By David Lovato 01.12.2021
In this sequel to the indie hit Curious Expedition, German developers Maschinen-Mensch challenge players to man a series of rogue-like expeditions to fantastic lands in search of treasure, culture, clout, glory—or perhaps just an untimely demise. Does Curious Expedition 2 live up to the promise?
Curious Expedition 2 begins with a tutorial level to introduce players to the game's mechanics. The tutorial can be replayed should anyone feel the need to freshen their memory on how something works, but gameplay is pretty simple: players set up an expedition in the central hub city, where they can choose which of three expeditions to embark on, each with varying difficulty levels that offer greater rewards for greater difficulty. This is in addition to the game's overall difficulty option, so players get a high level of customization when it comes to how easy or tough they want the game to be. Players can also use pre-expedition time to visit the various factions located in the city, which all take tickets in exchange for items or even people to help on the expeditions.
Once players are finished stocking up their boat and characters, it's time to head to one of the many mysterious islands that have been cropping up across the world. These are procedurally-generated in terms of land, things to do, natives to encounter, shrines to explore, and objectives to complete. Most expeditions have one main objective, and doing additional quests, like exploring shrines or talking to natives, will usually result in a better yield of treasure, but often doesn't come without danger. Players can move around the map to explore and reveal landmarks and other places of interest, but sometimes traps and enemies are afoot, leading to the game's text-based choice events and turn-based battles. Players will also have to keep an eye on their crew's vitals, and eventually the island will disappear, meaning it's always a race against the clock to get more treasure or complete objectives.
Having so much of the game be randomly generated leads to a lot of possibilities, and dialogue options and quest choices make for a highly diverse gameplay experience. Despite this, the gameplay loop itself can get repetitive, but some of this can be attributed to the types of missions chosen. Curious Expedition 2 offers quite a lot of different ways things can unfold, countless curveballs, and an overall different experience players can tweak and mould to their liking—or throw caution to the wind and let the game give them all it's got.
The graphics are smooth and consistent, and the sound department does a solid job on music and sound effects. Many characters in-game comment on the importance of respecting the cultures, shrines, and artifacts of the various islands' natives, which is a welcome addition to a game more or less set in a time period where humans did anything but. At the end of the day, Curious Expedition 2 has a wacky, zany alternate timeline that players get as much or as little control of as they desire. Impressively, the game can be played pretty much entirely with just the mouse, and with different skill sets, abilities, items, factions and more, it ends up being densely packed with content and options for those who want it, and laid-back and casual for those who just want to click around in this crazy world the developers at Maschinen-Mensch have put together.
Curious Expedition 2 offers a customizable gaming experience that can be as casual or as hardcore as players like, with tons of content and options, many of which can be changed on the fly. The game is smooth and solid, and having so much randomly generated content (and so much content to pull from) ensures a different experience on every run-through, even if the gameplay loop gets a little stale sometimes. For a certainly fair price point, players are getting a game they can play a hundred times a hundred different ways. Some of the best games are the ones where developers simply create a space and let players play; Curious Expedition 2 does so wonderfully.
8/10
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