Expeditions: Rome

**Expeditions: Rome** is the third game in the Expeditions series. In this installment, the player controls a young Legatus, a military officer with a rank comparable to the modern day general and commands a legion through the regions of Asia Minor, Egypt, and Gaul. The story takes place in a fictional retelling of Rome, where your character replaces Julius Caesar, and whose actions affect the fate of the Republic.

The game begins in 74 BC, the year of the Consuls Lucius Licinius Lucullus and Marcus Aurelius Cotta at the beginning of the Third Mithridatic War. Act II: Africa takes place around 69 - 68 BC, and Act III: Gallica in 63 BC. The game showcases historical figures such as Marcus Porcius Cato and Marcus Tullius Cicero, who played prominent roles at the end of Rome's Republic era. The player commands legions in Asia Minor, North Africa, Egypt, and Gaul (modern day France).

The game was originally set for release in the fall of 2021, but the definitive release of the game was moved to 20 January 2022. The game was developed by Logic Artists, who also developed Expeditions: Conquistador and Expeditions: Viking. The game was solely released on PC's as platform and is published by THQ Nordic.

A demo version of the final product was released on 20 December 2021, which lasts about five hours before the end of it is reached. This became the final version of the game around the release and players could continue their demo save files in the final product.

See **Portal: Expeditions: Rome** for more links about every subject in the game.

## Gameplay

### Character creation

#### Appearance

After the introduction video, the players are taken to the character creation appearance window, where they can change the look of their player character. Here, the player can change their character's first name, family name, nickname, gender (either ♂ or ♀) and their portrait.

The player can then customize the model of their character, being able to choose their face, skin colour, hair style, hair colour, as well as the size of their character.

After the players press confirm, they are taken to another window where they can choose their rhetorical style.

#### Rhetorical Style

Rhetorical style is a perk to unlock unique dialogue options in the game. The options here are: Ethos, Logos and Pathos

* **Ethos** - The art of using the power of your authority or your abilities to get your way.
* **Logos** - The art of convincing someone with sound logical arguments and reasoning.
* **Pathos** - The art of winning people over using stirring rhetoric or emotional manipulation.

After confirming their rhetorical style, the player will then choose their difficulty settings.

#### Game difficulty

Four options are available, each with a historical name corresponding to a difficulty:

* Augustus - Easy
* Caesar - Normal
* Pompeius - Hard
* Crassus - Insane

Below are futher options the players can switch on or off:

* **Combat Death**: The player character, story companions, and Praetorians can permanently die if they bleed out in combat. If the player character or a story companion dies, it will lead to a game over.
* **Iron Man**: The player is limited to one save, with manual saving disabled.
* **Gladiator Companion (Death or Glory DLC)**: The class of a story character met later in the game will be a Gladiator, instead of a Princeps.

If players now confirm again, the game will begin.

After completing the first quest and combat encounter, the game will take the players back to the character creation menu, where they can now pick their class.

### Personal combat

Combat is similar to its predecessors, with many skills from that game being present. The game features hexagonal grids and turn based battles with a squad of 1-6 player-controlled characters of certain classes. The interface used during combat is also very similar to Expeditions: Viking. The game features five detailed characters who stick with the player character throughout the whole game and Praetorians, which are the bare-bones characters as presented in Conquistador and the mercenaries hired in Vikings.

The class system present in Expeditions: Viking, in which class is determined by a distribution of Stat points, is replaced by a class system similar to Expeditions: Conquistador. The class determines the access to equipment, usage of weapons and with each class having exclusive active skills and roles in combat. There is also no longer a large pool of passive skills accessible to all classes, these are a part of the class system. The Experience points system is also back to determine when skills and statistics are improved, with one skill point being given at each level up.

The game introduces skills being determined by the wielded weapon. Each weapon, although the same weapon, can have different skills altogether and each type of weapon has a pool of different skills availabe, with higher ranking weapon have more skill available and having a larger selection. Unarmed skills, which was a single skill tree in its predecessor, have been expanded and are available to all classes, with each classes having a few skills for their own.

### Army battles

From the moment that the player character becomes a Legatus, they are also able to participate in Legion battles as commander. These battle consist of military units being represented as blocks on the battlefield with the player being able to determine formations and critical actions during battle. The player picks a Centurion with a set of skills and at at four points in the battle, a Stratagem. The team of centuriones and the chosen stratagems, add to to score of four specialisation, which are changing by enemy stratagems throughout the battle.

### Exploration

Exploring areas in this game is a combination of Conquistador and Vikings. The world exploration is similar to Conquistador, with the ability to explore areas with the party as detailed in Vikings, while the world map is also detailed and the player has the ability to travel the world in detail. Camp management and the distribution of tasks as they were in the two predecessors, is not present in Expeditions: Rome. The Legion Outpost has stations in which resources are made when setting a party member at work, but this does not involve daily tasks.

### Skills

* Crafting is no longer a skill, but now requires the collecting of many materials, either gained during exploration or dismantling pieces of armor and weapons, along with a schematic in order to craft an item.
* Diplomacy is replaced with Ethos, Logos and Pathos, which are three styles of rhetoric as described by Aristotles' book Rhetorica. One is chosen at character creation, with a second one being mastered at some point in the game. Leadership and other skills which give access to certain dialogue, have been removed.

### Chapters and acts

The game is broken up into 4 acts, namely Act I: Asia Minor, Act II: Africa, Act III: Gallica, and Act IV: Rome. The Legatus also visits Rome in between Acts I and II, as well as between acts II and III. Related: Quests.

## Downloadable content

### Death and Glory

The Death and Glory DLC, released on 12 April 2022, adds the following:

* The Gladiator class, which comes with three different subclasses: Murmillo, Retiarius and Provocator.
* Scissor weapon type, a new weapon type which can only be wielded by the gladiator class.
* Arenas to Asia Minor, Egypt and Gaul, which the player can visit and participate in while completing the normal story mode.
* Arena battles, a type of battle which involves unique win conditions and an approval system which changes depending on actions you take while in the arena. For each arena, a series of battles will need to be completed in order to become its champion.
* Four new unique pieces of armour.
* Three New Dagger skills.
* New tactical items: Acid flask and Hunting trap.

## Videos

Expeditions- Rome - Gameplay Trailer-2Expeditions- Rome - Announcement TrailerExpeditions- Rome - Death or Glory - Release Trailer
## Sources

1. ↑ Ingame information from the menu.
2. ↑ Ingame information from the menu.