Ash of Gods: Redemption

Ash of Gods (AoG) takes its inspiration from a trilogy of award winning books of the same name and The Banner Saga (TBS), an excellent game series with its first release in 2014. As such I would say for everything for which The Banner Saga was praised, you will find it in Ash of Gods. The noticeable difference is that the campaign, has strangely fit a complete story into a singular episode rather than TBS spanning three and with the kickstarter generating only $90k. Ash of Gods feels like a passion project, with a lot of effort placed into making things feel consistent and enjoyable reflecting the quality of the things which inspired it. This review is for the English version. 30 hrs. 4 days. The mechanics, art style, animation, combat system and sound design of AoG are almost identical to TBS. With TBS being such a cult hit, it begs the question how many unfavourable reviews AoG is receiving from defensive fans of TBS. Yes, The Banner Saga was beautiful; but does that mean that something inspired by TBS should be trashed? Frankly when I stumbled upon AoG I welcomed another production that plays with the same mechanics to tell a detailed story with rich and interesting lore, considering that the author (Sergey Malitsky) is lauded as a great story teller I chose to check AoG regardless of the reviews on GOG. After completing AoG, my theory rests that Aurumdust were massive fans of Sergey Malitsky and once playing The Banner Saga, realised just how easily the story could be told within the same framework. We can argue of intellectual property, but that does not make this a bad game. The writing is great, entertaining and rich. Play this game if you like to read. The combat comes second to the merits of the story. The decisions that the player is faced with feel contextual and play on the personalities very well. The story enables a great sense of investment. The translation has flaws at points. But any player who has been paying attention won't find it confusing.

The combat system, character skill development and dialog system all work and are enjoyable. If your looking for a good past time this is a good game for you. But if you want to get absorbed into the world and story of this game you will be disappointed. While the world is rich with lore and could be a great setting for an unforgettable story, that is not what you will find here. The game does not give you crucial pieces of information while at the same time asking you to make decisions which would require said information. To make it even worse the characters you make these decisions for actually know the things you haven't been told. This results in an odd detachment from the protagonists and many moments of „oh now you tell me...!?“ or „I guess I have known this all along then?“. Also the motivations and goals of the characters are often unclear leaving you with no other choice than adopting a „I go there because the game says so“-attitude. Some key parts of the story do not make any sense, even in retrospective and with additional knowledge of the world. To top it off the writing can be pretty bad sometimes and very often fails to deliver a atmosphere matching the events of the game. Gameplaywise many mechanics seem pointless e.g. the path you take on the overworld map which is utterly without consequence and the resource management seems arbitrary and unimportant. I could go on and on about things like this, so why three stars then? Well, looking back, I had a fun with that game and in the end that is what games are about. Just do not expect too much from this one. PS: Almost everything that is good in Ash of Gods was copied from the banner saga and is far better executed there. If you have not played the banner saga I would strongly recommend you to get the banner saga instead of Ash of Gods.

I'll keep the review short. Unnecessarily complex gameplay that leads either to fights that are too easy, or incomprehensibly difficult. Unlike it's inspiration The Banner Saga, Ashes of Gods fails to capture that 'satisfying' feel when you win a fight. The music is a weird amalgamation of many different popular games' styles, such as the ululating women of The Witcher 3. Most disappointing was the story; confusing and sprawling, and often peppered with very poor writing, such as from the title of this review. That's when I stopped playing and uninstalled it- when an innkeeper walked into my room and said: "Sorry sir, the noise from your room was so frightening I dropped a jar of water and shat my britches, and now I want you to wash them." It's just unbelievable and crass. I feel like less of a desperate hero, and more like an itinerant babysitter. Ashes of Gods isn't a bad game. It's just that for the short time we have on this earth, there are so many others that do what this does better.

This game was clearly inspired by The Banner Saga. However, in my opinion, it's not a bad thing in the slightest, since I, for one, would love to see more games in this vein. Thus, I'll compare it to The Banner Saga. Ash of Gods has a bit weaker writing (as in how the dialogues and descriptions are written), but the story itself is equally great, and the characters are very interesting and well thought-out. Ash of Gods' art is equally great to The Banner Saga's one. All the screens and characters are awesomely drawn. While I loved The Banner Saga's music, I loved Ash of Gods' one even more. It was made by some of the people behind the music in the Witcher games, which speaks for itself, and in this game they did an equally great job. Now the combat. At the moment it's Ash of Gods' weakest spot, since for now the game doesn't have a Medium difficulty setting, it's either way too hard (on Classic mode) or way too easy (on Story mode). The combat follows the same principles as in The Banner Saga, with a few twists of its own. What I don't like is the round robin system where after your character's turn there is always a turn of an enemy character, no matter how many character are left in your on your side, and how many are left on the enemy side. This makes single characters overpowered. I hope that the devs will introduce a new difficulty setting in a future patch, which will be harder than the current Story mode but not as mercilessly and unfairly punishing as the current Classic mode. For now, I recommend everyone to play on Story mode. To conclude, despite the shortcomings of the combat balance and woeful current situation with difficulty settings, I still had a lot of fun with this game, thanks to great story and characters and fantastic art and music. For me it took ~20 hours to complete this game (which is quite a bit longer than The Banner Saga 1 or 2). I give Ash of Gods 5/5 despite my complaints above since I enjoyed my time with this game quite a lot.