The Adventurers has just been released in Early Access on PC via Steam. It’s the perfect title for seasoned (old gamers sound better) gamers like me and possibly a great entry point for those wanting to dip their toes into RPG dynamics.
You start by choosing your party composition, which directly impacts the difficulty level. You can go it alone as a “Lone Wolf”—something I avoided out of fear for what awaited me (any Battle Brothers player knows what I’m talking about)—or opt for a middle-ground choice with two ex-soldiers in your team. Finally, there’s the easiest option (theoretically) with a starting party of three characters.
Once that’s done, you can set the difficulty for economic aspects and combat challenges. Next, you customize your initial character(s), selecting class and background from a solid variety of options. In my “short” playthrough, I went with a Warrior with a Bounty Hunter background and an Archer with an Acrobat background to highlight his sharpshooting skills and give a charisma boost.
As soon as you enter the world, a narrator provides some context to the story and starting point, then you’re immediately into gameplay, right near the first village. Here, you can buy the essentials and pick up your first quests (which, in my case, also turned out to be the last…).
Once that’s set up, we can start exploring the world, always keeping an eye on our resources: gold, used for purchases and paying wages; food, which is consumed as time passes during exploration; and supplies, needed to heal after battles and repair our equipment.
While exploring, you can set up camp to recover faster from your efforts and assign tasks to party members, like hunting, cooking, keeping watch, and so on. You’ll manage relationships with factions and various cities and roam the endearing world at your own pace.
When you reach a quest location, combat begins. Battles unfold on hex-based grid maps, with individual turns alternating between party members and enemies. Movement and actions consume energy points, with options to convert points between actions as needed. During my hands-on (which, unfortunately, ended sooner than expected), my team was wiped out by a group of skeletons, revealing just how tough this game can be.
For fans who, like me, have spent hours on Battle Brothers, this feels like a natural continuation—though, in my opinion, the UI could use some improvement. In the meantime, check out my Gameplay First Look!
