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 was pleasantly surprised by this game. The strong storyline really drew me in, and had me role playing as the son of a dead thegn trying to restore his father's territory to greatness. That sounds trite, but, not all game stories are compelling. Some are just a bland pretext to play the mechanics of the game. In this case, the game is the pretext to tell the story, I appreciate that.

Sure, there were a few warts, such as clunky UI components, trying to find the right pixel to loot objects, poor buff and debuff tooltips, quests that can be unintentionally blocked from completion if you discover them in the wrong order, consequences that weren't fully explained before a choice, etc.

But overall, I felt this turn-based tactical combat game really explored the culture and morality of being a viking during their heyday. The story was rich, the choices felt consequential, and the politics felt well thought out.

This wasn't groundbreaking new territory, but the subject matter was fresh, and the story hooked me well enough to get me to put down my other games and play through it, once I got started. That tells me something about how good it was.

I just finished this game and I thoroughly enjoyed it. That being said, there are gameplay mechanics and small issues that could lead to some frustration for the unprepared or unwilling.
Bad stuff first. The most annoying thing in this entire game is trying to get the little hand cursor to appear to pick up loot. You will find yourself messing with the camera to poke through barrels and chests constantly.
This game has a time limit. I strongly dislike time limits in my games, but the good news is that I had more than enough time and that was with me going back and forth to Denmark a bunch and generally goofing off. Don’t overdo it with the camping, and you can really stretch the time limit quite a bit.
As for the camera, it simply does not zoom out enough, but other than that, it’s easy enough to move it to your liking.

This is just a minor gripe but one more bit of jank. Sometimes you won’t be able to equip items and you have to leave the inventory menu and come back to resolve it. Not a gamebreaker by any means, but irritating, nonetheless.

The gameplay itself is very good, but I did have to restart as I didn’t quite understand the systems at work with SP and resource management. You want each of your hirdmen to only specialize in one or two weapons. This rule goes for most skills (1 or 2 support skills, etc.) If you attempt to make a jack of all trades, you are going to struggle on medium difficulty or above. When you start acquiring extra hirdmen, make sure you pick one to heal, one to tinker and craft, etc. You will have enough party members to pimp out camp. One more thing I wish I knew when I started, without the use of thralls, you will have a difficult time doing everything you want in your homestead, so it is good to focus on either power or prosperity as opposed to both (I used no thralls for the entire game).

Dialogue options in this game are many and meaningful. You have characters with personality, everything is well written, and the number of dialogue options can be dizzying for somebody who locks up at A or B style questions. The hirdmen’s dialogue is well written and the story is interesting. There are even a few mysteries left that I didn’t uncover…
Now for the meat and potatoes, the battle system. In short, it’s excellent. You will be killed and probably more than once, but once you learn how to use the battlefield and when to deploy traps or use skills, the game becomes a thrill ride. There is an excellent cover system at work here as well, and you can hide units behind hirdmen with shields, as well as obstacles. You are going to want to do this, as archers are DEADLY and can wipe out a party quickly.
In general, you want to utilize cover and deploy skills to limit the accuracy of ranged units. While doing this, you want your sword (or axe) and boards to block access to your archers, healers, etc. utilizing unit placement to also force archers to waste turns on tactical moves. It is all really well done, and once you get the hang of it, it is really fun.
So, yeah, Expeditions: Viking, it’s really good. I’m jumping back into Conquistadors next!

IN A NUTSHELL: a very decent turn-based strategy game with an amiable story. Buy if you like choice-making games and turn-based strategy. Rating is 8,8/10.

This game is the first game of its genre I've played, so keep it in mind that I don't have much experience of other similar games.

But darn if it isn't good, I love this game. Played it through a few times, there's nothing bad I could REALLY say about it, since I feel like I would be nitpicking at that point. Turn based combat is good, and I like how in-depth the character skill trees are. Characters are decent and the story is simple, but it works well. Also it was rather beginner friendly for a goblin like me who only has two functional brain cells when playing strategy games.

Overall I would give this game a 8,8/10

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.

I play offline and I finish the game. So the hours are not correct. I have many more.
It is an old game, but it seems new.
Great game. Even if I am not into invader-game, here, the story is great and no one is fully good or fully bad. It has sarcstic humor too wich I like a lot.
It had a time-line but it is okay to manage. You can choose super difficult to super easy.
You can cheat at the time-line but the sucess will be blocked.
Sometimes the remark's lines on the top-left are too quick to read.
What's else ? Great companions, great choices, super fun combat, many languages available.
I will look at the for expeditions rome since I really like expeditions viking.
I will replay this game for sure.

A great game brimming with soul. It's a bit buggy and rough on the edges but will always have a special place in my heart.
I also wanted to mention the soundtrack, it's absolutely brilliant. The only way to make it better is to have more tracks.