Armello

 PC
User Score
7.0

Mixed or average reviews- based on 86 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 45 out of 86
  2. Mixed: 28 out of 86
  3. Negative: 13 out of 86

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  1. tjohobbit
    Sep 4, 2015
    4
    Liked the concept and art but:

    Waaaay to much luck
    AI always try to hinder me and not the AI that are close to winning
    To slow watching AI turns.

    Interesting to see *the thing that never happens* that professionals dont have any critics about what the game even though everyone else have the luck as a issue for example.
    Plz stop taking gifts and start to be proffesionals.
  2. Kl0kwurk
    Sep 4, 2015
    1
    Great artwork but a disappointing board game.

    Armello has some similarities to Talisman, in that a way to win is in the middle of the board, but you need to improve your character's stats and gather useful equipment before you have any chance at it. However, killing or curing the king hardly ever happens as you have to be incredibly lucky for either to be feasible, so pretty much    Great artwork but a disappointing board game.

    Armello has some similarities to Talisman, in that a way to win is in the middle of the board, but you need to improve your character's stats and gather useful equipment before you have any chance at it.

    However, killing or curing the king hardly ever happens as you have to be incredibly lucky for either to be feasible, so pretty much every time the game will run out of turns and the player who happens to have the highest prestige wins.

    Winning or losing is almost entirely based on luck. Meaningful decisions don't really come up, each player will tend to do their own thing, clicking on the next 'quest' and hoping to randomly have the most prestige when the game ends.

    Quests and encounters consist of a random die roll. Most of your time is spent waiting for the other players to take their turns, more so even than most other board games thanks to all of the neutral units taking their turns.

    In general it is just rather shallow, dull and repetitive.

    I love board games but there are many other board games, both physical and digital, that are better and cheaper than this one.

    However the 2D artwork is gorgeous and the in-game graphics and animations are nice.    … Expand
  3. Kamamura
    Aug 29, 2016
    4
    Another promising game based on an interesting premise, spoiled by the Ameritrash design approach, in other words, every event in the game must involve tons of dice rolls - one dice does not suffice here, you have to roll dozens of them at once, apparently. The slick interface and nice art is marred by mandatory blur and bloom that gives the impression you are losing your eyesight toAnother promising game based on an interesting premise, spoiled by the Ameritrash design approach, in other words, every event in the game must involve tons of dice rolls - one dice does not suffice here, you have to roll dozens of them at once, apparently. The slick interface and nice art is marred by mandatory blur and bloom that gives the impression you are losing your eyesight to glaucoma. After a few hours of unfocused trodding on a map at the mercy of the RNG, you will shelve the game, never to return.

    Think Talisman, with better lore and graphics, blurred and bloomed to hell, with more directions to go.

    So much beautiful art, totally wasted.    … Expand
  4. Dagfinn
    Sep 2, 2015
    0
    A mediocre board game disguised by pretty videos and art.

    This game is incredibly random, there is no depth and no story, everything is determined by random dice rolls, there are no strategic choices to be made. There are supposed to be various ways to win, but unless someone has a lot of blind luck, the game time will run out and whoever happens to have the highest Prestige value    A mediocre board game disguised by pretty videos and art.

    This game is incredibly random, there is no depth and no story, everything is determined by random dice rolls, there are no strategic choices to be made.

    There are supposed to be various ways to win, but unless someone has a lot of blind luck, the game time will run out and whoever happens to have the highest Prestige value wins.

    You constantly have to wait for all your opponents and NPCs to take their turns and that takes a very long time.

    The supposed RPG elements are non-existent.

    The videos and artwork are very pretty but they don't make a good board game alone.    … Expand
  5. jaluk
    Nov 19, 2016
    0
    Microtransaction,Microtransaction,Microtransaction,Microtransaction,Microtransaction,Microtransaction,Microtransaction,Microtransaction,Microtransaction,Microtransaction,Microtransaction,Microtransaction,Microtransaction,Microtransaction,Microtransaction
  6. Cryos
    Sep 10, 2018
    4
    Gorgeous art, setting and animations with a nice smattering of lore.

    Absolutely awful everything else. Even for a board game, luck plays an absolutely enormous role - there's an abundance of player targeting cards, turn ending cards making most games a trade off between a war of attrition and an outright slug-fest. The games turns pass incredibly slow for various reasons with    Gorgeous art, setting and animations with a nice smattering of lore.

    Absolutely awful everything else.

    Even for a board game, luck plays an absolutely enormous role - there's an abundance of player targeting cards, turn ending cards making most games a trade off between a war of attrition and an outright slug-fest. The games turns pass incredibly slow for various reasons with decisions such as making dice rolls take an extremely long time because of the game slowly tallying all the character's bonuses and equipment on screen. The average game is an hour to two hours and you may spend most of that knowing your presence has been rendered moot.

    The UI is extremely poor, making it very hard to quickly find information about cards, players, equipment and quests when you need it and sometimes leading to misclicks, wasted turns or premature dice rolls.

    The quest system in particular is one of the worst mechanics in a game - the quest will always spawn opposite your board position, encouraging you to delay accepting a quest until you can manipulate where it will appear. The quests hint at the type of tile they will be on without outright stating it - they might as well just state it - why make yet another part of the game down to chance?

    The game is also quite buggy, with frequent disconnects and no feature to reconnect - if a player is disconnected, he or she is replaced with a bot and she or he may NOT reconnect by any means, even in a private game with friends.

    Most of your strategy will center around mitigating luck, but you will quickly find there is so much luck to mitigate (and you require luck in your favor to mitigate it to begin with) making the amount of strategy in the game questionable at best.

    The game might make an okay social game if you have 3 friends and a 3rd party voice program, but I'm baffled who would want to play it under any other circumstance for more than 3 games at most.

    The original 8 characters are also (with a few exceptions) notably less powerful than the DLC cast, which may explain why the game is often on sale but the DLC never is.

    I can't recommend this, unless you want to support the artists behind it, because at the very least, THEY did a very good job.    … Expand

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
75

Generally favorable reviews - based on 26 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 19 out of 26
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 26
  3. Negative: 2 out of 26
  1. PLAY! Zine
    Sep 7, 2016
    85
    Armello is so gorgeous, it kept reminding us that there is no an actual physical board game like this even though it really deserves to be. The game successfully mixes several elements from other genres, telling story and making our imagination run wild.
    Read full review
  2. GameSpew
    Apr 9, 2016
    80
    I’d highly recommend Armello to fans of Hearthstone, World of Warcraft, Starcraft, D&D, or anyone wanting to branch out from traditional board games. The graphics, though not the most exceptional in terms of quality, are beautiful; the combination of 3D effects with almost anime-esque cu scenes gives the game a unique and striking look. It’s interesting, the music has a calming effect, and it gives so much for a relatively unknown game, for not much money.
    Read full review
  3. Pelit (Finland)
    Jan 4, 2016
    85
    Game of Thrones with fantasy animals. Light tactical game is great fun as multiplayer. [Dec 2015]
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