Expeditions: Viking

However you cut it, Expeditions: Viking is a great strategy RPG. There is more than enough to keep you busy, plenty of skills to customise your playstyle, and loads of quests and adventure. The combat system is near perfect, crafted in a way that gives the players control over every element. I constantly found myself enjoying something new each time I played. Layered with enough depth and intricacy for genre veterans, but loaded with fantastic tutorials and information for newcomers, this game welcomes all types of players. A formula that has been bettered, through and through, Expeditions: Vi...

Logic Artists' made a grand appearance three years ago with the well-received title Expeditions: Conquistador. Expeditions and the developers have now proven to be consistent and adaptable. We've moved away from South America and taken a trip back in time. Now is the time of the Norse, this is Expeditions: Viking.

Take the role of an ambitious Viking chieftain and raid, trade, and forge alliances to increase your clan's power and prosperity. At the dawn of the Viking age, any means to protect and sustain your people can be justified. But how will history remember you, and will it remember you at all?

Expeditions: Vikings is a fantastic role playing strategy game for those of us whom feel the need to raid and pillage. It creates an authentic social environment where traditions and customs and be enforced or forsaken, much like the gods and myths in the Norse universe. Its a bit clunky, and not very pretty, but neither were the Vikings. With a few more character portraits, and some spit and polish it could be a real gem for any gaming collection.

My adventure as a Viking Thegn was a rocky one, but one that I still enjoyed. If you think the idea of playing as a viking is fun, or think the time period is interesting, give it a shot if you can overlook the bugs.

Expeditions: Viking has been as much of a trial as it has been an adventure. It desperately needed even another month in development to work out the kinks in its system, and even now (a monthish later), it has its share of problems. Despite that, it’s damnably endearing. The story’s morally gray, fantasy-free atmosphere is refreshing, with a great sense of humor. Add to this a visceral, varied, if somewhat unbalanced combat system, and the result is something I look forward to playing through again in the future… assuming it works.

Skol Vikings!

While it remains difficult to whole-heartedly recommend a game that demands upwards of 30 or 40 hours of their time and can instantly render that progress meaningless, whether through weird dialogue tree outcomes or reloads, the decision not to do so comes with a caveat. Logic Artists has made every indication that they are working on patching out the bugs players have experienced already, and without those glaring errors, Logic Artists has put together a strategy game that has some extremely compelling bright spots. As it stands, though, Expeditions: Viking is simply a solid and at-times frus...