Expeditions: Viking

This game is older, so if you are looking at it now you are likely buying it during a sale. As an on sale pick up, this game is absolutely worth it. If its full price, you may well still enjoy this a lot, but you simply have to know what you are buying.

This game is a point and click adventure with text based story line. The story is cliche, with tropes aplenty. The combat is an old school, turn based hex-movement system and works pretty good. Your attributes are permanent and don't increase with level, you level based on quest progression not combat, characters must be specialized as well-balanced characters are effectively useless, shields are a must, and you cannot replace hirdmen once the first 10 are selected.

I didn't understand all of this on my first play through and ended up getting to a point where I couldn't advance further because I had under leveled characters, under leveled gear, and I hadn't specialized my forces.

I have now reset, and I am enjoying my second play through even more with the increased understanding.

A great, classic style RPG. Tons of fun if you like the genre, and absolutely worth picking up.

I understand that this is the black sheep of the Expeditions series, but I ended up liking it more than I thought I would given its less than stellar reputation and the fact that I've never found the Viking Age to be particularly interesting.
I'll start off with the bad:
- I did have issues with crashes. I understand on release that this was a much bigger problem than I experienced, but even though it's a lot better than it once was I still encountered some crashes. Most of these were in the later part of the game (after you arrive to Britain.) Mostly it was just a minor annoyance thanks to frequent autosaves, but I experienced a crash immediately after a particularly difficult battle (last autosave was right before the battle) that made me rage quit the game for about a week.
- I wasn't really a fan of the time limit. It wasn't particularly unforgiving or anything. The time limit is a little tight during the Denmark part of the game, but it's fairly generous after you make it to Britain. I was able to experience most of the side content with some time to spare. Admittedly this was with using a guide to help with some of the more obscure side quests and I could see it actually being a problem if you were blindly exploring on your own. I don't know, I don't really think a time limit adds anything to the game and disincentivizes exploration to a degree, which is not something you want in a game about exploration.
Now for the good:
- I liked the character customization in this game. Conquistadors did have some limited customization in the form of promotion, but it's a lot more fleshed out in this game. For starters, the PC is actually a combatant this time around so how you build your character actually matters in combat in addition to out of combat. You're able to recruit a set number of named characters whose stats are predetermined, though you can play around with their gear and abilities, as well as recruit a couple mercenaries that are fully customizable and if minmaxed properly will be better than any of the named story characters.
- I actually found the characters to be pretty likable. Having good characters is always crucial to any RPG and I felt like the ones in this game had a lot more personality to them than in Conquistadors. I ended up liking the main cast so much that I primarily used them even if my customized mercs were better in combat because I liked their interactions so much. The berserker in particular was the real stand out.
Mixed Feelings:
- I feel like the difficulty was a little better balanced this time around. Conquistadors was pretty front heavy in it's difficulty but by the end you were steam rolling everything if you knew what you were doing. This game manages to keep a bit of a challenge throughout though that's mostly because of how broken ranged units are. In Conquistadors, ranged units were pretty worthless, so it feels like they overcorrected in this game because they are incredibly over-powered. I can't tell you how many times I lost a character or two in the first round of fighting because of bullshit enemy archers pulled. The good news is you can do the same with your own archers.
- Camp management and over-world random events. I feel like camp management is easier and overall less important than it was in Conquistador. Not really sure if that's good or bad. The bullshit random events from the previous game return so I recommend saving often in case you get fucked by RNG and get a bullshit random encounter or event (looking at you wolf ambush). These can often times be more difficult than anything in the main storyline.
All in all I liked it well enough I suppose. It definitely wasn't as bad as I was led to believe.

Expeditions: Viking is a tactics RPG where the player is the ruler of a small town in Denmark which is threatened by another clan. You’ll need to recruit a band of warriors and travel to Northern England and Scotland in search of allies and treasure.

I’ve already played Expeditions: Rome, which is the newest game in this franchise, and I think is massively underrated. Honestly I enjoyed Rome more than Baldurs Gate 3 (I’ve reviewed both games if you want to know why), but as the developers haven’t announced another game yet, I decided to go back and play the older game.

Gameplay

• Combat is turn based and is quite tactical. You’ll have an active party of 6 characters chosen from a squad of around 10-12. Each character has 2 action points to move and attack on their turn.

• Positioning on the hex grid is important. You’ll want to have shield wielders at the front to block enemy movement and protect your archers and healers, while some weapons such as spears have longer reach. Shields will sometimes prevent a character from taking health damage, but can be disabled by axe wielders using a pull move. And some weapons have special abilities, for example I found a spear that could penetrate 2 hexes, so while I had to be careful to avoid friendly fire, if 2 enemies were standing next to each other, I could get a double kill.

• Enemy AI is quite good, they’ll focus attacks on weaker characters, they’ll try to stun you, and they’ll put shield guys in chokepoints to block your movement while their archers hit you from miles away.

• Playing on normal difficulty, I didn’t lose many fights, but the challenge comes from trying to win without any character getting knocked out, because this can give them injuries which cause debuffs in upcoming fights. Injuries can be healed while camping on the world map, but the medicine costs are high and more serious injuries take longer to heal.

• During the camping phase you’ll also need to make sure everybody has enough food and sleep, and you can assign characters to hunt, guard the camp, and craft items.

• The campaign has a time limit, but this wasn’t a problem at all. I finished all the quests with about half of the time remaining.

Story

• Main quest gives you a choice of which faction to support, and many conversations let you choose whether to be peaceful or aggressive.

• Even though it took me 30 hours to complete the campaign, the story felt a bit short. I was expecting some kind of twist leading to another chapter, so I was a bit surprised that the game ended when it did.

• There’s not much voice acting, and the few spoken lines are poor quality.

Technical

• Graphics relating to environment and character models are bad (and probably wouldn’t have been considered good 7 years ago either). I did like the character portraits though.

Recommendation

Expeditions Vikings originally released in 2017, so obviously its biggest flaws when compared to newer games relate to presentation of graphics and voice acting. Thankfully, the tactical combat is fun and the story is decent, so its worth picking up on a sale.

It's fantastic, deserves more praise, I immidiately bought Expeditions: Rome as well as all the DLCs. I think that the developers put a great deal of effort and passion into the game.
60% turn-based fighting with cover mechanism, no magic but some shouts to buff and debuff, poisons etc. 20% choice making, talking, some stealth even, 10% upgrading your village, 10% camping and exploring - it has a lot to offer, but at times feels a bit basic.
I took me a while to get used to it, only prologue is around 5 hours long, almost made me stop playing it but I'm so glad I stuck with it.

A more detailed video review can be found here:
If you liked Expeditions: Conquistador, you will definitely like Viking. It got rid of some of the not-so-polished strategy components of its predecessor, and instead chose to focus on the RPG and turn-based tactics aspects, and it's better for it. The writing kept the same charm, while also having more interesting characters to interact with. Sure, the companions are somewhere in-between being stereotypes and characters with depth, but it's still an improvement.
The combat itself is pretty well thought out, in particular when you consider that the skill tree encourages synergies between the abilities of your vikings. The battle arenas are well thought out, which is pretty impressive since they're dynamic and laid out in the place where you make contact with your enemies most of the time. Admittedly, the game's more forgiving than Conquistador, but it's also more satisfying to play, less cheesing necessary.
Despite some of its quirks, it's definitely a RPG worth playing.

Don't judge a book by it's cover. This game is a real hidden gem.
Basically, it's a viking saga themed DnD campaign, but I could say so much more about how much I love this game from the plot to the characters to the level design to the world-building and the mythology. I can't think of any real flaws in this game. Some aspects of the game could've had more added to it, like the village construction stuff for example. It is cool even though the village construction only adds visuals and buffs. I do love the camping mechanic. All of the positives of this game outshine any criticism that I could make.

Best of the expeditions historical CRPG trilogy in my opinion. The most customisation in regards to what your character can do, and while there is time limit everything you do doesn't feel time-wasting and adds to the overall narrative while giving you just enough time to get everything you want to do done. Enjoyable companions and a historically realistic setting of Charlemagne era Viking exploration of the northern British isles. Nice touches such as unique looking designs for upgrading your companions armour. One complaint is wolves are horrifically over-powered and pack swarms will give me nightmares for the rest of my life.