Curious Expedition 2 Review (Steam)

Curious Expedition 2 is a turn-based narrative roguelike set in a reimagined version of the late 19th century that uses procedural gameplay and story elements to create completely unique and epic adventures every time you play.

Pros:

• Beautiful cartoon graphics.
• 1.92GB download size.
• Steam achievements.
• Steam trading cards.
• Controller support.
• Graphics-fullscreen, resolution and graphics quality preset (low/medium/high/ultra).
• Game settings-instant text, fast rest, and travel speed (slow/normal/fast/very fast).
• Travel-you pick where to go and set a route. Each time it will have a sanity cost so the longer the journey the more chance of someone going insane.
• Hand-drawn style cutscenes.
• Bright and colorful.
• Opening tutorial map.
• Gameplays out on a hexagonal map.
• Clear easy to read travel cost marker.
• Map uncovers as you play.
• 3 difficulties-traveler, adventurer, and lunatic.
• Death consequences setting-restart expedition, wipe year, or wipe campaign.
• The terrain can influence the travel cost so it would cost more to go through jungles rather than open fields for example.
• Choose your own adventure style gameplay.
• Find places of interest and investigate them by choosing options within them.
• Encounter natives/locals and depending on your actions will determine your overall standing with them which can be good or bad.
• The game mostly plays out on the map view and interactions or investigating will launch a new area/play zone.
• Button icons show on the screen.
• You can stop traveling with a button press.
• Lower insanity with items.
• Very easy to get into.
• Recruit new members to your team, you can view their stats, abilities, and items beforehand.
• Dice rolling mechanic is used in certain situations.
• Random encounters can happen.
• Play how you want, you get missions but you do it your way.
• Combat- turn-based, you roll dice and they represent healing, defense, attacks a d you take a corresponding die to the action you want to make. You can Reroll dice once per round.
• Loot drops.
• Earn EXP as you explore and play which then lets you promote members to increase stats.
• Save and exit.
• Before starting a new expedition you choose your team members. You unlock more as you play and the requirements to do so are shown.
• Expeditions will have their own 1-3 skull difficulty rating and a set budget.
• Clubs-three to choose from-Lux labs, Taishi Academy, and Royal Avalon Society. You earn a rank with them and can earn unique rewards. You will be given unique tasks and are clearly marked on the map.
• Items-buy from the shop before you leave and then you can find some in the world or trade/barter with others.
• At the end of an expedition, you get a load of rewards from your club and the chance to pick one of three bonus items that concentrate on something particular like resting, combat, or healing.
• Recruit your last team member from a bar before every expedition.
• Treasure maps can be found.
• Barter/trades will show a bar that goes green for a good trade and red for a no-deal trade.
• Paris is like your hub where you can go around visiting and recruiting people.
• Upgrade weapons and equipment in Paris using expo tickets that you earn from expeditions.
• Can change clubs every expedition without a penalty.
• Storage-each character has a set amount they can carry and your ship can hold a lot.
• Party management system for using items.
• Quick use Hotbar.
• Can get quite addictive.
• Excellent game for the big screen.
• Butterflies-find and collect these for bonus fame.
• Shrines-self contained dungeons that have great rewards but generally cause bad things to happen on the map or with the locals.
• Party members can die, contract diseases, fall in love, leave mid expedition and so much more.

Cons:

• The controller doesn’t work on all menus and will need you to use the mouse.
• Once you get so far down in a sanity hole it’s hard to recover.
• Slow paced.
• The difficulty ramps up with you only getting high-level expeditions or maybe just the one.
• Using the map to travel can be annoying as it forgets your destination if you have an event mod travel.
• Doesn’t do an amazing job of explaining all the items, buffs, and dice.
• Player selection in Battle is just a hard to see a yellow outline.
• Repetitive in terms of the same game flow.