Curious Expedition 2

Curious Expedition 2 suffers from some of the same frustrations that plague all games with any level of procedural generation, but, overall, it’s a fun romp filled with adventure and mystery. The structured story missions that frame the side quests provide a much-welcomed story to the game, and the myriad of characters, items, and gameplay options kept each mission fresh. Much like the mysterious islands you’ll explore and conquer, Curious Expedition 2 is worth checking out.

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.

Fairly familiar to its predecessor. Curious Expedition 2 provides new characters, items, events and graphic style while sticking to its original playstile. [Issue#309]

Curious Expedition 2 is a fun roguelike that quickly turns out to be a matryoshka of unpredictable adventures. It's a nice tribute to the adventure novel à la Jules Verne, and one that knows how to reward its players. It doesn’t dare as much as I would have liked narratively, but there’s still plenty of fun to be had.

A turn-based strategy Rogue-like that offers cool events and tough decisions. Highly addictive and re-playable.

Curious Expedition 2 manages to tread a difficult path in both its gameplay and its narrative and worldbuilding. It's a game that's a fascinating adventure that forces difficult choices and hair-raising gambles, set in a thematically intriguing world that brushes with some of the horrors of imperialism. Curious Expedition 2 is definitely a game worth exploring for anyone who finds grinding strategy or rewarding roguelike gameplay compelling.

Curious Expedition 2 is a fun and fascinating mix of roguelite, a stylish boardame and compelling adventures set in XIX century. The explorations are always fun play even if hard and punishing, with episodes of shining emergent narrative. Though, on the long run the fixed main quest structure and a little bit of déjà vu effect make the experience a little bit less magic than the first hours.

Borrowing from various genres, Curious Expedition 2 is an interesting and pretty simulator of an explorer. Sadly, it doesn’t offer enough content to keep you fully engaged throughout the whole adventure. In my case, the initial fun of exploration started to fade around the half of the campaign, as the lack of auto-battle started to annoy me (especially that my party became so strong that combat lost its thrill) and random encounters began to recur. [04/2021, p.52]

The quality of the overall experience is impacted by the limited appeal of the presentation. Combat can also become repetitive, with the dice system somewhat restrictive later on. Curious Expedition 2 is a good run-based title that will show-off the series to a wider section of gamers than the original, allowing them to go on complex resource-constrained adventures.

Curious Expedition 2's gorgeous backgrounds and good-looking characters improve on the first title, but don't do enough to make the management part of the game sparkle. Expeditions become a trudge, especially when your party robs you of all your alcohol; and combat can be fun, but not much fun to look at.

Curious Expedition 2 isn’t for those looking to relax at the end of a long day, rather for those looking for an 1800s adventure crazier than their wildest dreams. It’s a punishing experience in the vein of what it must have actually been like back in the day (sans the glowing purple fog and disappearing islands and all that), and one that will absolutely exhaust players as they lose track of time exploring the chain of procedurally generated islands. If you’re very fond of rogue-likes and want to try a unique spin on the genre, Curious Expedition 2 is very likely your cup of Earl Grey; anyone else may want to watch a let’s play or two before spending your hard-plundered riches here.

The gameplay is fun for a time, but once you see what Curious Expedition 2 has to offer, you will start to look beneath the surface. If you do that and you still like what you see, maybe you’ll have a new indie favorite. Or maybe you’ll find that your curiosity is quickly sated, and you’ll move on to the next thing.