Review: Armello

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Review: Armello

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Wed Jun 15, 2016 1:10 pm

So I saw this one on a YT gaming series and was somewhat interested in it, so I checked it out. Here you go:

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Armello is a digital tabletop game featuring middle-age anthropomorphic animals, like if the Disney Robin Hood movie became a game. It concerns different clans fighting to quest through the board and either kill, heal, or outlive the king as he's corrupted by Rot and loses health each day. So far, there are eight characters from four clans you can play with different skills, unlockable equipment (four sets, since they're specific to a clan). On the whole, they're not perfectly balanced (the female wolf comes to mind, since she can ping for one damage outside of combat before getting into combat, and you'd be surprised how often that makes all the difference), but they're not too OP, either.

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Anyways, there's a day and night cycle, and the king has eight health. He loses one life each day and gains one rot each night (and summons monsters during the night that you gain prestige by killing). There are four ways to win (two of them are about the same thing): heal the king with four spirit stones, wait for the king to lose all his health and then win by having the most prestige of the players, kill the king, or gather more Rot and become more corrupted than him, and then also kill him. The spirit stones are random loot, Rot is gained through cards or losing to monsters, and you can gather companions and equipment to become more viable as you move around the board. Completing four quests will also help to raise your stats and pave your way into the castle for free instead of passing very difficult checks to get in.

The combat system is deeper and yet more intuitive than I originally pegged it, where you can use equipment to give you the edge in dice rolls while you can also burn your cards off to guarantee a certain kind of dice roll. Having more rot than an opponent allow you to strip away some of their dice for your own use, unless they don't have any rot, in which case you're SOL. Attacking from stealth doesn't allow them to use items, evasion lets you only defend and run away (I think I've only killed someone once who's had evasion, and only because they had one HP). You have to pass dice rolls in perils outside of combat, too, lending some interesting mechanics to the whole thing.

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Unfortunately, it can become too easy to become massively OP in the early stages of the game and never have to worry from there on out. Not just the AI, either, but you can do it too. I had one run where I played the other wolf and just dominated, sweeping through all of my quests by turn 8 (of 16), getting jumped by two of the AI characters as I approached the castle and killing them without taking damage, then rolling in and killing the king, the toughest enemy of the game, also without damage. And since you gain prestige for killing enemies (with the exception of the kingsguard, which you lose prestige for) you're also pretty well set just to wait everyone out.

Although there was one game where the AI turned around and started protecting the king because he was going to get the prestige win, only for me to scoop some of his and win it all, and that was satisfying.

The artwork is beautiful, and the cards are actually animated and often funny. If I can't complain about your aesthetic, you're doing it well, so good job, Armello.

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Overall, I enjoyed this game, but I'm holding out on playing it more simply because there are apparently a ton more characters that were only given out to backers of their kickstarter that are coming out as a DLC. That leads to my only complaint about the game: there's not a whole lot of variation. I get that, it was a Kickstarter, but there are about 200 cards, and you can probably get them all in a half-dozen or so runs.

Overall, I'd give this game a try if you're into the "Digital Tabletop" kind of games, because this is a pretty good one. If you're not into those kind of dice-rolley games or don't prefer games of chance, you probably won't be a fan.

Anyways, stay tuned for my review of Stellaris, eventually.
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Doodle Dee. Snickers
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