Many Welps

When I pick a game for the monthly Blaugust Reviews Humble Choice, I try to pick something that I wouldn’t normally buy on it’s own or play. I’ve found some great games this way but sometimes I run into games that just don’t click with me. The Pegasus Expedition is one such game available in the January 2025 Humble Choice. I am not a 4X player but every once in a while I’ll give one a shot, just to see if my tastes have changes. What piqued my interest in The Pegasus Expedition was the story. Every other game in this genere that I’ve tried has been a sandbox experience. I tend to go through the tutorial and enjoy that. But once the training wheels come off, I struggle to figure out what to do next. I thought the story would provide some needed direction for me.

The story starts strong, with Earth in a losing war against and extraterrestrial threat, the Colossals. So humanity bands together, as they always do in these situations, to launch an expedition into another galaxy to look for an advantage against the threat at home. You play as the Director of the EU fleet and are the first to arrive in the Pegasus Galaxy. The fleet is immediately attacked by the locals. Because when a foreign ships shows up, unannounced, what else are you going to do? You attack back so that we can all have an excuse to do a combat tutorial.

You aren’t in direct control units in battle directly. You select the formation you want to use and position the battle groups. There’s a few additional options that provide buffs to your units, some of which are free while some consume resources.. Then you have to decide if you how you want to fight the battle. Do you take a neutral stance, do you try to fight with as little needless casualties as possible, or do you want to win at all costs. These options supposedly affect your diplomatic standing in the galaxy but I chose the win at all cost route many times and my standing didn’t go down. Then you watch your little blue dots do battle with the little red dots. Whoever runs out of dots firsts wins!

With the tutorial out of the way we get our first quest. In true human fashion, we’re going to exterminate the locals and take their territory….so Ai take my first system and – it’s on to the building tutorial. Systems contain buildable and habitable worlds that outposts can be built on that generate different resources. Only one outpost can be built on each planet, something I didn’t realize until I tried to build 3 different outposts on a single planet and my outpost kept getting replaced. Habitable planets can support people, and they’re much rarer than buildable planets so systems containing them are a high priority. I was tasked with taking systems from the locals, the Ror, in order to build up resources with the ulitmate goal of taking the Boh system which has their only habitable planet. We’re the good guys!

Every few turns, there are cutscenes to move the story along where you interact with your council of advisors. There seem to be dialogue options that seem like they might branch the story, but they all seemed to lead to pushing the Ror out of their systems.

The story also doesn’t take in to account the game state. I over extended my fleets before I realized that they were very low on health. I couldn’t figure out how to build more units, I don’t recall getting any information on that during the tutorial. I found an option to repair my fleets at a system with a Shipyard but that put my fleets on a 3 turn cool down where they couldn’t defend or attack. Before I knew it, the Ror destroyed my fleets, took all but two of my systems, and I was bleeding resources. My advisors kept commending me on how well we were doing! How my decisive wins have helped us strengthen our position!

I finally figured out how to build more units thanks to the in-game manual, but it was far too late. It also seems like some of them took too long. Some units I tried to build were going to take 5 turns to build, that’s basically forever! I went back to my only system with a shipyward to build some units and recruit some admirals to the cause. I slowly worked my way back into Ror space to retake some systems. By then I reached a point in the story where we encounter the Tamian Empire, who have ruled the Pegusus galaxy for a thousand years. So naturally, the humans hatch a plan to topple the empire. I tried to steer the story with a more diplomatic approach. We were in no state to start a another war, especially with an empire! It seemed to work for a turn or two but eventually I was given no choice but to invade their home planet to – get this – kidnap the Empress. Great plan guys, we’re just going to swoop down, scoop up the Empress, and leave. I’m surprised I got this far, with the sorry state of my military and my economy. But I did manage to get three fleets to their home world and kind of accidentally blew up the planet the empress was on..which lead to the breakup of the Tamian empire. So mission accomplished?

This is where the tutorial and tool tips end and the real game begins. I tried to play a few more turns but I was so far behind, it was not a fun for long. I couldn’t generate enough resources to build more ships and I couldn’t figure out what was using up my resources every turn. After a while I threw in the towel. I could start over with my new found knowledge but I didn’t want to have to go through the same story beats again. Maybe that’s a downside of a story in this type of game.

I think the tutorial could have explained more about building units but otherwise it was pretty good at onboarding a new player. I liked the story, while it seemed like my choices didn’t matter, I was engaged with it and wanted to know what was going to happen next. The only real complaint I have is that it’s hard to tell what buildings are in which system. I only had a few, and it was still annoying to have to click into each system to see what’s where, especially when looking for a Shipyard to park my wounded fleets at.

I want to reiterate that I am not a 4X player so most of the issues I have with the game are probably on me. The Steam reviews for The Pegasus Expedition are Mostly Positive and praise a story based 4X game that still has some depth to it. If you’re getting this month’s Humble Choice for another game, perhaps Against the Storm, it’s worth checking out!