Armello

TL:DR; The lore of the game is fantastic and deserves better, proper 4x game. This game however is plain bad, and worse - meta progression is tied to barely working online server. Graphics: 7/10 Mixed bag. Map is ugly AF, and despite being small, the game stutters on mighty modern card. Characters are decent, cards are fantastic. Sound: 4/10 Music is atrocious. Sound effects are mix of of bad and decent. VO is very sparse, unfortunatelly. Gameplay: 4/10 It's very basic board game with hard turn limit. Map is very small, very crowded and nearly identical every game. Making a game out of Armello was a fantastic chance to expand available game modes and map size with little cost to the rules itself, but unfortunatelly it wasn't done. There is an option to create a custom game, but it block achievements (and why, exactly? all rules still apply to everyone, so I don't see a reason for doing this). Then there is meta progression, which sounds like a great thing and it would be - but instead becomes the greatest offender for this title. You see, meta progression, namely unlocks, work well only if online server is available. Which most of the time it is not. It does not take a genius to simply add this meta progression to offline mode, as many games have done before, but for whatever reason it was not done. No online mode - no meta progression, period. And multiplayer is not available most of the time either. So you would read all other reviews and you would think this is some fantastic game right here. But in reality, it is barely functional today. I recommend watching gameplays instead of actually buying and playing. Too many paid dlcs (I got it on sale) for everything, you may as well save your money. On a closing note, however, I have to admit - the lore behind the game, the characters, the cards - it is a fantastic material, as the world appears richer in lore than many AAA titles. It really deserves a better game, a proper strategy/rpg combo, with some care it could go as deep as Might and Magic series. Alas, I doubt we will ever see such game. A shame, really.