Expeditions: Rome - Released

[Feist]

I'm watching it again, always a pleasure to rediscover. How they dare make Pullo responsible for at least two important facts!

Spoiler

Cause of the fight that prevents Mark Antony from using his veto, and Caesarian

You may find a few praetorians with known names in Expeditions: Rome by the way

Yeah, Pullo really gets around. Caesar does comment at some point, that "Vorenus & Pullo" appear to be "pets of the fates" or something similar…so best not to mess with them.

I do find this series kind of addictive, I only planned to watch a couple of eps, just to get in the right mood for "Expeditions:Rome" but now I'm already in the second season.

I thought quite a few names sounded very familiar to me but after a while all the various roman names starts to blur together a little.

 

[Redglyph]

Yeah, Pullo really gets around. Caesar does comment at some point, that "Vorenus & Pullo" appear to be "pets of the fates" or something similar…so best not to mess with them.

I do find this series kind of addictive, I only planned to watch a couple of eps, just to get in the right mood for "Expeditions:Rome" but now I'm already in the second season.

I thought quite a few names sounded very familiar to me but after a while all the various roman names starts to blur together a little.

They found the standard, were the only survivors when sailing to Greece and so on, they must be protected by the gods! It was fun, and the episodes do fly by. It must be a nice game for an historian to insert fictional characters in famous events and play with it.

There are a few series like that, making it easy to grasp history or science and making the audience want to know more. It's a good motivator. Games like Expeditions too, though they're limited to what is playable, we won't get a deep understanding at Roman politics or even its society, but it's a start. It surely works better than trying to force someone to read historical books first.

 

[Redglyph]

I'm about 30 hours in that gameplay and I'm counting 17 quests (active & done).

I must have about 20-25 hours in my gameplay of Viking and I count 41. Sure, there are a few short fetch quests, but I have to admit that the combats take more time in Rome than in Viking or other games (in Encased after 50-55 hours I had about 65 quests), and there seems to have fewer quests overall.

Something I don't like too much but which can be tuned in the difficulty settings are the random encounters. Some only have bad outcomes, I had one a few times (*) and apparently you can either give money, lose a small amount of reputation or fight one of two innocent parties (which just don't fit my RP). On the plus side, those road encounters are nicely implemented with varied vignette formats.

So I'm not ashamed to scum-saving and I'd recommend to save before any road trip.

In general, in both Viking and Rome, I'm still surprised how often the game encourages you to fight and kill people rather than resolve the situation more sensibly - most of the time it's not even possible. That, and L.A. do like their looting At least they've calmed down in Rome; I'm always shocked in Viking how you can loot almost everyone's property without even raising anyone's eyebrows.

(*) You may have repeated encounters, but it's rare. This time I had it several times because I reloaded a lot to re-do a legion battle differently to see the possible outcomes. Which are, by the way, quite random.