Expeditions: Samurai

It's plain bad. Many mechanics are just not working, it's not enough to level up the skill in your crew, you HAVE TO CHOOSE THE CORRECT MEMBER EVERY TIME YOU DO SOMETHING. Dialogue skills are not working at all, unless speaking character has it. The story is meh so far, the artstyle is questionable... I dunno. I just don't like it. You will better time playing Vikings or Rome again.

[i]EA, just started the playthrough[/i] This part of the [i]Expeditions[/i] CRPG series is focused on Japan and the European expedition to it. Surprisingly for a UE5 game, it runs. The turn-based combat is fine, the tutorial and UI are less so. Thumbs up for the rebindable controls, functional saving, customisable PC, and persevering despite the most puzzling choice of engine, as many similar games fail at these.

Expeditions: Samurai is not a perfect game. And yet, its "Mixed / Mostly Negative" rating at the time of review seems largely undeserved; many negative reviews highlight criticisms that, while valid in their own ways, ultimately boil down to people wanting a different game than the one the developers wanted to make. (You want a group of Japanese protagonists? Totally fair. But it's clear from every promotional material that this isn't the game for that, so you can't really act surprised and outraged about the choice to feature European protagonists instead.) The game is certainly hurt by comparison to other Expeditions titles, which were made (maybe with the exception of Conquistador) with larger teams and budgets. And many of its subsystems are kind of janky—path selection in combat can be a particular pain in the butt on the Steam Deck sometimes. And yet, I will say that the first major patch suggested that the devs are committed to rooting out a lot of these issues in time: it's a game with an active development team that listens to the community, which is great! It's tough to fairly rate the story with only a third of the chapters released (and, these being likely unequal in …

Completely unbalanced. Hardly any content. Do not buy.

Every system feels like a step up from the previous titles, flowing smoother. Especially the UI and combat, where it'd be a bit of a hitch for me before now felt a lot more intuitive and well put together. Like the last few steps to polish it all were the true (pleasant!) difference. As far as the story so far and the characters: I've always been a fan of the Expeditions games' character dynamics and little inner circle vendettas. Happy to report the spirit is well and truly alive in every catty exchange as the protagonist has to, once again, do everything around here. Can't wait for the full release, it's shaping up to be my favorite Expeditions game. PS: Please add a map to this one and let me be able to pet the cat on the barrel in the first landing zone right before you can sneak into the Japanese compound (the cat petting is much more important than the map) (thank you for letting me pet every cat) (but also I want to pet THAT cat too)

A lot of fun so far and I cant wait for more content :D