Armello

Genre: Board Game

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Online)

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Review:

Armello is a Board Game with some Strategy and RPG elements set in a kingdom of anthropomorphic animals in a medieval fantasy world, where the king has become infected with a magical illness known as “rot” that’s driving him mad and gradually killing him, and players take the role of various would-be usurpers looking to take his place when he inevitably meets his end. This game was released on multiple platforms in 2015 and made its way to the Nintendo Switch in 2018.

In terms of presentation, Armello is quite striking, especially for a board game. There is a lot of detail in the game’s 3D representation of a hex-based board, with forests and towns, well-animated characters, nice effects that can happen as players, the king, and the kings guard all have their effect on the board, and the game even has a day-night cycle with nice lighting effects. This is joined by some really beautiful animated cutscenes in the game’s tutorial, some nice period-appropriate music, and even nice voice clips as the king growls threats every turn.

The gameplay here promises a lot of depth too. Players have multiple stats that they aim to raise over the course of the game by completing quests, using item and equipment cards and the like. Some of these stats assist players in battle, some give them more flexibility in using spells and other single-use cards, and some expand their hard size. What’s more, players are given multiple win conditions – they can bulk up their character to fight the king and slay him, they can raise their own rot level to out-rot the king, they can collect four magic stones to purify the king, or they can raise their social status so that when the rot kills the king, they’re the one the populace calls on to replace him.

Having said all that, it’s a lot to take in, and even after running through the tutorial and winning the game a few times I’m still not entirely sure I understand it all, nor do I have a solid grasp of the strategy. Suffice it to say that this is a game I feel like you need to invest a good amount of time into to fully get into it.

There’s another problem, as well – with no local multiplayer, and with online servers that don’t have enough players to reliably provide enough to make for a multiplayer game, you’ll likely only be playing this game with computer-controlled opponents, which is a shame. Especially with the portable nature of the Nintendo Switch, it would have been nice if there were at least a local wireless or even “pass and play” multiplayer option, but that simply isn’t the case here.

That’s not to say the Nintendo Switch version of the game doesn’t have anything to offer players – this version of the game does have touchscreen controls, which at least initially seems like the ideal way to play the game (though once you get used to using a standard controller, I’d argue the precision you get with traditional controls is ultimately better).

There is one other issue I need to point to before closing things out here. This game’s tutorial suffers from a nasty game-crashing bug that I ran into multiple times while trying to review this game. It’s something you can work around (just exit the game from the pause menu and then select the tutorial stage again), but its presence here is sloppy and I felt it deserved mention.

In the end, I can’t help but feel like Armello is a missed opportunity. Without more multiplayer options, and without a sufficient number of players online, you’re stuck with a multiplayer-focused game without any good way to play it in multiplayer. Still, if you can enjoy playing such a game with computer-controlled opponents, Armello offers a deep and beautiful experience that’s fairly unique, and fans of board games may find it worth checking out.

tl;dr – Armello is a Board Game that has players as anthropomorphic animals in a medieval fantasy setting jockeying to take the place of a corrupted king. The presentation here is top-notch, and the gameplay is deep with a lot of ways to approach it, but the lack of local multiplayer and empty online servers really limit how much you’ll be able to enjoy this game.

Grade: B-

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