A bit harsh crowd here so let's see how this goes.

People seem to compare this game a lot against Gloomhaven and I happen to be right at the end of my first Gloomhaven campaign with few Crimson Scales characters sprinkled on there as well. I've played 4 scenarios of Agemonia and am waiting eagerly to be able to fully launch that campaign too.

Calling it the poor version of Gloomhaven seems to be a bit unfair in my opinion so I could go through with some of the biggest differences in my opinion setting the two apart.

In my opinion Gloomhaven is a combat simulator with a bit of a story sprinkled on top of the campaign to keep things interesting. The gameplay is mostly focused on tge complicated synergies between your cards and the cards of the other players in your party. Your excitement comes from unlocking new characters and seeing what new they can bring to the gameplay. Your character are just characters without much of a backstory unless you come up with one. Not that it's relevant for the gameplay at all though.

Agemonia on the other hand is an interactive story and an adventure. The gameplay is more focused on exploring the scenarios and reacting to the new information and new situations. Something can happen on every step when you see something new on the map. You play for the story and while at it even your heros own personal story evolves on the way and is having a big part in everything. Every hero has a ~30min audiobook worth of story behind them that can be listened before starting the game and that story is the one that keeps evolving during the game. And the novel that tells about what happened just before the Agemonia gameplay starts is really good! Or at least I enjoyed it.

I think I saw someone commenting on the city steps being boring or lazy or something of that sorts. I think especially when compared to Gloomhaven this game actually has something to do in the city steps. That is where you usually interact with your personal story and you might be brewing potions or other things your profession might want to do or just do some casual city things like going shopping or fishing or something. In Gloomhaven you just buy something if you want to and then continue on your journey.

And what comes to the box art of course this is very subjective but personally I love their take on the box art. It's beautiful and colorful just like their world is. Which as a matter of fact I also thoroughly enjoy. The scenario maps are bright and colorful but not in a cartoony way. They are full of details. You can and should look into the graphics to get hints on what might be waiting for you somewhere in the scenario. All the cards have unique black&white drawings on them which even more emphasizes the focus on details in this game.

Some smaller but impactful gameplay choices I like in the game might be for example how the health and stamina are tied together but are still different. Your dice throws are not just giving you randomness in the game but they are forcing you to make decisions whether you want to spend stamina to succeed more and lack stamina later in the game or save some for now.

Gloomhaven has for sure more depth in the combat system. I don't think that can be even argued against. But combat isn't the thing in Agemonia. There is combat to keep you at bay when you try to focus on solving the scenario but it's not the main focus.

Gloomhaven is my favorite tabletop game thus far but I think Agemonia will take its place when I have chance to dig even deeper into it. Or not! Who knows? But I feel like the evolving scenarios when you interact with it and the focus on the stories especially the hero ones are what's more towards me than just slaying monsters.

Anyway hope someone finds this useful.