CURIOUS EXPEDITION 2 Review for Steam

Curious expedition 2, developed by Maschinen-Mensch and published by Thunderful Publishing, is a turn-based dice-rolling adventure game available on Steam for PC.  The player is thrown into randomly generated islands tasked with different missions ranging from surveying islands to killing your own groupmate turned-zombie due to their inattentive infection.

The game is set in 1800 Paris where you find yourself first learning about the purple fog. On the first mission you see the fog take over the island you are on and after a close escape to your boat you look back to see the fog has cleared but there is no island to be seen. You are then taken to the exhibition grounds where you can go recruit new team members at the tavern and build your team.  Along the way you gather expo tickets which can be spent on items, equipment, or recruits through the different sponsors’ headquarters. 

Sane to Insane

Curious expedition 2 revolves around your sanity, and if that is not your first priority then wish your quest goodbye. Sanity is what keeps your team together and prevents insanity events from occurring. Insanity events occur when your sanity reaches zero. Sanity is what gives your team the ability to move across the island and serves as a somewhat “stamina” for the team.  Every time you travel with your team through the island it will cost a certain amount of sanity. You can regain sanity by eating food or drinking your favorite alcohol or sleeping at camp sites or villages you find along the way. Towards the end of quests, you find yourself fighting off insanity events and praying to come across any place to rest.  

Roll Roll Roll 

The next staple of Curious expedition 2 is the dice rolling. Whenever you are faced with an obstacle such as combat or success/failure of looting a temple; the game presents you with your dice to roll. Each color of the dyes-side is associated with something different.  Red is combat related, or green is related to looting. For example, if you try to steal from one of the villages, the game will ask you to roll the dice and if you do not roll at least two green dye, then you will get caught. Depending on the team member, their dice will have different colors on them. If you choose a British soldier for your team, both soldiers’ dice are all red, but if you pick a chef, their dye will have some blue sides and some green. This forces you to diversify your team, so you do not only have all one color of dye. If you mainly focus on red sided dice and a very combat-heavy team, then you will have a much higher chance when required to roll x number of red but an awful and possibly impossible chance when asked to roll a certain number of blue or green dice.  

Good vs. Evil 

With all these different events and choices to make, you can choose to be the good explorer who gets along with the natives; or the pillaging thief who decides to steal from their temples and take all their offerings. I chose to be the devil’s advocate during my playthrough and steal all the treasure and loot I could find. In doing so, the natives turned on me very quickly and attacked me on the island instead of offering goods or services. The tribe encounters get very repetitive as you can only really trade with them, recruit a new team member, or interact with their leader for quests or information. I also felt the tribes trading prices were very steep, and if I wanted something good, I would have to trade some of my loot for it, which made me think, “hmm, do I really NEED to eat, or keep the golden llama?”

Your Team

The relationships you develop with your team members can be quite short if things go wrong, and the conversations start to become repetitive and uninteresting. They can also develop a variety of different illnesses that if not treated will slowly but surely ruin that character and result in tragedy such as death or turning into an eight-foot zombie who you must now kill to survive.  While there is a huge variety of character appearances and different character traits; I never felt connected with any of the team members or a bond to any due to uninteresting relationships and the fact that it seemed I would lose at least one team member every quest, so our times together were cut short.  

Equipment and tickets 

I also had a hard time buying equipment with my hard-earned expo-tickets (earned from completing quests) because it seemed I would cash out on equipment for a team member through the shady dealer and the very next quest he decides to leave our group because he lost all his “loyalty” to me. The equipment does have a lot of variety and you can create several various builds for any scenario or quest you are about to head out on.  

Repetitive Loot 

The looting seems to be one of the highlights of Curious expedition 2 but can quickly go bad if you decide to travel too far and do not have enough sanity to return. The loot also does not have a lot of variety as it seemed whichever islands I went to it was the same couple loot items at the various locations. The locations have texture variety depending on what area you are exploring, but you can always expect the same village, temple, etc. just with a different look. 

Conclusion 

Curious expedition 2 is an overall well-developed game but does share its number of bugs and glitches. The story line is easy to follow and has a seemingly loose structure, which is not as interesting to follow as the game progressed. Sanity has become my life’s goal when I play this game and nothing else matters when trying to find a campsite once you run out of items to help regain sanity. The dice component is well managed and very entertaining when you are trying to steal from a tribe and not get caught. It is well thought-out and plays a major role in the game and your success while exploring the islands. I enjoyed playing but did not build any relationships with the CPU nor did I really care due to the lack of interesting conversations or want to build a loyal team. I am going to give this game a 7.5/10. 

Check Out the Curious Expedition 2 Steam Trailer:

Curious Expedition 2 is available for $19.99 for PC via Steam.

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