Curious Expedition 2

Roguelite with focus on exploration, rpg and equipment.

cool little roguelike

very fun

10/10. would rob native peoples of their artifacts, possessions, and lives, again!

very good atmosphere, played a lot and is still fun ! If you like a chill adventure, management game with a good universe and i recommend !

Sorry, but even for me, a Bi-Sexual furry, that game is not enjoyable for me because of the "overkill wokeness". Characters can have any gender, which is fine nowadays, but not in that time and age. It is romanticizing the era with "oh look how we accept anyone". I don't mind representation. I mind overrepresentation. Make one or two characters queer, I don't mind, would be good inside the "statistical" chance. But since anyone can be anything, I don't like it. Also as others stated most if not all bad guys are male?... really? I stick to CE1 for the time being.

and no. I don't want any clown or any kind of stickers. I have enough steam points. I just want to post my honest opinion.

The team ate my dog Jane :'( Uninstalling

Left on a journey to explore a mysterious archipelago.
Went insane and ended up eating my trusted pack mule.
Tasted delicious. Felt bad.

The game mechanics are good and the game loop is fun. Overall, an enjoyable game. However game time is way to short for the price attached. DLC should extend campaign duration, but don't

It's a really good gimmick, very unique. A shaky recommend on my part, 20 bucks is pretty steep. Perhaps I haven't made it far enough in the game, but the breadth of content is severely lacking. I haven't seen over half of the stuff presented in the trailers. Hoping to see more in the coming hours of play.

I really appreciate this game's adventure-filled theme of exploring uncharted islands, and it really captures the spirit of it. All the random events make things feel so exciting and unpredictable.

I like that you can earn fame and experience by fighting monsters, learning about the locals, or finding treasures, and you can play the game focusing on one of those things if you really wanted to.

I also like how you can recruit almost any character into your party, and they all have interest abilities to support different styles of play. But since those team members might leave (or be killed) at any moment, your team is always slowly rotating as people come and go.

There are a lot of systems in this game (combat, diplomacy, equipment, encumbrance, fame, factions and more), but they are explained well, and interacting with them is fun. This game has a lot going on!

不是很能理解怎么二十一世纪还能做出这种内容，充斥着对岛民虚伪的“尊重友好”和殖民者的傲慢自大。白人强盗肆意掠夺的行为被描述地淋漓尽致，希望喜欢这部分内容地人乘早下地狱。另外排除这些令人恶心的游戏故事和文本，剩余的游戏体验也只说普通水平，非常不推荐游玩。
It's hard to understand how a game like this could still be made in the 21st century. The content is filled with a hypocritical "respect and friendliness" toward islanders while exuding the arrogance and condescension of colonizers. The game vividly portrays the reckless plundering of white invaders—anyone who enjoys this aspect should go to hell as soon as possible. Even setting aside the disgusting storyline and text, the remaining gameplay is just mediocre at best. Strongly not recommended.

It's 19th century Tintin mixed with mild Lovecraft stuff in a challenging and replayable campaign-based game.

Curious Expedition 2

Simply put, I'm not having fun playing this. The most enjoyment I've gotten from this title is knowing I at least saved some money by not buying the DLC.

The gameplay is you put together a team, explore an island and try to complete an adventure. You wander all over the island, looking for spots that may have something interesting and brave the wilds. It actually sounds fun for someone who loves exploring in games. My favorite part of Skyrim or Civ is always seeing what's around the next corner. This should be right up my alley.

But this plays like an annoying mobile game. In reality, this is a lot less Indiana Jones and a lot more Yathzee. The missions grow stale very quickly, with each island playing just like the last one. You'll encounter the same types of monsters, have the same interactions with villagers, uncover the same temples and ultimately have the same frustrations.

The whole time you have what is in essence a clock ticking down to complete said mission. Fail and you go mad. Your random island could be relatively easy or the mission could be functionally and practically impossible depending on the size and needed unlocks. Get a bad island that has 2 or 3 things you need to unlock the end target (say, a Golden Pyramid) and it's not really an achievable mission. You'll deal with the same frustrations of limited bag space, bad rolls that you can do nothing to avoid, random events that may permanently just snatch away a key party member without any recourse or any number of negative things.

It all feels far too random for me. Most every single thing you do is a roll of the dice. It's not just a matter of coming up with the right number but the right individual dice. Say you're in combat against a giant snake and you're armed with a shotgun. Whether or not you can shoot it isn't up to you. You need the dice to come up with the ability to fire said shotgun. So in an encounter, you could go many turns without your best attack because the dice won't let you. If you have a sufficiently diversified party with different people filling different roles, that could be a pretty serious problem. And that's really the core game play here - roll the dice and take your chances. Encounter a tomb? You might need 3 greens to come up to break in. You got 2? Sorry, you're a loser and there's nothing you can do. No tomb for you.

It's not just random, it's pointless. Sure, there's a story but it's poorly told and does nothing to try to get the player actually invested in it. Get back into town (Paris) and you're just cashing in the goodies from your mission into prestige with one of 3 factions which gives you a paltry amount of currency to buy something from their store. It's one of the worst of the mobile tropes - doing something repetitive to earn currency just to change that currency in for another so you can buy something to do it all over again.

The art is colorful and fairly nicely done but it's nothing amazing. The music is....well, it's there. I loaded the game up one last time to see if I could try to find some enjoyment out of it. I got a mission to enter a golden pyramid. On an island with a magnetic mountain dead in the middle of it, taking away my one tool (compass) that helps me navigate towards the objective. I used a cheat just to see how bad this was. The boat parked in the East. The pyramid was in the far North. The two unlocks were in the far West and South. Unless you just happened to randomly choose the entire correct path, this wasn't an achievable mission. Then I got back to Paris and got a notification that one of my team members randomly died because....reasons.

This game isn't just not worth your money, it's not worth your time. It takes exploration and boils it down to a series of random dice rolls and events of which the player doesn't retain agency to control their fate.

Avoid.

Great game, wonderful art, nice music, not difficult and quite entertaining. I like the way that a game is trying to tell a story. I'd like to grab some drinks and spend my weekends with such a game.

Frustrating but engaging

Really fun for the first play-through, seems like you can get about 30 hours in and retire the game. Gets a little repetitive but man its definitely fun!

Slow passed compared to CE1. more on rails and bloated. So many animations and dialogue scenes makes it feel so slow compared to the first. and the campaign also bogs things down.

And why do I have to manage my party from a separate menu? It just slows things down more.

I don't hate this game. It's just alright. The alright expedition.

A nice suprisingly cosy (despite your commiting ennumerable crimes and atrocities) game.

This game surprised me. It's a funny, lighthearted, joyful, and at times pretty challenging game about leading a little band of explorers around mysterious islands. There is a pretty impressive variety of encounters, including contact and trade with indigenous peoples, hunting, foraging, spelunking, looting, and resource management. As director of the expedition, you have the option of recruiting up to four NPC companions (human, animal...and otherwise!), each of which bring their own unique benefits and drawbacks to the team. There are a ton of unique weapons, equipment, accessories, etc. for your characters, plus various survival provisions you can choose to allocate resources for before you step off the boat for each excursion. Combat is standard turn-based fare - simple but fun. This is one area I think that could use some real polish: making combat look and sound better using legit animations and sound effects with a little more oomph.

All in all, this game was pure comfort food for me. It's cozy, charming, quirky, creative, and *fun*. Beware: hours can melt away while playing this game. It gave me serious Civ-esque "one more turn" syndrome!

First, I'd love to not be forced to upvote or downvote.
This game is a perfect example where I'd much prefer the middleground.

The game is - especially at the beginning - fun to play.
It starts interesting, you have a lot of different characters, you explore, you gain fame, you level your chars, your equipment.
About the good aspects of the game, a lot has been said by other reviews.

When you play longer you start to realize that the biomes look different - but don't play really that much different. And that there are very little goals for each map feels boring. It gets repetetive very soon, because you cycle through a handful of objectives.
I bought the game in the last steam sale with all the DLCs - and I still only have a handful of objectives? Seriously?

Still, that alone would not be enough to give the game a negative review.

What I have realized after 30 hours is one thing, that is really bothering me:
For a long time, I thought it would be random if the people you encounter are male or female.
And that was a solution I was very fine with.
But after 30 hours I realize: That's not true.
Roughly 75% of all chieftains, hunters and shamans are female.
So the "good" characters are mostly represented by woman.
Ok, still not that big of a deal.

HOWEVER: You encounter "bad" characters as well. Characters who make inappropriate commands, who behave inappropriate.
And you encounter on some special maps completly disfigures abominations.
And ALL!!! of these "bad" characters are male.
EVERY. SINGLE. ONE.
In 30 hours.

So most good characters are female, ALL bad characters are male.

Since steam forces me to chose between upvote and downvote, I went with the downvote.
Because I simply can't upvote a bigot and deeply sexist game.

If you agree with the producers view on males being some kind of inferior subhumans - ignore this downvote. You can safely buy this game and have fun.

If you don't care at all, you can still buy this game.

But you should realize what kind of game you buy and what kind of mindset the devs have.

Then you can chose for yourself if you are fine with it or not.

13 hrs of play 5.1/2 hrs of that is trying the act 3 story mission twice on the lowest difficulty. i can not find the third object on both tries and have yet to finish one play through. If i keep playing i would have to do the same mission for a min of 2.1/2 hrs and hope that the forced r.n.g story mission allows me to succeed. Save your time and play something playable. NO GAME SHOULD BE UN-BEATABLE ON THE LOWEST DIFFICULTY. Really i have only my nights to play games and i've wasted 3 on this one mission of this one game on the lowest difficulty.

Darkest Dungeon for kids

It was a pleasant surprise. It's like Darkest Dungeon but very simplified and with wholesome art style and themes. Recommended on sale.

Curious Expedition 2 ranks among my favorite games of all time. In a series of distinct expeditions, you must lead a team of explorers across procedurally-generated maps, overcoming obstacles (from combat to dehydration) that require you to make the most of each party member's special talents. Each further expedition poses greater risk while also yielding more opportunity for rewards – and your goal is to seek out the technology that could bring peace and prosperity to the world!

What makes Curious Expedition 2 so special and so replayable is its variety of classes. There are the basic human classes (cook, missionary, field nurse), the more specialized human classes (Taoist monk, kinematographer, Grail knight), the non-human classes (salamander sea priest, mole tinkerer, shaman peacock), and so very many pack animals and pets (treasure corgi, donkey, red panda). Your companions come and go – when playing on difficult settings, expect crew members to die, transform, depart, etc. – and it is the player's job, both during and between expeditions, to maintain a crew that can both survive and thrive in expeditions harmoniously while scooping up as many treasures as possible.

Although you control a team of up to five, one serves as leader, and belongs to one of several leader-exclusive classes. These classes determine gameplay, allowing for enormous replayability. These leader classes shape your whole gameplay; as an anthropologist, you'll want to devote time to interacting with the indigenous people of each island you visit on your expeditions, while as a pirate, you have no strong incentives to avoid antagonizing (up to a certain point) each island's native population. Looting a temple and killing game cause distrust, but if you're playing a leader class that doesn't much care about popularity among the indigenous, you have all the talents you need to avoid the villagers, anyway.

What Curious Expedition 2 isn't is a game about combat. Even while playing as Big Game Hunter, the most combat-friendly leader class, you have strong disincentives (other than your time, of course!) not to fight everything you meet. One of the biggest mistakes I made was thinking that I had to fight every enemy – fight selectively, because combat yields a few bonuses but (usually) far more disadvantages.

My recommendations to new players? Keep your crew happy; cure your crew of any debilitating mental illnesses (such as alcoholism); be sure to keep a lantern for caves and wading-boots for swamps; and don't take the loss of a crew member (even a beloved one) as insurmountable. It will happen, and you'll sometimes find new friends in unexpected places. Above all, be willing to experiment. Happen across a mysterious portal? Investigate! Receive a chance to take on a yet-unknown quest from a village headwoman? Leap at the opportunity! The game rewards risk-taking. After over 273 hours of gameplay, I know a lot of the payouts – but the game continues to surprise me with all of its combinations and permutations of advantages, disadvantages, and challenges.

This game is at its most fun at its hardest, and, once you feel as if you've learned the basics, I strongly recommend ironman mode on lunatic difficulty.

I recommend in the highest terms – and I hope that Maschinen-Mensch will continue to develop such enjoyable games of strategy and exploration!

Exceptional game, great art, wild progression.

You never know what lies ahead, and you and your little pawns are generally along for the ride. So ride the river, see where it takes you.

Make sure to get a bunch of sane inducing food on the front end.

GoodBye and GoodLuck.

Curious Expedition Original was great fun, a little old school, a bit hardcore and definitely roguelike with total wipes due to little else than bad lack and unfortunate roles. Curious Expedition 2 retains some of that live or die approach... if you want it. This is due to difficulty levels, and I think this is great. The difficultly settings really let you choose how much of a punishment you are wanting to take. I took the easier approach to learn the game, experiment with the various companions and leaders and definitely checking out the DLC fantasy lands. They're fun. I moved to the normal difficulty, and oh boy, what a difference that makes. Poor decisions and gambles, hurt. The forced story elements are brutal but if you make logical decisions, have at least some luck, or just good supplies, you can probably make it.

The mysteries, surprises, the joy of being lucky or just, you know, greedy combined with finding a great adventuring group really does relive the original experience with the added bonus of upgraded graphics and a steady approach. If I have one complaint, it's going to be those story adventures, the ones that can be difficult and multi stepped which means if you gorged on resources in leg one, two and three... oh boy.

If this is your first go or your a fan of the original, give it a go. You can get an Island done in a relatively short period of time which also makes this game a I have some time, can I feel like I did something tonight. Yes! And rreplayability is good due to the leader and just some random events you don't always see. It's great fun!

I adore this game. To me, Curious Expedition 2 is a game of recruiting a rag-tag group of adventurers and critters to explore the mysterious disappearing islands. The gameplay, much like in the first game, is a race against time as you try to survive on the islands with your few resources without resorting to eating your friends.
The game has plenty of NPCs you can recruit with their own individual abilities and traits. You can create a diverse cast of adventurers or you can be like me and play 90% of the game as the Naturalist (Robots of Lux DLC, 6€), and befriend a bunch of dinosaurs (even the T-Rex! but you cannot ride it...)!
The island-expeditions themselves are very fun, but can get slightly repetitive for an achievement-hunter like myself. There are many points of interests scattered around the map for you to investigate and decide if you want to have morals or just pillage and loot whatever you come across. Personally I had a tough time being mean to the pixels on my screen.
I've heard people having issues with the art-style, which honestly baffles me. To me its very charming and suits the mood of the game perfectly. I personally ended up buying the Highlands of Avalon DLC just to meet the cool looking sea serpent and befriend the Clydesdale draft-horses, which are absolutely friend-shaped.

As with each indie game, there were some visual bugs and whatnot, but I found nothing that impacted my gameplay (aside from when my T-Rex was injured and she kept playing the "taking damage" animation constantly and was rather loud about it. But honestly I think she was just being dramatic.)
I had slight issues with the enemy aggro-system, in which if an enemy is chasing you and you turn to approach them, they sometimes get a surprise round anyway. This might purely be a skill-issue on my part however.

All in all, I highly recommend trying this game and supporting the developers, who even released a new, FREE cultist update this summer, 4 years after the game came out. <3

Mini-Review :

I wasn't sure what to expect with this game and just hoped for some nice adventure, and I really got it and enjoyed myself for nearly 30 hours for my first run, with a fighting party whose members were animal only (likely the easiest setup). I'd have likely done a second run to test a diplomacy party if I hadn't a backlog full of games.

The game rules aren't much realistic though and lower a bit the immersion : your main resource to manage is Sanity. Every time you move, you lose some depending on how unfriendly the terrain is (eg: swamps make you lose more Sanity than grass).

You can get back Sanity by eating food, resting, or special items or events. So unlike survival games, food isn't that important. It feels a bit weird, but this allows the game to focus on other things.

The 2 other core elements that put pressure on your expedition are :
- to stop you from resting too often, there's a fog coming closer to the island more and more with the passing days ; once on the island, that fog prevents you from seeing tiles and raises the Sanity cost
- several actions will lower your reputation with the local tribes

And of course, there are combats. They require enough tactics to keep my interest along the run, without being overly complicated.

The story is nothing exceptional but it did the job of keeping me interested and giving me a purpose.

Thus said, I'd have not enjoyed the game if I didn't save scum. Normally, at best, if you die you should restart the current island expedition. That'd have frustrated me too much, especially as some horrible things can happen more or less unexpectedly while you learn the game ropes.

Also, the humans are pretty annoying to manage, and I quickly ended up with my sweet animal companions. 🙂

Lastly, the game lacks a bit of depth, except maybe for the min/max lovers or master strategists who don't mind party wipes, but for me, it was fine.

I enjoyed the visuals and I'm glad they took that style instead of the 1st Curious Expedition pixel art (which prevented me from playing it). However, the backgrounds in the city feel a bit flat, but we don't see them a lot.

Pros :

- A taste of adventure
- Really sweet atmosphere, between 1889 Paris and exotic & mysterious islands
- Original mechanisms
- Many little parts that fit well together, preventing the game from being too repetitive
- Very good replayability, despite a small lack of depth in the gameplay mechanisms
- Lots of gear with interesting perks
- The game just got extra free content, more than 3 years after release !

Cons :

- Gameplay rules aren't much realistic, lowering the immersion a bit
- Too much guesswork on the consequences of our actions at 1st
- Luck often matters a lot
- The more you lose, the more chances to lose more (and vice versa), which makes the previous 2 points even more painful
- Inventory management is painful : you quickly get too many items and constantly throw useful stuff away ; some of it being very small items (although the smallest ones take no space)
- Gear evolution is pretty limited after less than half of the run
- It doesn't feel like a rogue-like in the sense that the randomization almost doesn't affect the gameplay ; ie: all my expeditions felt more or less the same, and I didn't feel like I had to adapt to the circumstances, only to the island type

The game has a st***id "online competition thing" that you can never access cause the servers aren't kept up properly.

What a waste.

I enjoy this game alot. it is relatively easy to get into and understand the mechanics and its pretty fun to recruit and have such a wide range of enemies and potential allies. One gripe I have is that once you finish the first playthrough it can get rather repetitive, although ive only had 3 runs so I can't say too much. I personally recommend the Robots of lux and shores of taishi DLC, which add more interesting content in my opinion. And after the first playthrough I would recommend the more difficult resets to make it intense