My game page shows a "Deluxe Edition Upgrade " tag on it.
$10.00 US

What do you think the "Digital Deluxe Upgrade" is? :P As far as I can tell, buying base game + upgrade DLC here is the same price (in my region, anyway) as buying Steam's Digital Deluxe edition outright, and provides the exact same content. The only thing not available here is the "Beer for Developers" DLC, but that doesn't seem to be included in the Deluxe edition on Steam, either -- it's separate.

It's also mentioned right in the news post. :P

Right?

I thought it was Stoic's side project or something, and was wondering why they would not try to differentiate from their ongoing franchise a little bit more.

I can appreciate "imitation is the greatest form of flattery" but... that's pushing it a bit. Will wait for reviews to see if the game can truly stand on its own, or if it's a quick cash-in on TBS' coattails.

So people are ok with manga or US comics/cartoons-inspired games for decades, like litteraly, but if there are games whom character design seems to take inspiration from european comics, well they are "rip-offs" of the very first one who take back that thing in the industry?

Maybe the gameplay is very similar too, but hey, what's next? Dungeon Master or The Bard's Tale shouldn't have existed because of Wizardry and Ultima (even they shouldn't have since they are rip-offs of several PLATO games), or Zelda is a rip-off of Hydlide, the -Souls series are rip-offs of Severance, Baldur's Gate and co ripp-offs of Darklands, and so on.

If it's the beginning of a new genre or sub-genre, it is welcome.

But now the serious question: is the game good?

Unlike Banner Saga it supports Linux :)

I fuckin' love the molasses thick accent!...Guess I'm a Europhile after all! But yeah, this looks like rogue-like done right!

I don't even mind if it's a "clone", as long as it's a good one. However, you'd think they should at least mention Banner Saga as a source of inspiration, if their game is so heavily based upon it. I didn't notice any mention of it on the game's store page.

Perhaps one day.

It seems they took the Banner-Saga-Design-Team hostage and forced them to draw the game. A Tip to the Hat to the Stoic-Team would be nice. Maybe in the Credits of the game. Anyway, could be a great game, I wishlisted it.

They do mention it on the forums and I imagine elsewhere. Why, if you and others bothered to look, the Banner Saga devs actually backed their Kickstarter.

here: someone perfectly summed up a counter argument to similar 'it's a rip-off' complaints.
http://steamcommunity.com/app/691690/discussions/0/1698293255135304547/

edit:
another stand-out post by the same person
[
Man, i have given an extended reply (first one), but it could be a lot more simple than that:

Same engine: No.
Same graphical assets: No.
Same musical score: No.
Same texts: No.
Same ruleset: No.
Same setting: No.

So no, there is no way it could be considered a "rip-off", neither a mere "clone", nor a "retexturing" (since there are no textures, but animated sprites, different hand drawn rotoscoped sprites)

Same look 'n' feel: Yes.

So, it's clearly inspired by it. And they have plainly said that, everywhere.

End of the Story.

P.S

a) I am not a fool, i know the OP was clearly trolling in different ways and with different aliases, and should be better to not feed him, but i thought it could be helpful to have a polite and exhaustive answer, for everyone else.

b) No dev here, been in the closed beta and voluntereed for the translation.
]

Good to know, now I'll defiantly have to buy all four sagas as they're still connected by devs even if not by game! I've wishlisted the banner saga...Saga for far too long!

The TBS devs 'gave their blessing and support', which doesn't translate to any other kind of connection. This is its own game, you'll see when you play it.

" as they're still connected by devs even if not by game!"

Even acknowledgement/blessing is a connection between developers, which is fine by me, as they both recognize their shared work with their respective individual games, so there's still a kinship between developers with their games enough for me to buy both series!

At least that's how my own admitted "franchise-whore-mentality" sees it anyways! ;^) I feel the same with Vaporum/Grimrock!

Hey, thanks for the link, the first post is pretty informative! :)

After a while these 'rip-off' or 'clone' arguments start to get annoying, 'hey, these guys use the same engine as game xyz, thieves!'
Ugh...

All point-and-click adventures are a ripoff of Maniac Mansion.

<.<

(No, seriously, some time ago Ron Gilbert dug out some reviews from the archives and, or course, the term "point-and-click adventure" didn't exist back then and reviewers were struggling to come up with a succinct description of the one-of-a-kind game.)