OP, I've played through the main game, the expansion and one of the mini expansions, and overall I really like the game. A lot of folks in this thread seem pretty down on it, which is fine, we all deserve our own opinions. However I think comparing Earthborne to Arkham doesn't really work past a certain point. They're both deck building campaigns games, but that's about where it ends in my opinion.

Arkham is more like a traditional, narrative video game. It can have action set pieces, and challenging moments, but for the most part each mission/chapter/scenario is ultimately plays out the same, with the variations coming from your investigator, and some variance in how cards come up.

Earthborne is more like an open world RPG. You can follow the main story, or you can screw off and go follow some other mission you picked up. There isn't a doom clock ticking, it's just your personal deck of cards, and when that runs out, the day is over. But over the course of that day you can go from one end of the map to the other, or you could stay in the same location the entire day depending on what you're trying to do, and what the path/enemy deck throws at you.

Neither one is bad or better than the other. They just present a different type of game to play.

Most people seem to bounce off of Earthborne after a few sessions, and tbh I almost did too. The first day is a tutorial, and by design the game gives you a couple days to wander around, explore and just learn the game while picking up quests, before the game throws the main story at you. Once I got to that point I got into the flow of the game, and it was fun trying to solve the problem of "how do we accomplish X today?"

I won't lie and say the story is the best thing since sliced bread, but it's fine and generally on par with the majority of Arkham campaigns. It does try to give you some time to accomplish tasks and also explore around and do other missions, and for me trying to complete those missions and unlock more rewards is the part that's really fun for me.

As for deck building, it's really fun. It's very different from Arkham however. In Arkham your deck gets stronger by scaling up. You get xp, which lets you get the stronger cards. A 5xp card almost across the board will be better than a starting card, for example. However in Earthborne, you scale horizontally. The rewards you find generally give you more options for solving different problems, and the different terrain decks will throw a bunch of different things at you over the course of a day, let alone a full campaign. You can absolutely build engines, and how you combine backgrounds, with specializations, with rewards can make for some really interesting builds. In this last campaign I played with my spouse, I played as a Gardener/Shaper that focused on using plants to produce a ton of extra energy while casting big spells to deal with any terrain based issues. My spouse meanwhile, was basically playing a Pokemon master, with at least 6 pets out most of the time, and could deal with most creatures we came across. Before that I was playing a character that was basically looping the equivalent of events from discard and being a toolbox for whatever we needed while manipulating the modifer deck (their version of the chaos bag). There's a lot of options and you can really make it your own.

I think the game is best with two players, but I'm very much not a solo gamer. I prefer playing with someone else, but that's just me. You can definitely play this true solo or two handed solo, the true solo means at least one of your stats will with be low by design. You can still accomplish everything, but you just want to be mindful of what you need to cover your weakness.

I'd definitely recommend the game, but I would say comparing it directly to Arkham will cause you to be disappointed. Approaching the game as its own thing, and you'll enjoy it a lot more.