Expeditions: Rome

Rome, c. 60 BC. The death of the patron of a prominent Roman family sees his heir take ship for Asia Minor, where they join the military campaign of Lucius Licinius Lucullus against Mithridates VI of Pontus. They learn the art of war, commanding both a legion and an elite group of speculatores, Roman troops and infiltrators assigned to deep penetration missions behind enemy lines to assassinate enemies, sabotage supply lines and gather intelligence. The quest for justice will take a long time, with decades unfolding and Rome waging war in Gaul and Egypt to secure its borders. The new legate will have important decisions to make which will change the history of Rome...and the world.

Expeditions: Rome is the third game in the loose-knit Expeditions series (after 2013's Conquistador and 2017's Viking), which mixes elements from roleplaying, tactical combat and strategy games into an interesting whole. The game sees you create your own character and then assemble a team of companion characters, in this instance called "praetorians." Praetorians come in two flavours: named, voiced characters who play a major role in the story, generating their own side-quests and having unique dialogue; and recruitable, optional characters who play no role in the story but fill out your ranks during some missions. Praetorians can also be assigned to different jobs in camp, such as working in the baths (improving morale), the blacksmith or replenishing your weapons. Some Praetorians can also be assigned as "Centurions," leading your legion in battle.

The game most consists of missions where you have to visit a location, engage in dialogue and often (though not always) combat. Combat unfolds in a manner very similar to the XCOM series, with turn-based fighting where your characters can move, take an action or use an item. As you win battles, you level characters up and can unlock additional abilities, such as heavier attacks, the ability to move through enemy spaces without triggering attacks of opportunity, or adding more damage types to attacks, like poison or bleeding. You can also adjust equipment throughout the game, either using new weaponry and armour looted from the enemy, building your own or upgrading old favourites to keep them viable right to the endgame. Characters can also engage in other skills such as healing, buffing allies or debuffing enemies.

Battles unfold like games of tightly-controlled chess. Positioning is hugely important, and a seemingly unwinnable fight can be brought under control with only modest changes in tactics and equipment. Knowing when to advance to bring your heavy infantry and when to hold back and pepper the enemy with arrows to draw them out can be crucial. At the game continues, the use of equipment becomes paramount: bandages can heal injured warriors, Greek fire can literally blow up parts of the map and pilums (Roman infantry spears) can allow melee characters a ranged attack before closing in.

Between RPG missions you can retreat to your legion camp to heal up, upgrade weapons and armour and plan your next moves. The second part of the game, which opens up after reaching Asia Minor, sees you conquering an entire region in a manner vaguely reminiscent of Total War. You take a settlement, where you can upgrade the facilities by taking over facilities in that region (quarries, mines, farms, lumber yards etc). When ready, you can send your legion to conquer another province. When your legion engages in battle, you only have loose control, and can assign different strategies to your troops and hope for the best. Ensuring your legion's manpower is maxed out and you keep upgrading your strategies between battles is a fairly reliable way to ensuring victory in each battle. You also have to defend against enemy counter-strikes. Once you've taken a settlement, you usually have to send your troops on a special mission to secure the province. Intriguingly, this is seen as "busywork" which your all-star A-team can't be bothered to deal with, so you have to assemble a rumble squad from your B-listers. This is the game's clever way of forcing you to have a good reserve of praetorians with varied skills rather than just relying on the same six dudes throughout the whole game. Your B-listers can also be killed permanently, making using them somewhat more hazardous then throwing your main gang into the fray each time.

The result is a compelling mix of strategy, tactics and RPG elements, including a focus on rhetoric (you are Romans, after all) to resolve some problems with politics, Greek-trained logic and diplomacy, not to mention good old-fashioned bribery. This is a pleasingly varied game that balances lots of different influences and ideas into a very solid whole.

The plot is solid but your companion characters are an enjoyable lot to spend time with. There's uncannily skilled bowman-assassin Calida, stoic legionary Caeso, fiery gladiator Bestia, venerable philosopher-fighter Syneros and Scythian warrior Deianeira, in addition your custom-created avatar character. Each companion has a different philosophy and viewpoint, often divided between favouring action, patience, stealth or diplomacy, and their insights into the crisis of the moment can be useful. Their combat skills are also excellent: Calida became my go-to companion for leading the B-team praetorians on side-missions, her formidable stealth skills and long-range death-dealing making her perfect for controlling the battlefield. Syneros's ability to use a heavy pike or staff to inflict damage across multiple spaces is also formidable.

The game takes a refreshingly relaxed attitude to history. Very early in the game you befriend and become a key ally of a famous Roman soldier. However, he dies in unexpected (and ahistorical) circumstances, leading to you filling his shows. It's then up to you how much history follows its original trajectory or if you can nudge it onto a better - or worse - course. There's also some very nice use of proper Latin pronunciation and interesting asides on Roman ranks, customs, laws and weapons. The game also throws a lot more curveballs at you if you play a female character, as Roman law, custom and society was very patriarchal.

The game does have a few problems, and the first is a distinct lack of explaining its finer systems. For example, I lucked onto a review early on that recommended putting a praetorian with the "Social" perk into the legion's bathhouse and keeping him there for the entire game, as this results in a slow but constant uptick in morale. Nothing in the game itself really tells you this, and it's probably the best way of building up morale for your troops (vital to minimise casualties in battle). Similarly, the game initially lowballs the importance of tactical items likes javelins, knives and Greek fire, despite having both loads of them and a Praetorian at camp constantly renewing them making an enormous difference to the game's difficulty.

The second issue probably won't be one for a lot of people: the game is on the long side. It consists of four acts, with the first three seeing you conquer Asia Minor, Egypt and Gaul in turn. Marching your troops across the map, fighting a big battle, then multiple missions to advance the story and secure each province is rewarding, but soon starts to get a little repetitive, and risks becoming filler. This is particularly notable during the Egyptian campaign, easily the biggest of the three (Gaul, in comparison, is refreshingly tight). The combat is excellent, being clever and rewarding, but it starts to wear a little thin, especially in the mid-going when you are levelling up skills and equipment comparatively slowly. There's also the feeling that some game systems are not quite as important as they should be: levelling strategems to improve your chances in battle was something I forgot to do until completing the Egyptian campaign, meaning I finished well over three-quarters of the game using just the strategies you get at the very start and not really suffering for it.

Expeditions: Rome (****) is a hugely enjoyable game with a great cast of characters, some very solid writing, a good-enough plot and brilliant tactical combat. The strategy metagame is light but enjoyable enough. At around 60 hours, the game does outstay it's welcome by a bit, but if you're after a historical RPG with turn-based combat and a lot of rich atmosphere, this is the game for you. The game is available on PC now.