As a game, and a board game adaptation, it's beautifully designed. Sadly it's technical aspects let it down, and led me to experience the worst matchmaking system I've ever been held hostage by. Of my first 12 games, I finished 4 - this was due to personal disconnects, other player disconnects (leading to a mass exodus of players that could not reconnect and AI that does not take actions on their behalf), and glitches, oh the glitches.

Glitches are largely forgivable, but not when a single glitch can lose you almost an hour's worth of progress (roughly the length of 1 mp match). I was randomly disconnected without an option to rejoin (I have never seen this fabled 'rejoin' button), my entire screen turned orange, the game camera froze on game start, the menus would glitch on character selection and assign me a random hero...and this doesn't mention the crippling UI glitch sometimes triggered on quest completion, where your dice roll to pass or fail the quest and (critically) get your hands on a particular item is often inaccurately shown. This is infuriating.

There are other annoyances with the matchmaking, but these happen pre-game and only cost you seconds. It's the ones that can cost you hours that kill the game stone dead.

This really saddens me, as Armello is otherwise a joy to play. I love the Redwall-like premise, the different win conditions and mechanics, the CSGO skins system, and the sense of progression with items and rank and character level. Barring a couple of imbalance issues (Magna and Fang stand out to me as a new player) all of these components slot together tidily. I just wish the game allowed me to play it.

As a game, and a board game adaptation, it's beautifully designed. Sadly it's technical aspects let it down, and led me to experience the worst matchmaking system I've ever been held hostage by. Of my first 12 games, I finished 4 - this was due to personal disconnects, other player disconnects (leading to a mass exodus of players that could not reconnect and AI that does not take actions on their behalf), and glitches, oh the glitches. Glitches are largely forgivable, but not when a single glitch can lose you almost an hour's worth of progress (roughly the length of 1 mp match). I was randomly disconnected without an option to rejoin (I have never seen this fabled 'rejoin' button), my entire screen turned orange, the game camera froze on game start, the menus would glitch on character selection and assign me a random hero...and this doesn't mention the crippling UI glitch sometimes triggered on quest completion, where your dice roll to pass or fail the quest and (critically) get your hands on a particular item is often inaccurately shown. This is infuriating. There are other annoyances with the matchmaking, but these happen pre-game and only cost you seconds. It's the ones that can cost you hours that kill the game stone dead. This really saddens me, as Armello is otherwise a joy to play. I love the Redwall-like premise, the different win conditions and mechanics, the CSGO skins system, and the sense of progression with items and rank and character level. Barring a couple of imbalance issues (Magna and Fang stand out to me as a new player) all of these components slot together tidily. I just wish the game allowed me to play it.