Banner Saga

The game's premise is very interesting, the world is beckoning, the story is engaging... but there's something lacking. The turn-based combat is fun, however some story choices are vague, and some events are illogical (or the most logical option is merely not there, and some stupid things are forced upon you). Because of these flaws, it's 4/5. But generally do try this game out, although maybe not at full price.

This is a must have for fantasty, turn based strategy fans. What a masterpiece.

The game is great, I am not going to talk about it, people already made it better than I can. However, I start to play in french because I had trouble understanding the texts in english. Usually I play in the original language but for once I was making to many bad choices because of this. And there we are: the french translation is A SHAME. There're numerous mistakes everywhere, the style is completely lost. Producer probably wanted to save pennies and gave us that shit. Will probably not buy the second game just because of this.

The biggest problem i have with this game, is that it doesn't realy want to be a game. You can fail all over the place and still finish it because the game just wants to tell a story. In theory, you have to manage a caravan with soldiers, varls(fantasy creatures) and alot of civilists. Supplies are scarce in the world of Banner Saga and you need a big, well fed army to defeat the dredd that are pillaging villages and cities. Humans and especially varls are on the edge of extinction in this game and your army could make the difference in this world. So you have to make harsh choices and sometimes leave people you come across die because you can't feed another mouth. Oh, and leveling up your heroes and buying new supplies takes up the same resource, so thats another harsh descision you have to make. Well, that's the idea. But this game, even on the highest difficulty, won't allow you to fail. You can litteraly starve all your people to death. It won't have any effect on the story. Failing in combat is also no problem. The game will continue no matter what. I ruined this game for myself when i heard about this because the story is realy good as far as i can tell. (The Banner Saga has a wide open end) But when the gameplay part is absolutely senseless it ruins the experience as a whole and even the depressingly feeling that you had when your caravan reaches the last supply is suddenly gone. Because it does not matter anyway. TBS is a huge missed opportunity.

...but it just does not 'click' with me. Actually, of all the games I backed on Kickstarter, this one has disappointed me the most (so far). I admit it is still an ok game and there are many worse out there, but here is why I do not recommend it: - It is story based, but the story is not great - mostly it seemed pretty boring, to be honest. - Lore and world bckground are probably interesting, but the game presents them extermely scarcely, mostly on the world map, which you have no gameplay reason to ever use at all. - There are a lot of characters, who seem interesting at first, but never really fulfill their potential and end up being bland to annoying. My guess is that voice acting would help a lot here. - There is tactical combat, but rather simple and repetitive - and battles seem more like solving a puzzle than being in command of a party of unique warriors. There is little enemy variety too. - Caravan management layer is completely broken. Losing all clansemen makes no impact on the game, it does not even change random events, which still refer to your caravan as if it was full or people. - No manual save option means you might end up forced to repeat certain parts after coming back, if you happened to play through a longer section not containing autosave points. - CYOA dialogue options are rarely clear as to what they will cause, meaning you might choose an option and end up causing something you were actually trying to avoid. Usually you are just forced to choose randomly, as there is not enough information. On the plus side, presentation in superb. The game looks and sounds great (music is especially impressive), but this should be dressing for a good core game, not its main advantage. My rating: $3