Update: 600 hours in, I stand by this review. There's been quite a few improvements to RE:IS since I wrote this, I really recommend both this game and its DLC.
-------------------
When I first heard of Renowned Explorers : International Society (henceforce known as RE:IS) my initial reaction was along the lines of "what on earth is this?". I purchased it on a whim, and having now played it for nearly 100 hours and all treasures collected, it has definitely turned out to be one of my wisest purchases (and heck, i'm actually writing a proper review for once, my first one on steam.)

RE:IS is a roguelike in an Indiana Jones style - you and your crew will be having adventures all around the globe, from searching castles in the Scottish highlands to the tombs of ancient pharoahs in Egypt in the hopes of finding treasures (and with over 100 treasures to find, there is plenty to see.) You'll run into a variety of characters such as bagpipe playing clansmen, pirates suffering under a voodoo curse and a group of monkeys worshipping a giant fruit.

The game keeps a fairly lighthearted and humourous theme throughout, which is aided by its bright and colourful art style. Don't let this fool you however - there is a surprising amount of depth to be found in the games combat and exploration systems. Battles have three different approaches: you can befriend your enemy, offering them things such as compliments and peace treatires. Or you can take a straight up physical approach - hacking and slashing your way through hordes of your opponents. If you prefer a more devious approach, you can play mind games with your opponents, hurling insults towards them in such number that they run away from the battlefield sobbing.

Overall, RE:IS takes a refreshing approach to the turn-based rogue-like genre. The developers are very active within the community and listen to feedback and suggestions from players. The game is frequently updated with new content, and more has been promised down the line. I highly recommend purchasing this game.

A really fun and suprisingly deep game. I'm a great fan of FTL and Darkest Dungeon. This is just as good, if not better than both of those. It also has that 'one more turn' feel of something like Civilization. and the risk vs reward mindset of another game i play - BloodBowl.

It also feels a bit like an old game that i used to play on my original XBOX called 'Gladius' the combination of descision making in combat together with the number crunching for various task/challenges works great.

Really enjoyable and just what i was looking for as a lighthearted inbetweener game.

The main idea of the game its become the most Renowned Group of Explorers in the International Society of Explorers,
you can have your own goal, to help History and Science, being Famous and Prestigious or just for Power and Money;
to become the best you need to find all the treasures you can, while you spread your name and feats among the world and Society.

You are a group of 3 persons, Each character have their Stats and Alignment that will help you in getting all kind of treasures.
Sometimes you will fight for the treasure, other treasures you need a certain ability to gain it.
You need to plan every mission, every step, every decission and have luck for getting as much as you can and being the most renowned Explorer.


* Its a perfect Strategy game, If you like Strategy games this is a must to your library
* Battles are turn based (I love that)
* Lot of enemies like farmers, thieves, pirates, wolfs, sheeps, crabs, vampires, mummies even Nuns will be some of the enemies you will encounter
* Lot of characters to play and many groups you can do
* You need to replay many games to unlock all treasures and Abilities for all characters
* You can save your progress, so if you ruin in some point you can Load it
* Many maps and locations you can go
* 4 Difficults for the game
* Andventure Mode: in this mode you cant save, the idea is test your strategy and luck and see if you can beat the game with the save restriction.


* You need to replay many games to unlock all treasures and Abilities for all characters
(Maybe boring for players that doesnt like to replay the game)
* Only in English
* A lot of dialogues to read

10/10 If you like stategies games this a must in your library
8/10 If you dont like strategies games

In my very first encounter, I encountered a pack of wolves. I impressed them with my great intelligence, then insulted them. They were confused by my mixed signals and ran away. My most successful run was ended when a ghost pirate and his voodoo cultists were friendly and invited me to sit down for tea, and my crew felt that their vengeance against the Spanish was entirely reasonable and I should stop fighting. My current game is more direct and is full of dashing gentlemen and fisticuffs.

This is absolutely amazing. Yes, the overland map is a lot like FTL--random events that are influenced by your party skills. Combat is your standard hex based tactics game (even though it's not really hex shaped, which is neat). Physical attacks work like normal, but speech attacks are a major part of the game, and so is control of emotions and mood. If your enemy is using devious speech attacks but you are being friendly (they all deplete Spirit just like physical attacks), then you get defense bonuses from being the good guys. If both sides are friendly, then both sides get a bonus if they are the first ones to go to physical attacks, stuff like that. Takes about an hour or two to really get used to it, but then it feels natural.

This game is pretty polished. Not perfect, but it hits its mark pretty darn well. Difficulty seems pretty well tuned, the first couple missions are easy but surviving to the end seems like a real challenge, much like FTL. You can sit down for a couple hours and play a game or two and have them end in one sitting which is great, honestly...replayability seems high, and unlockables are present but a very minimal part of the experience. Bugs are very minor and hard to spot. It's really damn cool to be able to build a party that fights like something out of Monkey Island.

All in all, heavily recommended.

What you have to know abou this game BEFORE you buy it, is that it lacks a lengthy campaign.
Instead, it has a very small and generic campaign, with a very simple and generic objective (be the best).

You have to do a few explorations, each of, can be finished in 15 or 20 minutes, and then you hop to another for a total of 5. That means that the whole campaign can be finished in a couple of hours or more aaand thats it.
Reanse and repeat.

There is no grand expendition or campaign with many hours of gameplay and strategic desisions!
To my dismay, there is no need for a masterplan, or any kind of real depth in the desision making!

That doesnt meen that this is a bad game, though!
The combat system is very original and funny and so are the dialogues in the game!
Nice sounds and design and colourful characters are also a plus!

My mistake is that i was hoping for something more,

You just have take it for what it is!

#EDIT 1:The game has a great replay value if you like to keep challenging yourself to achieve a better score and to compete in leaderboards...

#EDIT 2: TOTAL RESPECT to the devs for their communication, for supporting their game, nurturing and caring both the game and the community around it.
I do not regret buying this game and i will totaly support them and in their next project!

Renowned Explorer (RE) is one of the very best game that I have played for the last 10 years, period :).

I have about 300 games, and haven't felt so excited about a new game for such a long time --- perhaps the last time that I felt so excited was as long as Civilization 1 in 1991.

I normally play RPGs, but Renowned Explorer is in a Genre all by itself. It's radically different from the typical RPG or strategy games that I am family with. Because it is so different, it took me a while to grasp and learn the basics of the game. In the end, after learning about the game, I begin to have great fun... and hundreds of hours on the game.

The nice thing about RE is that the entire game campaign consists of 5 expeditions, and you can play it over and over again with different team setups. Different team captains have different super powers, and so, each game with a different captain usually require different strategy and even different playstyle, making in intriguing and interesting.

Another nice thing about RE is that the development team offered to add additional contents and updates on a regular basis. So far they have already added quite a bit of new content. Such a commitment from a developing team is really commendable. Even with 276 hours played, I will still be playing this game whenever they add anything new.

I am sure I will get MORE than my money's worth and highly recommend this game.

It's a game that seems so simple, but the depth is amazing. I thought this would be a casual, 12 hour game, but two years later I am still going back to it. Some of that is due to the amazing community and the weekly challenges, and some is also due to the game getting two things exactly right: the tone and the balance. The game is light and fun, yet challenging, which is apparently difficult to pull off, since the other games I own rarely achieve it. Repeat playthroughs are a must.

I recommend this game to my friends, but it's a hard sell for some reason. I'm here to tell you: buy ths game. Would that there were more like it out there.

What a surprise this game! The witty writing and 'flow of the game' is great!

The game plays like a boardgame. You start with an expedition on a map with randomised layout, but with fixed events. Every move you make costs supplies, which can be found on the map but not enough to keep exploring. During exploration you can find gold, things to study, and fame. Also there are several types of challenges, suitable for a profession. If one of your characters is trained for that (via a vast number of ways, like leveling up, items, events, research and more) it receives a bonus on a chance to pass a check. Most of the times the consequences of a win or a loss is stated, and you may choose to take a gamble. Negative results can be a loss of supplies, or a negative combat debuff.
All this written in good writing, and it stays funny but is flirting with 'too much'. The quality keeps it on the right side.

The combat is coloured quite differently from other tactical combat games. Instead of health the characters have spirit. Spirit can be repelled by three means:
- physical attack
- insults
- friendliness (can also be targeted at teammates to heal)
Aside from spirit every character also has a mood bar, which influences their personal defensive and offensive stats. And on top of this there's also a general mood, which can be controlled by the types of abilities you use and they also influence the stats, and the rewards upon victory!

A lot of words, however it works intuitively. TLDR: easy to use and understand, yet quite deep!

I had a great time with my one playthrough! This game is very suited for many playthroughs, with different crews and tactics. And I would be pleased to play more, but I just want to play a lot of other games. I fear however that the humour suffers from diminishing returns, and that is always a risk forcing laughter.
The combat system is simply genius! Defeating enemies with hugs, brilliant!!

79/100

This was definitely a good buy. It has good replayability in the short term but once you've gone on every expedition three or four times it becomes a bit predictable. Could do with some more randomization or better yet more content. An extra handful of expeditions would be a welcome addition.

Pros:
-Upbeat, lighthearted tone.
-Reminiscent of several fun cooperative board games I've played.
-Good campaign length. Not too long nor too short.
-Good variety between characters.
-Nice balance of intuitiveness for ease of play and complexity for challenge.

Cons:
-Loses replayibility in the long term.

When was the last time you insulted a sheep into submission? Or complimented a mummy on his wrappings? Or engaged in a battle of charms with a vampire? Unless you’re leading a way more interesting life than the rest of us, or have already played Renowned Explorers, the answer should be never. And that should also be the big reason you ought to play Renowned Explorers, because the battles are nothing like you’ve ever experienced. They’re far more than battles of wits, far more than rock-paper-scissors strategy, and support a game far more charming and entertaining than most adventure jaunts you’ll find.

The Renowned Explorers are a club of intrepid adventurers brought together by a common love of antiquities, danger, and glory. They hold annual competitions to see who can amass the most prestige for themselves, and you just happen to want a piece of that. Assembling a crew with two other like-minded explorers, you embark on a series of five expeditions around the globe to uncover treasures and secrets for the world. If you play your cards right and use every tool at your disposal, you can claim the title of Most Renowned. Otherwise, you’ll leave behind little more than rumors of your last great journey.

At the heart of this title is something of a text adventure. Each of your expeditions sees you leading your crew around to points of interest in whatever region you’ve jaunted off to. At each point you’re given a description of what’s happening, and a load of choices in response. Depending on your decisions you might end up finding a hidden treasure, scoring some gold or research, battling bandits or natives, or pulling yourself out of some other dire predicament. These story snippets are the gears that power everything else in the game, and considering how many systems that covers it can be daunting to figure out how best to approach a simple text prompt.

Your options at each stop are usually presented with a percentage of how likely you are to succeed, which is heavily dependent on your crew, their skills, and other decisions up to that point. Characters are loaded with six different stats, a list of skills across multiple disciplines to learn, and slots for different pieces of equipment. Challenges may call for specific skills, completion of previous encounters, or sometimes just the luck of the draw. Success means scoring tokens which are converted to currencies used to gear up between expeditions, while failure can cost you stat penalties, supplies which are used to traverse the map, or resolve which works as your extra lives in combat. While the text portion of the game generally won’t end a run on its own, it can tee up a defeat in combat with mounting penalties.

Combat isn’t the main focus of the game, but it’s perhaps the most unique element. Encounters play out on familiar hex(ish) maps where you and your foes take turns moving around and using skills. The difference here is that instead of different weapons or attacks, you have three schools of abilities with wildly different effects. Aggressive actions are attacks, devious actions have negative emotional impacts, and friendly actions have positive ones. All of these when used on enemies deplete their spirit, and reducing it to zero defeats the unit. But everyone also has an emotion meter that tracks whether they’re happy or sad, and what specific emotion that puts them in. Furthermore, there’s an overall mood determined by the predominant actions on both sides which can incur huge (like 50% huge) bonuses and penalties depending on how the two teams are feeling.

The interplay between these different approaches affords a wealth of tactical options. Each mood affects attack and speech stats, so a clever player will make their enemy enraged before hitting them to lower their armor, or sadden an enemy that’s about to attack to lower their speech. Items can play a part in this as well, boosting key stats or even giving bonuses when attacking enemies with certain emotions. Really you have enormous control over the approaches your team can take, but to succeed in more difficult areas you have to focus on one or two and stack up your bonuses for it.

The same is true for the resource game, as winning the game requires you to accrue enough renown to beat out the other explorers. Renown is earned from most things you do but there’s a ton of ways to boost your earnings, and ways to focus on a few resources to really pump your results. Gold is used to buy items, status lets you recruit an entourage that provides further bonuses from tokens earned, and research lets you unlock studies that produce all kinds of powerful effects. Choosing how to spend these currencies to build your renown machine is the real meat of the game, and mathematically-minded players may find plenty to chew on here.

With a design this tight there’s not much to critique, aside from seeing the same encounters over and over as you sink more and more time into the game. The variety comes from the different crews you can assemble, and the different choices you make in building them up, but you’ll still end up reading the same passages again and again. It’s an issue the developers seem keenly aware of if the different expansion DLCs are any indication, and there are so many treasures to find and unlock anyway that it shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Wrapped up in such a charming presentation, it’s doubtful you’ll have any bones to pick until at least a dozen or two hours in. The unique strategy and combat may take some getting used to, but once it clicks you’ll have a hard time stopping yourself from launching just one more expedition.



Did you enjoy this review? I certainly hope so, and I certainly hope you'll check out more of them at https://goldplatedgames.com/ or on my curation page!