Inspired by the award-winning board game franchise, Arkham Horror: Mother’s Embrace is an investigation game served with turn-based combat, set in the haunted worlds of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Plunge into an original story written by Fantasy Flight Interactive’s official writers and exp...
Inspired by the award-winning board game franchise, Arkham Horror: Mother’s Embrace is an investigation game served with turn-based combat, set in the haunted worlds of H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos. Plunge into an original story written by Fantasy Flight Interactive’s official writers and explore the American Roaring Twenties.
The year is 1926: a professor of astronomy is found dead in her mansion and everything indicates that she has been the victim of a heinous murder. Choose from 12 intrepid investigators from the Arkham Horror games, each with a unique set of skills, and assemble your team to shed the light over this mysterious death.
Find clues, perform interrogations and progress through nine chapters as the story unfolds. Your investigation will take you to visit shadowed institutions and mysterious locales, ranging from Miskatonic University, the Arkham Asylum, and the bayous of Louisiana.
As the investigators get closer to their goal, your squad will have to face curious science, living nightmares, and a sinister cult, whose mad scheme is to bring about the end of everything. Use a large variety of melee and ranged weapons, as well as powerful items and devastating magic spells to defeat your opponents in turn-based combat; while you attempt to retain your sanity.
As you face off against Lovecraftian horrors, your investigators will descend deeper into the depths of madness, affecting their level of sanity and causing traumas that will impact the course of your investigation. Care about your sanity and make the right choices … the Ancient Ones are preparing their return.
The story keeps me hooked and going so far. The gameplay is fine, the combat is mediocre so far.
I recommend playing it with controller not mouse and keyboard. The graphics are low end but thats just a minor issue for me. The movement is... really slow or slow (move fast button is a move not sooo slow button in reality)
It is a solid 3 star from me, because the story keeps me playing. The rest is 2.5 stars so far for me. There are simple better turnbase combat, detective, mystery and role playing games out there.
My advice, watch some gameplay before you buy if you are unsure about this one.
Everything about this game seems designed to frustrate the player. The mystery is too vague and obtuse to be interesting, the 'puzzles' seem arbitrary, and there isn't sufficient emotional investment in anything that the various timers (sanity, Old Ones' curses et cetera) come across as anything but sigh inducing and annoying. As you progress, your odds of success do not increase but rather dwindle. . .As well as my appreciation for the game.
Two stars, because there seemed some honest effort even if it was ill managed and poorly directed.
Long story short - this an awful rendition of the Mansion of Madness board game. Shouldn't be charged any money, and I doubt it would got me hooked even if recieved for free.
First things first - I'm an avid fan of Cthulhu mythos and FF series of board games based on it. I think I own almost all of the board games, including MoM and AH, and I play them regularly with friends. When I first saw the trailer for the digital version I feel pumped - even if graphics weren't looking great, and I could see some shortcuts taken in how the scenes were constructed - I was hoping for at least a little distractor in my favourite universe.
Oh how naive I was. This one? I couldn't even stand mere 30 minutes to play this mess of a game. Awful camera and controls, wooden voice acting and predictable scenario - all this simply are proper mood killer. It tries to be fairly accurate in depicting core game mechanics but fails miserably in building the mood - and Cthulhu Mythos is all about the mood. It is simply that bad.
Do not buy. Play boardgame instead or at least spend that money better and buy Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.
It's not a terrible game, but it's also pretty unremarkable and by-the-numbers. The gameplay is fairly dull and the combat slow, the plot is predictable and doesn't have any emotional stakes or character development, and the game feels a bit low budget, with dated graphics, a handful of lines that should be voiced but aren't, a few minor bugs, and some typos. It's also just not very atmospheric or scary- Eternal Darkness did a much better job of being Lovecraftian, disturbing and fun, and that game came out over 20 years ago.
As for positive points, for fans of the board game this is based on, it's kind of neat to see the familiar characters come to life as voiced 3D models. The voice acting is decent (especially Professor Tillinghast), the gameplay is just good enough to make a single playthrough feel worthwhile, and it's kind of nice to see a Lovecraft game without a single reference to Cthulhu or the Necronomicon for a change. If you're a Lovecraft fan, it might be worth getting when it's on sale, just don't expect any replay value or a terrifying experience that will stick with you.
Honestly, they probably would have been better off making a digital adaptation of the actual Arkham Horror board game than this. It could be a lot worse, but there are much better and more interesting horror and even specifically Lovecraft games out there to choose from.
Copying incantations from another game (BG) will not make your game good. None of the recent games marketed as 'Lovecraftian' are really Lovecraftian, but parodies of Lovecraft.
Interestingly, certain titles which have nothing directly to do with Lovecraft, such as Soul Reaver or Clive Barker's Undying, are way more Lovecraftian. It's not about namedropping. It's about crafting the right tone, art and atmosphere.
