Welcome to our CHEATfactor Game Review of Armello. We review the game and then factor in how the available cheats affect the overall game experience. For better or worse, our reviews will help you decide whether or not to use cheats when playing the game.

When I started Armello for the first time I was hooked. The interactive board game had a gorgeous interactive world, brimming with unique and creative characters. The more I played though the less thrilled I became and soon enough I didn't care what happened in this world I was previously so invested in. Sure, it's fun and inventive but after that initial experience with the game I never felt like I had a reason that I had to go back, it was just there. For all that Armello does right it commits a cardinal sin in the world of interactive entertainment, it makes you forget about it far too quickly.

Armello is essentially a table-top board game come to life right down to the dice and somewhat unclear instructions (though the tutorial mode is pretty effective in helping you grasp at least the basic concepts). The game revolves around a King and kingdom both named Armello and afflicted with the magical condition known as Rot. As one of the game's unique and engaging characters lead characters like bloodthirsty rabbits or smooth talking wolves your job is to either assassinate the king or prestige enough by winning a decent amount of battles to assume the throne.

The world and it's characters are easily what Armello does right. Visually, the world and each character that inhabits it is interesting and compelling thanks to the game's fairy tail art style. Each character also feels and plays different than the one before it with unique attacks and abilities that will make you want to go back and play through it again as someone new like a bear character that gains momentum and strength for each spell cast. By the time I sat down to write this review I still didn't know who my “go-to” character was in the game and that's not a negative thing at all.

Each turn in Armello takes place in two parts, one during the day and one at night. Once the sun rises again the player with the highest prestige from battles and quests is given a choice by the king between a few different options that dramatically change the flow of gameplay for the next round. These changes range from being able to change the power of enemies on the board to sabotaging some of the leader's rivals's stats. Gaining prestige isn't the only way to win in Armello but it is very important to continuously gain prestige as if one player dies in an attempt to kill the king the player with the highest prestige automatically wins. This focus on prestige made the game feel repetitive, especially after longer play throughs.

By far Armello's biggest issue is how it handles it's multiplayer functions. The game is touted as an interactive multiplayer table top game but it also feels like the game doesn't quite know how to handle multiplayer games as it's riddled with inconsistencies and just strange design choices that are admittedly more annoying than game breaking. Since your job is to gain more prestige than your opponents (well, at least for the most part) each player will have their own strategy and will start each quest a different way but most experienced players will know where to go on the map and interactions with other players is often limited to random encounters that just serve to annoy and impede progress.

There are also some pretty stubborn pacing problems with the game. Key is the fact that if it's not your turn you're going to be spending a whole lot of time waiting around and waiting for your opponent to make a move. That's nothing new for a turn based multiplayer game but Armello's wait times feel excruciatingly long thanks to the fact that you're literally watching your opponents read their buff cards and weigh their options. All of this makes for a game that you're really not able to just jump in to. I often felt like most games I've played could have been cut in half time-wise and maybe that would have helped me enjoy Armello a bit more if I didn't have to commit at least an hour each time I tried to play. All of this is made even worse by the fact that there are no general chat options and only pre-made greetings and conversations that allow you to talk with other players, a shame when you consider how much strategy should go in to a game like this.

I wanted to like Armello a lot more than I did. I wanted to be immersed in it's fantastic world and characters and I was - until the game's questionable design choices made it hard to keep playing. To be fair it suffers from a lot of the problems new real time strategy games do but all of Armello's problems seem to compile on top of each other and it takes away from what should be a fantastic experience. Hopefully Armello gets a patch to fix some of these issues and I'm able to dive in as I wanted to, as the game seems like it deserves.