When I heard that the Expeditions series was getting a new entry, I was excited. It was mid 2025, three years after Rome had been released in 2022. This announcement not only confirmed that the studio was still up and running, but that a new project would be coming in the near future.

In 2026, it was announced that the new project would be called Expeditions: Samurai and set during the Sengoku-Jidai period of Japanese history. Elation soon followed. If the work done on Rome was anything to go by, a new title set in one of the most fascinating settings in History had everything to succeed. Well, I’m afraid to say that, in my opinion, Expeditions: Samurai, in its current state, is not going to turn any heads or win any awards any time soon. Let’s find out why, shall we?

• Genre: Turn-Based Strategy/ CRPG
• Developer: Campfire Cabal
• Publisher: THQ Nordic
• Price: $19.79 | 19,79€ | £17.65
• Release Date: 7 August, 2026
• Target Audience: Turn-Based Strategy players; CRPG Players; Historical game fans

The game starts aboard a Dutch ship, De Albratos, on its way to Japan on a diplomatic mission. The crew is sick, tired, and on the verge of a mutiny. To make things worse, you’re then attacked by the Portuguese; the captain and the ambassador are killed, and you and the rest of your crew have to fight their way out and end up stranded in Japan. Now it’s time to get back on your feet, take care of your crew, figure out what’s going on with the Portuguese and the Jesuits, and plot for revenge. In this alternative version of events, your character takes the place of William Adams, who never left England, making you the first of your nation to arrive in Japan, just as the Japanese Civil War is coming to its climax. This all sounds pretty great, and it is, and the premise of the story is the reason why I’m even writing this in the first place. Were it not for that, I would have probably checked out a couple of hours into the game. Unfortunately, that’s where most of the good things about Expeditions: Samurai end.

Let’s start with the presentation of the game, because this is quite possibly the biggest point of contention within the community, and while I do not hate the new art style, I also do not enjoy it either, and I cannot understand how the decision to move from the semi-realistic look of Rome to this weird claymation style was even approved in the first place. I have to ask, what’s the biggest advantage of this? Does it add anything to the presentation that previous titles were missing? If so, I would love to know what. Sure, it looks good in screenshots, but in movement, textures look blurry, there’s very little detail on the characters, and things just end up looking like smudges a lot of the time. With the game being set in Japan, I was hoping for more colorful and lively environments, and what I ended up seeing most of the time was washed-out color palettes and generic locations.

A lot has been said by players about the characters’ looks, and the fact that they’re all so awkward-looking, and I have to agree with that sentiment. Again, it’s such a weird decision, especially when they had the solid art style in the previous game. I do understand the urge to create something unique because it’s set in Japan, and games like Ghost of Tsushima and Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun also did that, but this just isn’t it. At least the UI looks pretty, and the available skills are kind of cool. There are also a lot of small things that are so annoying. Just look at this screenshot below, where the sword is in the scabbard mid-combat! At least the animation work isn’t terrible.

With that out of the way, let’s talk a bit about the gameplay. Here, at least, things are somewhat mid. Not bad, like the presentation, but also not incredible. The gameplay consists of a mix of exploration, stealth, and a turn-based strategy game. Well, the exploration aspect of it is just there, I guess. There’s not a whole lot to see or do in the maps aside from just watching your characters travel from one location to the next and talk to a couple of NPCs. I even tried to search around to see if I could find any loot, or secrets, or a couple of hidden treasures that would encourage me to explore whenever I entered a new area, and either those are very well hidden, or they don’t exist, which feels like a wasted opportunity. I also wished the areas, especially the towns, would have a lot more people wandering around to make them feel a lot more lived in and alive.

Now, let’s talk about stealth and the combat of the game. The stealth aspect certainly… exists, and I’m not sure why, because combat is a lot more enjoyable than stealth. It’s the basic sneaking around while the enemy has predetermined paths for you to avoid. If they spot you, you’ll have a certain time frame to escape their line of sight. You can take them down and hide their bodies. Stealth is certainly a thing, and it can help thin down the enemies before a fight, but it’s so barebones that I would have rather seen the time that was invested into creating this system being put to better use in refining the turn-based combat, which is the other area of the game, aside from the story, that’s redeemable. Like the art style, I have to ask: what does the stealth system add to the game?

Combat as it stands right now is the most enjoyable part of the game, so much so that if I can, I’ll avoid stealth altogether just to get into the turn-based strategy combat, even if it’s the most time-consuming and dangerous option. Combat plays like a traditional turn-based strategy title, with movement and action points. While most things are somewhat to be expected from turn-based strategy, the amount of different skills, status effects, and things like armor, glancing blows, and lines of sight surely add a ton of complexity to the game, something that’s right up my alley. So far, during this early stage of the game, most encounters have been rather small in scale, which feels like a disservice to the systems at play, so hopefully the later stages will open up a bit more and provide ample opportunities to enjoy and experiment with these mechanics.

With that being said, the game urgently needs to fix its camera, because it’s abysmal. It’s slow to react, almost like it’s being pulled by a rope, and changes height constantly as you navigate the terrain. Just have the camera fixed at a given height, and it would be cool.

Before we wrap this one up, I have to mention the game’s dialogue system. While the writting is decent and I enjoyed most of the conversations, especially the ones involving dealing with the Japanese as well as the Jesuits (mostly because I paied extra attention to those, to make sure I picked the options that might be the most advantageous to me), I don’t think I’ve ever came across a moment when my main charcather wasn’t the one doing the conversation, even in moment when it would make a lot more sense to be another character talking. I don’t want to spoil any of the moments for you, but there’s a moment early on when you’re speaking with another priest, and I think it would have made a lot more sense for that conversation to give your priest a couple of lines, instead of him and the other one just reacting to what you say. So, maybe this opens up later, and I’m not quite sure, but if it doesn’t, then why do all the characters have an “authority” skill to level up, whose description is “Wield authority or strength in dialogue”? Also, once I got insta-killed for picking the wrong dialogue option, which is really not that cool, and it would be a lot better to have the game be designed in such a way that a less favourable answer could hurt you, but to kill you and force you to do the conversation again just feels cheap.

Before writing this first impression, I wanted to go back and play a couple more hours, but to be honest, I just couldn’t deal with all the annoying bits the game has, and until it gets any better, I don’t see myself picking this one up anytime soon. The only thing Expeditions: Samurai did for me was to inspire me to play Expeditions: Rome, which does the combat equally as great, but everything else is just a lot better. The game can still be saved, but the art style would have to receive a major rework; all the wonkiness would have to be ironed out, animations polished, the exploration needs to be a lot more involved, and the combat scenarios do need to open up a lot. So far, this is the end of the line for me.

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