Leave a Review Elder Sign
Good, Not Great
The game is fun until you try and play the expansions. I paid for both and have been playing them for about a month now, I've beaten Chthulu once, and Ithaqua just keeps destroying me. The latest expansion is the definition of cheap gameplay and harkens back to the old 8-bit NES games where anything past normal difficulty means the computer plays perfectly. I've noticed the dice rolls probability is much favorable to the player when playing against Yig or Azathoth, but once you switch to the "Very Hard" expansions, man, I've almost thrown the phone against a wall a few times. The Mythos effects in the expansions are brutal (+3 Doom every turn) and thanks to the Wolf Pack monsters (# of monsters doubles every turn), the board hits the maximum monster capacity very quickly. Unfortunately, you'll also have about 4 dice locked and unusable at any given moment, which means you have to use turns to intentionally fail missions just to clear some of the monsters off. The game needs a serious rebalancing, and the latest update seriously fails in that respect. Like someone else said, I signed up for difficult/challanging, not for the computer to mount a miraculous comeback at the very end every time.Show lessstaind77
Fun Game!
Very good artwork, sound, and UI. There are some minor bugs and misleading descriptions on items.
Overall this game is very addictive and lots of fun! It is true that relying on the luck of the dice rolls can be brutal at times. To win, one needs to pick missions carefully based on investigator abilities and items, and manage probability risk by knowing when to use items, when to save dice, and learning the different possible results on different kinds of glyphs.
Unfortunately it is not an easy game to learn. There are tutorial videos in the game, which weren't instictively placed. There is a guide in game, but I found it more helpful to read the manual for the board game version on the developer's website.
Some investigators are more useful than others. The Yig mission is pretty easy, and you can use whomever. But I have to be pickier who I take to the Azeroth mission, and the only way I'm able to consistently beat the hardest mission (Cthulhu) is by soloing with one specific character, which is unfortunate.
I would definitely buy more expansions for new missions and investigators for this game.Show lessLeglamp
Excellent Adaptation
This game is wildly addictive, challenging, tense, and incredibly fun!
With a variety of characters to choose from (and some awesome unlockable ones) you control four investigators who battle one of three Ancient Ones. As you start the game for the first time, numerous videos guide you through gameplay, explaining almost every element of the action. Additionally, if you missed something or are confused, the game includes a help guide that outlines everything you need to know to defeat the Ancient One and save Arkham.
Additionally, the graphics are gorgeous and fitting for a tabletop game adapted for the iPhone. With a tense ambiance and "magical" sound effects, you start to feel more engaged in the gameplay. As a dice-based game controlled by AI, though, it can be annoying when you are hoping to defeat Cthulhu in R'lyeh but end up going insane. That's part of the fun, though. You have to strategize in your Investigator choices, obtain enough additional items to aid you, and then hope luck is on your side as you venture to save the world.
With all the add-ons and variety in Investigators and Ancient Ones, this game is totally worth it!Show lessThister
In my top 2
I really love this game. The artwork is spectacular, and full of all kinds of creepy subtleties that are genuinely unnerving. The gameplay has the randomness of the dice, but there is so much going on in the way of making sure you match the strengths of your current hero with the best challenge for those strengths. I find myself thinking ahead a lot, too and planning which hero will tackle which challenge before midnight strikes. Some strategies I've developed since I've beat all three Big Bads now are: 1. Get rid of the midnight effects as quickly as you can. 2. Ditto for the glyph locks. They can be crippling. 3. When you get to Cthulhu, you don't have much time since the doom track only goes to 11 (are the designers Spinal Tap fans?). I recommend spending all your available trophies to go exploring as quickly as you can so that you can start unlocking the gems to get to Cthulhu. 4. Whenever you have a red and yellow glyph available, use them now! For a while, I tried saving those puppies for a rainy day, but I have a much better chance of winning if I just take the bird in the hand. This is a beautiful game. I can't stop playing it. Sure, there is a lot of luck, but it's well balanced luck, and the trip is a lot of fun. You start feeling like you know the characters after a while. Between this and Zooloretto, I can't think of two better games to have on my iPod. Highly recommended!Show lessHaHaWorld
Up for a challenge?
As a 40 year old woman that works in a pet store, I can assure you that this game is FAR from impossible to beat. I just purchased the Cthulhu expansion in-game (which is labeled "very hard") and beat it on the first try, with all 4 investigators sane and healthy. The base game has added Yig as an easier mode for the folks that have complained about the difficulty, and added unlockable characters for the harder modes. It isn't more luck-based than any other game that has dice, so if you can win a game of Monopoly or Risk, you can beat this. Just takes a little getting used to the strategy involved, making the best use of your investigators, and remembering to spend your trophies. Best bet if you're having difficulty is to use investigators that win multiple cards, because you can stockpile the red and yellow glyphs and take out any adventure. (BTW, I beat R'lyeh with the nun. Would have loved to see Lovecraft include heroic kick-butt nuns in his works! XD )Show lessRebsothoth
Good conversion, but incomplete; lacks replay value
This game is a good reproduction of an excellent card & dice game. I enjoy playing it on the iPhone a lot. The production values are high.
Winning the game centers around playing to the strengths of each character, and making the best use of the objects in their inventories. If you're finding this game too hard, be more careful choosing your adventures, and make sure you understand the rules. You should win around 50% of the time, in my experience.
One glaring omission keeps this from being a 5 star game, however. They only include one "bad guy". In the original game, there was a whole bevy of them, and each game you chose a new one to play against. (Several of the Arkham Horror games have this theme.) Each bad guy had its own set of alterations to the ruleset. Azathoth is the simplest of the bunch, so it really feels like they killed the replay value of this game by not including the rest.Show lessiwishtherewereanynicknamesleft
The feel of Arkham Horror at your fingertips.
I don't usually buy apps cause there's plenty of free stuff out there. I love Fantasy Flight and would love them to make more iPhone games, so for only a few bucks this game is worth it. It's great!! I had mixed feelings at first because I thought the game was too hard. Keep in mind, I've never played Elder Sign (the card game) so I did a lot of learning as I went. READ THE HELP GUIDE. Go figure, the game made much more sense after I figured out what everything meant. I also looked up tips online for the card game, since this is very similar. I went from losing every time I played, to wining 3 out of 4 games. I ready for an expansion update!! If only the Arkham Horror Board Game could be this well balanced.Show lessJunior6288
Driving me crazier than Cthulu
Let me start by saying I love Arkham Horror, and have been playing it for years. Part of what I love is the deep challenge which results in great satisfaction experienced during the occasional win. It also recognizes the difference between the fun of a challenge and the frustration of IMPOSSIBLE!
This game basically works on a die-roll system, where one starts with six die, and eliminates one die to reroll the others, a la Yahtzee. But somehow the 1/6 odds of dice become 3/50 odds to get the emblem needed to progress, and the Ancient One also randomly Causes other losses (sanity, stamina, or Doom to bring the game one step closer to lost). I love Lovecraft, and the Arkham Horror board game, and will still occasionally play this monstrosity. I would NOT recommend it to someone without the patience of a saint, and even then, that saint will want to throw his iPhone through a window.
Please learn that ratcheting difficulty to impossible is not a substitute for a challenging, engaging game system.Show lessTysonian
Ready for More
I've played this game more obsessively than any other app I've downloaded to my phone. It runs smoothly and the graphics are impressive. The number of features in this introductory version enrich the game play and give me my money's worth. I love Arkham Horror and this gives me that experience anywhere, any time. The tutorial video and Help are very good. Kudos. My only comment would be that the value on the clue glyphs are difficult to read.
I look forward to new features. I'd love to see: 1 or more Ancient Ones added maybe with different game affects; expanded and persistent statistics on games (investigators used, tasks won & lost, etc.) and investigators played (a play history for each investigator).Show lessSubRosa005
Fantastic, just needs a couple tweaks
This is a fantastic implementation of the dice game and one of the best graphical board game apps yet. The game is fun and challenging, and there are a lot of tactical choices that really do matter (don't listen to those reviewers who say there's no strategy or that it's all random... that is definitely NOT the case, and my winning percentage of about 75% after 30+ games when those same people say it's too difficult should be proof of that).
A few suggestions for improvement, though, which will take it to an easy 5 stars for me...
More GOOs, characters, etc. Probably a certainty for an in-app purchase expansion at some point.
The scoring system is almost completely meaningless as it is. I'd much rather it just have a basic function for recording your won/lost stats and other details related to that.
Need to be able to skip the cut scenes. As it is, because of those, the app actually takes longer to play solo than the dice game.
3 doom tokens at once at midnight is way too harsh and random. Yes, I'm glad this version is more difficult than the dice game, but that's a poor way to do it. For the time you invest in the game, to lose just because you got hit with a 3 doomer (or two) is unfortunate. 2 doom tokens at once... okay once in a while... but 3 is too many. I think a steadier stream of 1 doom token being added would be best.
Otherwise, though, it's a terrific app!Show lessGrudunza
