Armello – Review

If you enjoyed playing board or card games when you were a kid, Armello will captivate you. There are multiple reasons why this is a game you want to try. The game is a fun experience and challenging enough to keep you coming back for more to master it. Even if you’ve never played a game like this before, it’s enjoyable just learning the basics and finally getting a satisfying victory. Also is this game the debut project of the independent game studio League of Geeks, with this title first being announced in 2012 as an iPad title.

Story

In a realm far away from here, there once was a king who ruled a kingdom peacefully. This kingdom existed out of four clans which were united a long time ago. The name of this magical realm was Armello and all went well until the lion king got poisoned by a corruption from a dark force called ‘Rot’. When all seemed lost, four representatives rose up from each clan and started a journey with as main goal becoming the new King or Queen of Armello and save the people from the dark corruption that stole the sanity of their once beloved king.

The storyline in this game is almost non-existent, you will find it if you ‘read between the lines’ and it is very shortly shown in a cutscene. They could’ve done much more with it, which would add a great value to the game, as the content we got was actually quite good. The overall idea on paper is quite nice, but sadly there’s just too few content to explore when it comes to a charming game that could have been much more if the story department was taken care of.

Graphics

The graphics are mediocre, this game looks decent and pretty at first sight, but when you look closer you can see a lot of flaws. Especially because this game has a very limited range in terms of content and artwork. Eight different characters, a king, his minions and some crows. And if we look at the environment(s), we only see a few different tiles with some different art on it. If it was a board game with a few more different undergrounds it would be acceptable, but right now, the quality doesn’t match the price tag that comes with the game.

Sounds

While the graphics are mediocre, for the content they provide, the sound is pretty solid. Every action has a different sound. So when you are fighting, dying, getting corrupted or even conquering a village your gameplay is accompanied with a correct sound. Also, there is some background music and lines which are supposed to make the game more understandable. Overall nothing fancy, but it gets the job done.

Gameplay

Armello is a role-playing game that acts as a strategy board game and is played like one. The main goal of this game is to be better than the rest of your rivals that you are playing against. While you can play it offline and completely solo, there is also an option to play it online in multiplayer mode, this mode can be played with up to four different players.

The game starts out with giving you the chance to play the prologue to get the basic knowledge needed to start with the actual game. There are four different parts in the prologue, each represented by the representatives of the different clans. Of course all characters have different strengths and weaknesses which can be used to your advantage if you are after a certain goal (which is given to you by the game).

Armello works with a dawn and night system. Each dawn, the king gets more infected and therefore loses health and each night, the king gets more corrupted. When the king dies after 20 turns, the player who earned the most prestige point wins. Prestige points can be earned by completing objectives, quests or killing another player.

When this all sounds pretty easy, there are other ways to win the game. It is also possible to cure the king, kill the king or get even more infected and replace him before he dies. If you can manage to do one of those things before the end of the game, prestige points don’t matter. And of course, each character is adapted to one of those ways to end the game more quickly.

Besides that, the game really likes to screw you over. Each turn you can receive cards from three different piles: the item deck, spell deck or trickery deck. This can only be done when you have the space to hold the cards. Cards are mostly used to annoy or irritate the other players, because of their buffs or debuffs.

At the start of a normal match, there are four characters more to choose from. Each character can also upgrade a skill with +1 and pick an item which also gives you a skill upgrade or ability.

Conclusion

Armello is a game that had our attention before launch but lost a certain appeal after we played our first single player game. Not that the game is bad, but it had so much more potential when it comes to the graphical prowess, the story, the characters and perhaps even certain mechanics. Adding some of the aforementioned elements would not only lengthen the replay value of the game, it would simply offer a lot more different outcomes, something to sink your teeth into and would simply up the like-ability factor of the game. Like we said before, if you want to play a new board game, you might still want to give this one a chance, even though it lacked some content. If you find a proper groove, or you’re into this type of game, we can still imagine you spending more than a few hours on this one.

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