Where the biggest RPG franchises lean on the iconography of chainswords or D&D sorceries, the Expeditions series has instead been about finding the magic right here in our own past, telling sweeping stories against the backdrops of monumental events like the Spanish conquest of the Americas or, most recently, the feisty final years of the Roman Republic. It's done a fine job of it too, enduring across 13 years and four games, and steadily evolving each time.
A journey to Sengoku-era Japan was probably inevitable for the series sooner rather than later, given the era's near-mythical resonance with gamers, but beyond the new setting, a few more things are changing in Expeditions Samurai. The game is taking the Early Access route for a start, with the goal being to polish it with the help of the committed community the series has amassed over the years. It's made by a new studio too, albeit made up of series veterans including Expeditions: Rome's Creative Director Jonas Wæver.
So something old (about 500 years old, to be somewhat exact), something new for the stalwart series, and I've taken its Early Access build—which covers the game's first act—for a spin to see how this new journey unfolds over its first several hours.
Like HBO's series Shogun, the premise is based on the exploits of real-life English seaman William Adams, who arrived in Japan after a near-fatal expedition and eventually rose to the rank of samurai under Tokugawa Ieyasu. Now, as the fictional 'Insert-your-name-here' Flynn, you get to embark on that same journey, approaching it more with the rugged swag of the HBO series' protagonist Blackthorne rather than how I imagine Adams would've handled his delicate situation.
Things don't begin auspiciously for Flynn, who on his way to Japan as part of a diplomatic mission faces starvation, mutiny, and ultimately an attack from a Portuguese vessel that leaves most of your crew dead and you and your companions stranded in a fishing village near Nagasaki, an area rife with Jesuit missionaries, Spanish and Portuguese explorers, and the inevitable bad blood that comes when rival colonial and Christian factions clash in faraway lands in the 17th century.
Meanwhile, Japan is crippled by civil war and feuding warlords, so it's all looking rather spicy for Flynn and his ragtag band, which includes a grumbly Dutch warrior, a privileged son of a Dutch aristocrat, and a French priest (and don't worry: if that party make-up sounds a little too colonial for you, native companions like Kage the rōnin and female warrior Tora-Hime can join you later into the act, but you'll need to endear yourself to them first).
It's a far cry from the lofty status you start Expeditions: Rome in, where you build your name from a prestigious to a legendary one. Here you're a culturally unaware oaf who's blundered into the most foreign of lands, and you never feel more than a couple of dialogue faux-pas away from a swift execution—whether at the hands of Jesuits or local warlords.
Some of the new mechanics are a neat fit for your precarious position. The stealth system, for example, allows you to complete missions non-combatively, as well as giving you far more control over how you enter combat (should you choose combat at all). Party-splitting is a thing now too, so I could send my sneakiest companion, Dutch burglar Antje, to nab loot or knock out enemies unawares, while getting the rest of my party into position for an ambush.
Character progression is a bit of a mix of what came before, but leaning more into CRPG-style depth with Skill Points—effectively attribute points which now dictate not only underlying combat stats like health and critical hit chance, but out-of-combat actions like sneaking, foraging, tinkering, and your no-nonsense ability to smash through things where gentler approaches fail.
You also get Perk points and Abilities as you level up, which give a large palette of combat abilities and modifiers to take your characters in. In my initial party I had two tanky Guardians—Piet and myself—and built one out into a damage-dealing, door-smashing barbarian while the other could mix up ranged and melee combat along with boosting allies.
Each class is built around a unique resource too, further diversifying the game's tactical playbook. The Marauder, for instance, gains Focus each time they kill an enemy, which can then be used to mark enemies or restore endurance, while the Duelist relies on getting into advantageous positions on the battlefield from which they can deal the most damage. It's a neat way of pushing you to learn the specific vocabulary of each class while not having them feel like they speak completely different languages (looking at you, Clair Obscur).
A couple of the game's headline features, co-op and party romancing, are both already in Early Access. While I didn't get to test the co-op, it's interesting that the two systems are actually intertwined, so you and your pal can compete for romantic interests and then deal with the soap-opera strife that ensues.
You can also both tussle over the same conversations, so key branching story decisions can potentially get decided by whoever is more persuasive in a given conversation. I haven't yet seen this in action, but it's great to see a game integrating player disputes into the co-op RPG experience rather than having their conversations exist in parallel or have one player just tag along for the ride (it takes me back to the original Divinity: Original Sin, which utilised a rock-paper-scissors game, skewed by each character's conversational abilities, to decide co-op dialogue outcomes).
So there's plenty in Expeditions: Samurai already, but of course it's still a bit of a testing bed. The game's writing is sharp and got a few chuckles out of me, but the dialogue could use some tuning away from your main character's responses always involving some form of sassy quip. It's great that you can play Flynn as a Blackthorne type, but a little more freedom in moulding them to different personalities would be appreciated. Movement and stealth also still feels rather wobbly, but there'll be plenty of time to iron that out.
Some of the vaunted systems like village management are due to come later, and you won't be able to take romances at this point in Early Access beyond initial flirtations, but it's all in the pipeline. The first major update is expected to focus on balancing, stability, and making sure the core mechanics are running smoothly, before Act 2 is expected to launch later in the year.
Campfire Cabal are hoping to get Expeditions: Samurai to full release in early 2027, but if you fancy joining the game on its EA journey, you can buy it on Steam at a steep discount until 14 August.
