It looks like I am nearing the end of the demo and have a few quick observations.
The combat is still largely the same, though it looks like there are more opportunities to use elevation than in previous games. I have not encountered any traps yet, which were a huge part of previous games, but I imagine they make an appearance later.
The visuals range from underwhelming to bad. This has never been a good-looking series, but the models are worse than I remember in previous games (all the characters look kinda bloated) and there are several instances where the colors of UI elements are too similar to the background (arrows on the overworld map, for instance).
Unit/character differentiation is limited. While the skill trees do seem more interesting than before, that’s nearly the only way characters are distinguished from one another. Attributes are determined strictly by class and there is no way to alter them excluding the odd skill here and there (bonus to hit points or critical chance were the only ones I noticed), for example. Maybe that’s good enough, but if the game is twice the size of Vikings, it seems unavoidable that characters in the same class (of which there are four) will inevitably become the same at a certain level. This is a pretty big bummer for me unless other things unlock later.
I did not like the companions in Vikings and generally found dealing with them to be tedious, so I created my own party instead. I believe that’s still an option here, which is good because these characters are so far no more memorable and perhaps worse. These games keep becoming more like character-based RPGs with each entry, but what makes Bioware games work is that the companions are usually compelling. None of the ones in Expeditions ever are.
Base management looks to be greatly expanded from Vikings. There’s not enough to do in the demo to tell if this is for the best, but it does look more meaningful and interesting.
The large-scale battles are also potentially a good addition, but there’s only one in the demo and the feedback it gives isn’t the best. It’s a card game where you select from three randomly drawn strategy cards for each phase of the battle (the demo one has four phases) and then it plays out on screen kind of like a block wargame. Visually, it is not particularly engaging—your blocks careen toward the enemy blocks and although there seem to be different unit types, there’s no positioning of them and it’s not clear if they are meaningfully different in the demo battle—and I’m not sure how much it matters which options are selected beyond the modifiers on the cards (I know selecting card x means I do more damage against the enemy, but it does not seem like the AI is selecting a strategy card of their own and once the battle commences it is not obvious what is happening or where/when my selected card is making a difference). Probably I would need to do a few more to tell, but of course that’s not in the demo.
Based on the demo, it looks like the series has outgrown its tutorial-stage malaise I’ve been complaining about—you get put in command with a legion to manage before the demo ends—but I still half expect to be proved wrong. Still, overall, I remember enjoying Conquistador and Vikings more than this one at this point. But, again, there’s not near enough game here for that be entirely fair.
I enjoyed my time with it, but it’s probably slipped from being a pre-purchase to either a ‘see how I’m feeling about it nearer to release’ or even a ‘pick it up on sale’ kind of game.
