Recent reviews by Lucius

It is amazing to me that I have yet to write one of these for this game but this is what I have to say about Armello.

Armello is an amazing game, with astonishing visuals, awesome battle animations and amazingly crafted characters and variety that just screams "MUST REPLAY". Even with rather light-hearted customization abilities, the character personalities and the separation via clans has you clutched in a constant internal battle of which character best fits you and what clan do you truly belong to. (Personally I prefer Rat clan, Mercurio is love, Mercurio is life).

The game really is simple to learn and easy to pick up, with hundreds of card combinations that allow for a different experience within each play through. I always find myself delegating each character to different victory types only to realize that I may have misjudged one, and having to play even more Armello to truly discover the potential each character has.

Having 4 Victory conditions, that being in Spirit Stone, Rot, King Slayer and Prestige also adds to the pace and variety of the game, as you may find yourself geared towards a King Slayer Victory only to realize that you have 4 Spirit Stones or a ton of prestige and thus having to change your method of plan in order to better suite the type of victory that you are geared towards. This also allows you to find different ways to play the same character and really discover their potential even further.

The game is loads of fun, every game is different, every play style is different, and having so many characters to choose from (with more coming soon) really allows for a fresh feel every time you play. The board design is beautiful, with the chance of winter occurring and snow being sprinkled all over the land, as well as a really awesome transition in animation whenever you enter a battle sequence. The swift strikes of Mercurio's blade, the bulky bludgeoning blows of Brun's Mace and even the Cute and Adorable expressions that Barnaby makes when he swings his hammer really adds personality to the battles. But don't let that adorableness fool you because Barnaby can really kick ass. I wlil admit the damage animation really surprised me as well I definitely wasn't expecting blood and the sound effects that accompany really instill the feeling of pain in you, you almost do feel annihilated when you are super over-killed by any character. This definitely livens up the battle and makes it a much more invigorating aspect of the game to engage in.

I will say this however. Armello is hard to master, but not because of real complexities of the game and characters. Yes you can customize the stats of your character in so many different ways offering so many different ways for you to play, but at the end of the day Armello is all luck. Yes there are ways in which you can modify your stats and skills in order to better yourself for victory but everything down to the bone of this game is luck. The cards you draw, the dice you roll, the gains from dungeons, the spoils form quests, everything is luck and in the end you are basically finding ways to manipulate RNG to work in your favor.

Which brings me to defense. Armello loves seeing the attack dice stack up to ungodly amounts, (I myself have had 20 attack dice in a battle before) with 3 sides of the dice awarding you with a hit on either time of day corrupted or not, you can literally get infinite attack if the RNG works in your favor. Unfortunately there is only 1 of the six sides that awards you defense, making it extremely difficult to survive in some cases. Yes there are items and cards that can remedy this but again it is up to the luck of the draw and luck of the roll to gain shields. Even with that, you can enter a battle with 20 dice against someone with maybe 5 and still end up dead due to favored rolls for attack and getting no shield dice. You only need so many hits to kill and so many hits to survive and more times than not you will find yourself overkilling by massive amounts only to get hit just enough to die, making the overkill, very enjoyable to receive but meaningless in the end due to dying anyway

If you are looking for a game to play "competitively" Armello is honestly not your game, sure there is that wonderful rush of "you are never truly out of the game" but more times than not it is the game just rewarding you with lucky rolls and draws than it is you being rewarded for playing skillfully. Which is unfortunate because while it feels great to win games in Armello (believe me I take so many screenshots and share them happily, they make great desktop backgrounds) some of that glory is taken away by the shear fact that as strategic and skilled as you can be in the game, 90% of that was still RNG potentially playing in your favor or it playing your favor when it mattered most.

With that being said, I have played well over 300 hours and as frustrating as this game can be (believe me, it really can) it has that charm and style that makes you want to play more. Part of it is the competitive player in me not accepting a loss and having to prove the might of the rat clan (RNG please Mercurio loves you) but another part really just is the connection you establish with the game. The characters in my opinion are more than board pieces manipulated across a board. They are characters with personalities and styles that give life to the game you are playing. For the longest my twitter handle Read *Rat Clan* because I truly enjoyed the witty gameplay that came with Mercurio and the rat clan. This game is tons of fun to play with friends, and still an experience to behold online with other players. But I can completely understand people growing weary of it after a few hours of play and there are definitely ways for this game to be even better than it is.

I end this by saying one of the biggest reasons I still play and have played over 300 hours is the community. The developers are really invested in the community, listening to forums, chats, hell every week they have a Dev v Community game stream where you can face the devs (I won one, not many people can say that ;)) and that really breathes a deeper life into this because you become even more invested in a game that you know is not only bringing you a satisfying experience but one that is listening to you as well. Mercurio knows that he can be OP sometimes but he is doing his best to understand your pain and tone down his desire to Hoodwink you. Buy the game, it is worth it, even if you only play a few times!

Game Dev Tycoon is just oneo of those games that really makes you think about why you love the games that you play. Is it th soundtrack, is it the amazing graphics, is it the outstanding level design? Whatever it may be Game Dev Tycoon really captures the work that goes into the games we play in a very simple and entertaining fasion. What i love most about it is how accurate the divisions of labor are in terms of what we normally see in specific genres of video games and how those divisions can change with unique topics and difference audiences coming into play.

You will find yourself immersed in tid bits of history that you may have never even known and thus sparking youru curiosity towards systems of the older generation, or Nintend and Sony's sour turnabout and more. There is just so many things you can do with what little you actually do and I look forward to seeing this game expand and integrate even more content.