Arkham Horror: Review of the mother's embrace

The board game Arkham Horror is known for its desire to punish even what some would consider as a perfect race. We expect you to die - _Beautiful. And if you do not die, you will become cursed, or traumatized, or sick, or .... You had the idea. Naturally, the Asmodee developer assured Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace does not fear the spirit of his Lovecraftian origins. The only warning is that it did not break me with an entertaining assault of spells and detections. Mother's Embrace, rather, put me between the ribs with a sharp knife made of a mysteriously mediocre game design.

I like the way things start in Mother's Embrace. We are in 1926 and you find yourself plunged into a case involving the murder of an astronomy teacher. In addition, it never seems that you are more than a jump, a jump and a jump away from a sinister worship with fantasmagoric dresses and funky symbols painted on their merchandise. And you know_ they will become a little ridiculous! Classic stuff.

The actors are doing a good job of transmitting the circumstances in which they are, but I would lie if I said that each distribution member brings his game to the scenario. I do not want to feel the impression of hitting writing - it's actually pretty good. But the most eloquent words in the world can not save a scene where an actor is like a qualified professional, and the others rings as if they made their best impression of Resident Evil '96. Good luck to try to stay invested when you are too busy laughing through its nine chapters.

The story except, the shallow detective work that will be entrusted to you did not seize me the way I dreamed. The Arkham Horror series is to pierce mysteries, after all, and I expected a greater effort to simulate the subtleties and difficulties of an investigation. For the most part, you stay on a relatively linear path, walking towards and from a series of luminous indices. A light puzzle job can be sprinkled here or there, but Mother's Embrace rarely tries to go beyond the simplest solution.

Of course, you will want to read as much text as possible, because make incorrect decisions will add to the Mythos Clock. This clock determines how close your investigators are to become traumatized. If a trauma point is won, combat loss will be applied until you can go home and rest. And given the surprisingly limited range of combat, it is in your best interest to avoid running Mythos Clock. Too often, I realized that there was nothing better than the faithful fist weapon. Of course, a revolver should probably do more damage than a key. But it is worrying that nothing else has never really felt as viable as some selected remote weapons.

That being said, it's not all bad news. Remove the to small budget layers that cover Mother's Embrace, and you will see that there is a little pleasure to discover. The main loop that consists of choosing from a group of group members with variable statistics to engage in turn-turn battles works. As with any other game of this nature, there is some satisfaction to perfectly trace a series of movements to clear a room at one stroke. And Mother's Embrace is no different.

Yet even after having dug beyond the rough exterior and having found a real appreciation for part of what Amas has accomplished, it did not take me long before reminding me how much the rest of Mother's Embrace proved to be mediocre. Discover the right combination of spells / traps / attacks to master a level is of course pleasant. But then the rigid and clumsy animations that fill the gaps are completely discordant. Just like for dialogue - and elsewhere, the entirety of Mother's Embrace - around every turn, a step forward is done, then a step back to counter it.

If you can look beyond all the problems that afflict Arkham Horror: Mother's Embrace, there are certainly worse games with whom spend a weekend. Especially if you are a fan of the Lovecraftian horror, but avoid if you are someone who asks your 2021 game experiences to have at least the impression of playing something made in the last fifteen years. Certainly, I will be curious to see if it receives a sequel because I think this series could become a sleeping success. Stay tuned.