Banner Saga

[Kong Wen]

It looks like Banner Saga will be coming to Android & iOS tablets this summer, consoles before the end of 2014, and then Vita sometime after.

This has been on my Steam wishlist since it was released—it's another one I didn't back on Kickstarter even though it looked interesting to me. Has anyone else here played this game? I'll definitely be all over a PS4 & Vita version.

[Forscyvus]

Just got through with one playthrough of this game. So I'll review it, why not.

OVERALL: Best Damn Strategy Game I've Ever Played

Gameplay
The meat of the game is the grid-based skirmishes. It looks like what you've seen before at first, but there are a few GREAT tweaks.

Each unit (you can have six at once) has 5 stats, which the game claims are equally important. That's true, it's all really well balanced. There's Strength, Armor, Willpower, Exertion, and Break. Strength is at once your strength and your health, armor is damage reduction, willpower is basically a reserve of mana/bonus damage, exertion is how much of that will you can use at once, and break is how easily you can damage armor. Primarily because of the Strength/Health union, battles are fought at the knife's edge, as getting hit makes you weaker and has a snowballing effect. However, high armor enemies necessitate high break characters too, and exertion and willpower add another layer of resource management into the mix. Positioning is also highly important, as some units take a 2x2 chunk of the battlefield and can be used to shield your squishier units (or accidentally block them from lining up their shots). Numerous times I felt as though only a tiny change in strategy could greatly affect the outcome of the fight.

There are other changes like the fact that you don't get a full-party turn, instead you get a single unit's move, then the enemy does, regardless of how many you each have left (until there's just one, then you get a full-party turn to speed things up.)

If you are tired of Fire Emblem or Xcom's move-up-slowly-until-they-come-at-you-one-by-one gameplay, try The Banner Saga. This is an ENORMOUS plus for me.

Outside of the skirmishes, you basically play Oregon Trail. You have a band of tribesmen and warriors and you have to get them across the bleak wastes to the next town. Shit will happen along the way and you have to make some EXCEEDINGLY tough choices without really clear outcomes to make it. I had to sit and think for minutes at a time at decisions, which I suppose means they were pretty meaningful. High quality writing. There's the odd cheap death, but hey, in the real world people can die from your decisions, so deal with it nerd. Also of note: the game does not allow you to save manually. It saves often and keeps old saves (this is not Xcom Ironmode), but it does not let you save willy-nilly, which might be frustrating to some of you. But seriously, live with the consequences of your decisions. It's way more engrossing that way.

It will take some figuring out though. The game does not explain the mechanics of the Oregon-Trailing terribly much. Some of the menu UI is a little wonky too (specifically party management and leveling), but it works.

Aesthetics
This is a budget game, and Kickstarted at that, so there's little in the way of animation or VA, but the game has a nice rough, colorful 2D line-art style and some unremarkable but fitting music. Sound effects are good. Combat can get a little crowded when all the units clump up, especially when you have everyone's status flags turned on (and there's no goddamn visual distinction between friendly health/armor flags and enemy ones, which is irritating), and sometimes the towns/camps can be a little misleading as to which parts are clickable, but they all look pretty neat. Everything is tied together with a very unified Norse vibe that is really appropriate and seems to be faithfully executed. Even towns like "Frostvellr" are pronounced the way they would be in a nordic language.

Story
This is a REALLY story heavy game, what with the lead developers being ex-Bioware devs. It starts out in a frozen tundra wasteland that is bleak and hopeless, almost postapocalyptic, AND THEN the apocalypse happens! Yay. This is actually really good and it heightens the drama of your decisionmaking over the course of the game. Running out of supplies is terrible when you know that nobody's around with any more supplies. There are a few major things you can change depending on your decisions, not only who lives and dies, but some other things that might be interesting in sequels.

There are a few cheapened things: most of the lore is delivered on the map. Clicking locations pops up a short blurb that informs your understanding of the world. I read all of it, took me an hour, but I know I'm a sucker for that shit. Maybe you'll be annoyed. Even then, there were some annoying inconsistencies in the map and the story (particularly annoying to me was a part about the Summer Path), but those can mostly be overlooked as non-crucial. But I fear that you might not pick up on some of the references that the game makes to its history if you haven't read the map.

The meat of the story itself, though, is really good. There is a part in the middle where I felt a sense of awe that reminded me of what I felt getting the reveals of the first Mass Effect, which I hold to be one of the best feelings I've ever gotten in a story. It's grim, but it's not dark and there's always something to keep you going.

The biggest criticism I can level is that it's only 13 hours long.

I dunno guys, just play it because it's good.

[kitroplious]

Thanks for your impressions! I might go check it out on Android (not the best at strategy RPG's though!)

[Kong Wen]

Banner Saga is 50% off on Steam until this Friday, 12 September, at 1 p.m. Eastern.

[Kong Wen]

Woot, finally an update on this!

The PS Blog indicates that Banner Saga will be coming to PS4 in early 2015. The developers previously noted that they'd be working on a Vita version after the console ports are released.

[Kong Wen]

Banner Saga 2 has been announced for PC. With the announcement of the PS4 version coming in 2015, it's unclear whether the sequel will be PC-only, or whether it will eventually come to PS4 after a while as well. I suppose they'll wait and see how the first port performs.

[Kong Wen]

Woot, finally an update on this!

The PS Blog indicates that Banner Saga will be coming to PS4 in early 2015. The developers previously noted that they'd be working on a Vita version after the console ports are released.

Make that early 2016. Nice to finally have some definitive news on this.

It'll also support a data import feature for moving your Banner Saga 1 info over to the sequel when it comes out.

[Yasume]

No Vita news yet, though. Hope it isn't stealth canned.

[Kong Wen]

No Vita news yet, though. Hope it isn't stealth canned.

I have sad suspicions that that's what's going to happen.

[Kong Wen]

I agree with a lot of what Forscyvus said above.

• Choices are tough, and consequences are not immediately apparent (although they are sometimes at least immediate, which can lead to instant regret!)
• Combat is really hard. It's not just a game where you can be good at positioning units on a grid and everything will be OK. You have to be strategically on point at all times, and even then your team is guaranteed to take a beating.
• The game doesn't do a great job of explaining how all the stats and systems work, but you'll catch on after your first few battles.
• My only complaint graphically: if you zoom in, everything gets kind of blurry. They didn't develop their assets to look crisp at all zoom levels. Probably a resource issue, and it's not really annoying, but it would have been a really nice touch.
• I'm still very early in the story, but so far I like that the characters all seem to have their own motivations—it's not a big group of best buddies working together.

I still need to spend more time with this.