Great game, even if it feels cheap – Elder Sign: Omens for iPhone Review

I love Elder Sign. The board game is excellent & I think the app is great, but my biggest problem lies with the fact that it often feels like this game cheats. Yes, poor choices often result in losses, and a good strategy will help, but I've managed to lose on "easy" cards despite having more than enough clue tokens & items to reasonably beat it. It feels like after a certain amount of successes, you will automatically fail on 1 or 2 adventures. On some of the harder cards, it feels like you need to sacrifice investigators & items before being able to pass it. The curator is arguably the most ridiculously adventure in the game. I've had to beat some cards with 4 Investigators, but that's the one card where I've had all 4, had a very well equipped Joe Diamond (with 5 clues aka 10 rerolls) and still lost! I don't know what kind of algorithm the game uses to determine successes & failures, but it feels as if FFG deliberately stacked the deck highly against the player. Considering that I have full control of my rolls in the Board game version & fail considerably less, it's hard not to feel like the game cheats. I still enjoy the app, but some days it feels like a trial in patience. It's why I typically end up playing the board game version instead. At least I can control my own dice roll. Either way, if you can get past the notion that the game cheats and are willing to deal with many losses before beating the harder AO's, this game is still a good way to kill some time, or play ES without having to set and clean up.
Review by Kiroquetanomon on Elder Sign: Omens for iPhone.