Expeditions: Conquistador Preview and Q&A
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The real focus is on the followers, who are disposable, pre-set characters with their own specialties and personalities. You begin by choosing ten followers from a static pool of 30, divided into five jobs (the Kickstarter page promises ten): doctor, hunter, scholar, scout and soldier. I didn't get much use out of scholars in the press build, especially as they and scouts cannot fight, but the other three roles were very generic, falling into the tank / archer / healer stereotypes. In addition, they have a mix of personality traits like 'Pious', 'Narcissistic' and even 'Racist', and come with a short bio that knits it all together into simple but believable personalities. They might be best understood as a simpler version of Jagged Alliance 2's mercenaries. Subsequently, I found two main ways of customising the followers. Each battle accrued a shared pool of experience, which I could expend on any follower to level them up. I don't know if the press build hiked up XP gain, but I could generally level up one follower after two battles at most, and there were only 5 levels. Each level seemed to unlock a new skill, making it 5 skills per class. The doctor begins with a basic heal skill, for example, while the hunter begins with a double-shot then unlocks an aimed shot that negates the distance penalty. I could also find or purchase .quipment', again a general resource I could use to increase a follower's melee, ranged or defensive capabilities.
If it all seems a bit simple, well, it is. My impression is that beyond the first few hours, I will begin to miss the ability to select skills and customise my followers a little more, or hand them special weapons or pieces of equipment. The Kickstarter campaign had promised the inclusion of ability trees as a stretch goal; at the moment, the system feels solid and effective, but with too little to offer to the kind of player who loves trying out different party combinations and character builds.
It's also worth noting that the folks at Pure Sophistry had a brief chat with the developers after the Kickstarter ran its course:
Finally, the million dollar questions- when can we finally get hands on this wonderful product?
Expeditions: Conquistador will be released in January 2013. That may not be the end of development on the game, depending on its success, but we can promise you that the first release will happen at that time.
