Hello! I’m not Roma, I’m Nikita, and I don’t want to touch on childhood memories here, but I’ll have to make one remark. I fell in love with the strategy genre even when I didn’t know what homework was. It’s all because of the game Age of Empires 2 (then I called it “Three Kings” and my dad always didn’t understand what game I wanted to play).
One thing struck me about it, I was worried about the pieces of pixels, given that I did not know English and hardly even understood what historical events were happening on the screen – I was simply delighted that there was a truly living world around. Peasants work, wars fight, animals run around and, for some reason, don’t want to just die. I felt responsible for every unit. It was important to me that my allies survived and I was very sad if I couldn’t save them. Therefore, with such trepidation, I began to look for other strategies, but the older I got, the more I realized that I could not repeat such emotions. The only exceptions will be strategies from Metelitsa and… Expeditons: Rome?
It was a long time ago and not true
First century BC. Rome is slowly moving towards decline, but does not yet suspect it. The main character’s father is killed by a political opponent, but there is no evidence of this. Our sister is taken as a wife by a relative of the murderer, and our mother decides to send us away in order to protect us, and also to gain some sense.
This is unlikely to be a spoiler for you, but if you are afraid of what will happen, then read from the next paragraph, our main character will play the role of Caesar, repeating (or almost repeating) his military and political exploits.
The situation is so-so, but on the path to revenge and greatness we will be helped by faithful comrades, of whom there will be five. Each of them is endowed with a fairly interesting backstory and each has a skeleton in their closet. Our faithful slave-sage Cinneros is a former Olympian who literally stole the prize. Bestia, a former gladiator, was separated from her sister when they were slaves. Kalida is pretending to be a man, and she may also be responsible for her father’s death. Deianira – seeks revenge for her murdered sister. And Tsezo is just a drunk, and as we all know, this sin leads to the most tragic consequences.
There will be a separate quest for each of them. Each of them is quite fascinating and poses not the most tricky, but quite interesting moral dilemmas. In general, it’s worth saying that both side quests and the main storyline often confront us with difficult ethical questions. However, this does not always happen; in more or less ordinary dialogue, we are mainly asked to choose between modest and kind-hearted remarks or remarks from an asshole. Sometimes intermediate options are offered.
I don’t want to reveal all the intricacies of the plot, because they are worth experiencing them yourself. Three and a half acts await us. Each act is a military campaign in different regions (Asia Minor, Egypt, Galia) and a small interlude in Rome between them. We have to, within reasonable limits, choose sides in the conflict, decide human destinies and, in the end, decide what kind of example we want to be for the people.
In this barrel of honey, as usual, there are a couple of spoons of a well-known substance left. The first is that the developers failed to spread the plot evenly across all three acts. First of all, this is noticeable in the density of dialogues; if at the beginning of the game all the characters actively discuss almost all events and actively participate in dialogues, then by the third act, which is the most tragic and in a couple of places quite creepy, everyone somehow becomes quiet and speaks quite rarely.
Here we need a plot example so that you understand the essence of the problem. In the third act we have to make a sacrifice in order to get to one of the leaders of the Gallic tribes. We are told that either the protagonist must sacrifice himself or kill one of our comrades. Do you think our companions will somehow express their disapproval of this fact?? No. Everything will take place in complete silence.
I will also add here that the variability also decreases greatly by the third act. In general, it is mostly linear and plays the worst. The developers have already promised to deal with this problem.
The second spoon is some stupidity in the actions of the characters and limitations in the proposed choices. Yes, many RPGs suffer from this, because the developers still need to lead the plot in a certain direction. You have to come to terms with this in this game.
Again, so that the picture is clear to you. One of the Gaul leaders decides to join us. He takes care of us in every possible way, sometimes he will give us clothes, sometimes he will protect our eyes. Yes, yes, if we don’t want to sacrifice the person from the previous spoiler, we can come to this leader for a ritual knife to remove an eye, but the leader will refuse us, saying that we don’t need this and that he values our union.
And what does he do then?? That’s right, he invites us to a meeting, under the pretext of recruiting another Gaul leader, and then attacks you with him. The outcome is obvious.
By the way, our comrades will react to all this very dryly. Well betrayed and betrayed.
And you can play?
It’s possible, but like in any other real RPG, you won’t be greeted by a chic character editor. I wish I could say. In fact, it is empty and made for show. A choice of one and a half faces, hair and skin color, a couple of hairstyles and height. Not too much.
In addition, we are also given the opportunity to choose a portrait, which will be our face in the dialogues. There are a lot of portraits (about 10) and they are drawn with high quality. But! They do not correspond in any way with the appearance from the editor, so its meaning once again raises questions.
Then comes the adjustment of our character like the S system.P.E.C.I.A.L. They believed? Well done for not. The system is even more meager than in the character editor. Three speech styles to choose from. Strong asshole, smart asshole and cunning asshole. Why do they? Sometimes in game dialogues there will be answer options that are available only to a certain type in order to try to solve the situation in a different way. In general everything. If not for one “but”. These manners are completely out of balance. In the first playthrough, I chose logos and was right, because the number of replicas for this class is dominant. I roughly calculated 60% – logos, 30% – pathos, 10% – ethos. In general, this is a trifle, but in a couple of key moments it played a cruel joke.
By the way, it https://gamblingsitesnotongamstop.co.uk/review/magic-win/ says here that in the game we can get another manner of speech, but after going through all the quests, I still don’t understand where to get it.
The next point of any self-respecting RPG is, of course, the choice of class. There are four of them to choose from: tank, DD, range DD and support. Oh, sorry, I misspoke. I meant princeps, velite, sagittarium and triarium. The game often uses Roman terminology, which is explained in the loading screens. Nothing fancy, but it’s nice that you can learn a couple of new words or learn more about the structure of Roman society.
Each class has three subclasses with separate leveling branches. There are passive and active skills. Level up – plus one leveling point. At the end of the game I managed to level up almost 2 branches completely. However, active skills take up slots, so you won’t be able to assemble an ultimate fighter on the battlefield. Points cannot be reset, so you should choose your skills carefully.
Subclasses differ from each other, but this diversity varies from class to class. Triarius can hit with a strong stick, heal his allies, and interfere with the enemy’s positioning. But the princeps mostly tanks anyway.
To summarize, I will say that the system is not too deep, but it is simple enough so that you don’t have to think for five hundred thousand years about where to invest your treasured point.
And now you can play?
Patience and work, you still have to wait. It remains to deal with our body kit. Everything is simple with him. The character has armor, a helmet, two pockets for consumables and four hands, for two sets of weapons. Armor and helmet can give: resistance to different types of damage, armor, health, critical chance, critical damage power and other affixes. Armor is also divided by weight, more armor, more debuff on movement.
Weapons, in addition to affixes, make it possible to use different abilities. He can have from 1 to 5, but only three can be used at a time. There are many abilities, each has its own benefits, from splash damage and destruction of shields, to demoralizing the enemy and increasing damage if the enemy is surrounded. Considering that in battle we already have 6 active skills from the subclass, another 6 (three per two assemblies) from weapons are added to them, and two consumables and another free slot are added here, which can be filled by taking some item on the battlefield. And that – 14(15) abilities. This all gives a fairly wide range of possibilities on the battlefield, but there is one catch, which we will talk about a little later.
Some items are tied to classes, and some are even tied to an individual character. The gradation of rarity is the same as in most games. Colorless, blue, purple – the number of additional affixes changes. Legendary – have an additional ability.
At first glance there is a lot of variety, especially in weapons. Dozens of types of swords, daggers, shields, bows, staves, pikes, spears… which are essentially reskins. The Roman gladius will not be much different from the Egyptian khopesh, but it’s not so scary. The scary thing is that the Expedition in Romania is starting to enter the territory of luter shooters. You’ll be collecting lots and lots of stuff, your inventory will be capable of arming a legion, and you’ll have to check item after item to find a version that’s a little stronger than yours. At some point you will just get tired and like me you will indiscriminately disassemble them for parts.
You will need spare parts at the forge. In it you can create objects, improve and change their affixes. The problem is that on the battlefield you will already get everything you need, except for consumables. As a result, you will need the forge a couple of times to create legendaries and consumables, and after the upgrade, once again to improve items. At the same time, they give you dozens, if not hundreds of drawings. You can, of course, dabble with crafting, but why?? Not clear.
Travel, romance, kill
In the game we travel across the global map and through small locations scattered on it, from big cities to forest edges, for secret meetings.
We don’t always have to fight at locations, sometimes we are simply invited to walk around, chat, find hiding places or just trade.
At the beginning of the game, we even get the impression that the environment is interactive, and for our attentiveness and meticulousness in exploring all corners of the location, we will be given the opportunity to complete quests in a new way, but this is all a bluff. There will be a couple of such cases per game, which is undoubtedly sad.
And then there’s the crooked camera, which doesn’t allow you to quickly inspect the location, and besides, the characters move slowly, which turns studying the environment into a waiting simulator.
Raise the SHITs
Now we can talk about the combat system. In general, yes, we are dealing with turn-based battles in the spirit of XCOM, but there are a lot of nuances here. Firstly, here we are dealing with hexes, not squares, secondly, the fighters here have much more characteristics, thirdly, the emphasis is on melee combat. But let’s start in order.
A battle can involve from 4 to 6 people (there are battles with fewer participants, but this is an exception). There are usually more opponents, and their classes may be slightly different from ours. For example, some opponents have invisibility, and there are those who even combine two classes in one. Plus they have "pawns" that have no class.
Characters have a bunch of characteristics and it is important to take them into account, especially at a high level of difficulty.
First of all, resists. The game doesn’t say this, but here they don’t reduce damage, but show the chance of a sliding attack, which will deal significantly less damage. The resist cannot be higher than the maximum resistance level. The type of damage depends on the skill, so your spear can deal both piercing and bludgeoning blows.
Armor reduces damage by its value, but does not protect against fire or poison. Some skills can destroy armor or bypass it. The damage of each hand is separate, as is the chance of crit. Also, different classes have their own individual characteristics. Shield strength, amount of concentration, accuracy (shots) and armor penetration.
The game doesn’t have too many different challenges. Kill someone, kill everyone, escape, steal and escape, free prisoners, destroy something. Sieges should also be included in a separate category of battles, but more on them later.
Level design pleased me. The locations are varied: there are many places where you can climb, there are stairs for this (characters, by the way, know how to jump from high places), you can often get to the enemy in different ways. In the arenas there are exploding barrels of oil (which the enemy can also explode) and wells in which you can get water to extinguish the fire and allies, there are boxes with throwing weapons (consumables) and boxes with heals, fires with torches, and also barricades that can be destroyed. By the way, the fire can spread to neighboring cells, and a thrown torch in combination with a puddle of oil will give a very beautiful fireworks display.
It’s also worth mentioning the archers, or rather the shooting mechanics themselves. Each bow has its own range and accuracy limit. Accuracy allows you to shoot at bOlonger distance without damage penalty, and range determines the maximum shot range. There are two factors to consider here. Firstly, the game has a cover system, approximately like in XCOM, but due to the fact that we have hexes here, it is difficult to understand whether an enemy archer can hit you. Secondly, when shooting, the terrain and position of the characters are taken into account. You won’t be able to shoot through objects or other warriors, so it’s very important to take into account the position of your workers. Fortunately, the game highlights who you can shoot at from a particular point. I almost forgot, arrows do not damage shields.
Remember in XCOM you could not shoot on your own turn, but use the “supervision” ability, which allowed you to shoot on your opponent’s turn if one of his characters fell within the shot radius? Well, this game has it too. For archers it looks exactly the same, but for close rangers it always works, but only once per turn. If an enemy begins to move or use a consumable near the character, he gets hit. It seems like a small thing, but it greatly affects positioning. For example, you have an archer who needs to get closer to the target to deal more damage, but in this case the archer himself will be very easy to get close to. At this point, you place several characters in front of him and if the opponent foolishly decides to attack the archer, he will receive several tasty blows on the way to him. Thus, the game has a fat layer of positioning that is worth thinking about.
Just like in XCOM you have action points and movement points. The first can be converted into the second, but unlike the above game, you can move gradually (at least click each hex in turn), which clearly allows you to add more tactics to your game and reduces the butthurt per miss click.
However, what are you all about good. There are three problems here. The first is the smallest – if you want to go to a certain cell without gradually moving from one to another, then the game itself will lay out the route for you. Sometimes it’s far from optimal, and you can’t change it somehow. This most strongly affects one of the velite’s skills, "Marathonian", which allows you to move an inorganic number of hexes, until the first stop. So if you want to run to the enemy, and there is fire on the optimal (according to the game) path, then be sure that you will walk along it.
The next problem is the long AI turn. When there are few opponents, this is not so noticeable, but as soon as there are more than 4 of them, then waiting for your turn turns into torture. Each enemy unit must think before moving. Everything turns into hell when there are about 20 enemy units and another 5-7 allies on the map during sieges. Be prepared to wait 2-3 minutes for your turn.
And finally the biggest problem – you need to kill opponents. What? The best strategy is to kill enemies quickly enough so that they don’t have time to damage you. So what’s the problem? The problem is that for two classes, archers and shield bearers, almost all subclass skills do not speed up this process. It is worth saying that skills cost action points (in 90 percent of cases), therefore skills that do not allow you to deal damage in the same turn are meaningless. Shield bearers – basically can have skills for all kinds of disables and strengthening of defense, and archers – for all sorts of different shots, which either deal less damage than usual, or throw a debuff on the enemy so that they can shoot harder later. It turns out that with these classes you only use regular attacks, and all your subclass skills weigh in just in case. As a result, Velit makes ¾ kills, while other classes either buff him or distract opponents. At the beginning of the game this is not so noticeable, but by the end you don’t even think about any other tactics. First he runs and kills everyone he can, and then everyone goes and finishes off if anyone is left.
Because of this, depth is lost. And this, in turn, leads to the fact that after the second half of the game you are already playing on the machine and thinking not about how to win, but about how to win quickly.
Team and competition
We are not united in turn-based battles, we will also participate in the conquest of territory. At the beginning of each act, a map opens before us, which is divided into regions. In each act we need to capture a certain number of these regions in order to move on to the final battle – the siege.
Here it’s time to say that we are not just anyone, but a legate of the Roman legion. The Legion serves us as a mobile base and the main tool for capturing territories. Here we discover a new battle mechanic – clash of armies. As soon as our legion reaches the target, the battle begins.
I would like to talk about these battles in more detail, but the developers themselves did not bother to clearly explain how it works. In general, everything is simple – you choose a card that somehow affects the battlefield, then there is a skirmish controlled by some formulas, then you choose a card again and everything is repeated 3 more times. From clear parameters we have the size and morale of our army, their indicators simply add up. And here comes the dark jungle. By what principle anything happens on the battlefield is not clear. It is only clear that if your stripe is on the enemy’s side, then you are likely to win.
The developers have already promised to make this system more transparent and understandable. We’ll wait, but for now it’s a mess. I would even say that this is the most empty and meaningless part of the game. Fortunately, you won’t spend a lot of time on it.
Our legion is also a base for us when we are in a captured outpost. At the beginning there is a merchant’s tent, a garrison, an infirmary. Not a lot, but we will soon have the opportunity to improve existing ones and build new “tents”. To do this, in the occupied territories we must capture places where certain resources are extracted. They do not mine them, but simply give you one unit of a specific resource one time.
Here we can build:
The forge, we already talked about it above. Please note that the cap on the level of improved and created items depends on the level of the forge.
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