Review: Armello

Gaming culture has undergone a bit of a...well, a regression for lack of a better word. I don't think video games are becoming any less popular as a medium of entertainment, but the last couple years have seen an incredible surge in the popularity of board games. Remember board games? Those things you were forced to play with your parents once a week while they tried to coax out more details about your life in some poor attempt at family cohesiveness? Yeah, those.

But at the same time, not those. Maybe I just wasn't exposed to the geekiest possible board games when I was young, but I remember playing Monopoly and Scrabble and Life. Simple games with simple rules. But those games are nothing like what we've seen come out of the board game renaissance in the last few years. Games like Risk and Settlers of Catan (ok, arguably Chess was very much this type of game as well) set the stage for incredibly complex games like Arkham Horror, Dead of Winter and Legends of Andor, games so complex that many of them could be played cooperatively against the board rather than against each other, which is still a novel idea to this day.

Much in the same way that Hearthstone before it married card games and video games in a way that simply couldn't have been done in any other medium, Armello is very much a child of these two genres and it works very well...for the most part.

Thematically Armello acts as a sort of combination of the Redwall books - which, for the uninitiated, feature tribes of anthropomorphic animals living together in a fantasy setting - and a very watered-down Game of Thrones. The basic premise is that you are a member of one of four clans - the wolves, the rats, the rabbits and the bears - and the ruler of Armello (a lion, natch) has been taken by the rot, a sort of corruption that threatens to drive him to madness before it, eventually, claims his life. Your goal, then, is to put yourself in the best position to take the throne from him and ensure your tribe's ascent to power.

Gameplay wise, Armello is very much a board game at its core. You have a set number of moves every turn and you negotiate the map for resources including gold (to buy things, duh) and cards to empower yourself or snare up your opponents. You must win before the withering lion king's last heart of health wastes away. If no one has claimed victory before then, the person-er, animal with the most influence over the throne (measured in prestige) at the time of the king's untimely death wins.

Combat and other conflicts - like fighting your way through one of the game's many "peril" cards placed by other players or even the king to hamper your progress - is played out through rolls of the dice (many, many dice in some cases) in which you try to match symbols for successes - in combat, swords and shields for hits and blocks and in "perils,"trying to match different symbols. 

In these ways Armello is fun but not especially innovative. It doesn't so much bend the "board game" genre like Hearthstone, in many ways, did with the card game genre, doing things that games like Magic: The Gathering, in its physical medium simply couldn't. But it does it competently and with a nice veneer of paint that wouldn't have been possible on a drab board with cardboard cutouts. And keeping track of all the numbers of modifiers and cards would be a much bigger hassle in a physical medium anyways.

The one thing that Armello does that, while not impossible, would at least be difficult and unwieldy in a physical product is the implementation of the king's "neutral" forces and the universally-hostile "banes," creatures of the rots. While clearly an antagonist, the king is more mad than hostile and while he can be turned on players for various reasons, he and his Labrador guardsmen are more obstacles and nuisances than outright enemies. He can even be manipulated into helping you in various ways. The banes, meanwhile, are a constant, AI-controlled threat that add some spice to an otherwise pretty standard experience. 

Individual games of Armello are fairly short and it would be nice if there was some level of customization to mix things up more, adding health to the constantly deteriorating king to lengthen the game perhaps even additional map sizes to mix things up a bit. But overall, they are enjoyable and nicely paced to be played in a single sitting. Unfortunately, multiple game sessions tend to feel very similar with the only variation being how you choose to attain victory, which mixes things up a bit but I predict not enough to give Armello permanently-lasting appeal.

Finally, the game can be played single-player or multiplayer. I haven't had a chance to play it with my friend yet, but I predict that multiplayer is the way to go. It can be nice to get a feel for the game in single-player mode, but the AI is easily delayed and duped. In the few games I've played so far, I've won primarily by letting time tick away and maxing out my prestige. The AI makes a bit of a clumsy attempt to claim victory but nowhere near the concerted effort a human opponent would. It almost seems to stumble around until the game is almost over and then say, "oh right, I actually have to try and win" before trying for the only victory criteria it can accomplish...one in which it has done very little to prepare for.

So for now, multiplayer seems the way to go, but if you enjoy board games and can gather a group of friends, I'd definitely say give this game a try. It may not have the complexity of some of the insane board games that have been coming out in the past couple years, but it's an experience that I don't think you'll regret.