced a nice rise in the gaming industry by developing the Expeditions: Viking games in 2017, promises to make us feel the difficulties of a Legatus’ life up close with the Expeditions: Rome game, which will be released on January 20, 2022. The fate of the novel is now in the hands of us players.
Although the game developers stated that the game was in the RPG and Strategy genre, I felt like I was playing a TBRPG (Turn Based Role Playing Game) genre while playing the demo. Then, when I did some research on the internet, I learned that they translated the genre we have been calling RPG for decades into Turkish as RPG, and while I was laughing to myself, the joy of learning something new surrounded me.
In the game’s turn-based combat structure, we control multiple characters as a team. In the demo I had the opportunity to test, I did not encounter a panel where I could intervene in the items or skill trees of the side characters other than the main character, but we can control many variables in the progression of our main character. The game’s developers promise that we will be able to make comprehensive tactical choices as we increase the levels of each of our 5 unique companions in the adventure we will continue. In other words, we will have access to the items and skill trees of not only our main character but also the side characters.
Apart from the combat structure of the game, we are generally bombarded with dialogues. I came across some words that are rarely used in English in the dialogues and I had to use a dictionary to understand the course of events. I think I will have improved my English a lot while playing this game. In fact, such games should be played in English classes in schools. If we had such a developed education system; I would definitely want them to be added to the curriculum. In order for us to successfully pass the dialogue parts of the game and progress in a way that suits our interests, it asks us to choose one of the Ethos, Logos or Pathos options during character creation. Thanks to these choices, we only choose dialogues that suit our character’s temperament and direct the course of the game according to our temperament.
- Ethos: We persuade the other party by using our authority, power and abilities.
- Logos: We convince the other party with our power of reasoning, by presenting solid logical arguments.
- Pathos: We persuade the other party by using emotional manipulation or exciting public speaking.
From what I understand from the dialogues in the game, we will try to survive in a world full of intrigues according to the choices we make. Maybe we will cause the heads of some nobles to be separated from their bodies by making intrigues. While the supported languages include English, French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Polish, Russian and Spanish, Turkish is not available for now. I would really like to play such an exciting, intrigue-filled dialogue game in Turkish, but I think they did not bother to translate it into Turkish because they did not make enough money from us.
Our story begins with a ship trip to Lesbos. They killed our senator father. Our brother, who will inherit the inheritance, wants to kill his other brothers. Just as we are about to be beheaded; a close friend of our father tries to take us from Rome to Lesbos by ship. We have our first introduction dialogues with our teammates on the ship. While trying to learn from the captain when we will give it to Lesbos; a pirate ship with a blue flag crashes into us from the side, crushing us terribly and boarding our deck. Are we going to die for no reason now? We attack them too. We have yet to see war, so we have to grab our weapons with our young hands and shed the blood of the pirates. When we arrive at Lesbos with our companions, we start living the life of a Legatus in the lands of Rome, jumping from adventure to adventure.
Even though I have played games with much better visual effects, I found the visual effects of the game to be quite adequate. The blood effects that occurred when the characters were hit or the scenes where some of their limbs were torn off seemed quite realistic to me. They wanted to provide a real experience without feeling the need to mask anything. Period clothing, weapons and structures were designed exactly as they should be and were skillfully modeled without ignoring the fine details. Even the edge work on the tents in the Legionnaire camp was considered. It really put me into that atmosphere and made me feel like I was living in the first century BC.
The music of the game is well designed to make us excited or calm down and make logical decisions according to the situation we are in. The sound effects created according to the weapons used during combat were satisfactory. Although, when you stab the guy with a sword, he says “aaaaaghghagh” and then stops. He doesn’t make a sound for a while. If someone stabs a sword into my gut right now; I would continue to scream until the whole combat is over and I die. My voice would never end. I would scream. I guess they don’t use this type of realism in any game because it would be too disturbing. When this happens, the realism decreases a little.
Although, when we think about it from a different perspective; we are playing a turn-based RPG game. Let’s say we stabbed our enemy’s intestines with our sword during our turn. He started to squeal as I wanted. At that moment, I wanted to make myself a coffee. Let’s say I got up and spent half an hour in front of the computer. He will continue to squeal for half an hour and maybe if I take longer, the sounds of torture will bounce from wall to wall in the house for hours. As a result of the neighbors who have put glasses against the wall calling 155, my door will be broken and I will be lying on the carpet with my back handcuffed. At that moment, the heroic police officers who were celebrating as if they had caught the serial killer could not find the victims in the other rooms bla bla bla… Did I exaggerate too much? Wait, this is just the beginning. What other plots will I make up for you in my articles…
The map structure of the game is taken exactly from the real world. While traveling in the lands of the Roman Empire, we are bombarded with general culture as if we want to witness history 2100 years ago. We will leave our footprints in many geographies including North Africa, Gaul and Rome itself. In order to go from one city to another or to the relevant camp point, we click on the relevant place on the general map. The game time accelerates and takes us there in a few seconds. While we are traveling quickly on the main map; the time in the game also progresses quickly according to the distance. I traveled by horse while playing in demo mode, but there are definitely ship travels in the game in general. Because we started the game in a ship going from Rome to Lesbos.
When I played the demo, I saw that the game did not have any multiplayer or online mode. I cannot predict whether the game, which is played entirely in single player mode, will have a multiplayer mode in the future. If I had made the game, I ask myself, “Would I put a multiplayer mode?” Since it would be against the general logic of the game, I answer myself, “I would not.”
When the first combat is over and we need to give our character the first skills, the role selection screen comes up. I chose to be an archer. Other options include heavy melee, assassin and support roles. Depending on the role we choose, different skills are unlocked and we choose those skills from the character menu. Again, depending on the role we choose, we need to make the right weapon and armor choices.