Live through an epic role-playing Viking saga where your strategic choices directly affect your personal journey. Make allies as you travel with your caravan across this stunning yet harsh landscape. Carefully choose those who will help fight a new threat that jeopardizes an entire civilization. Eve...
Live through an epic role-playing Viking saga where your strategic choices directly affect your personal journey. Make allies as you travel with your caravan across this stunning yet harsh landscape. Carefully choose those who will help fight a new threat that jeopardizes an entire civilization. Every decision you make in travel, conversation and combat has a meaningful effect on the outcome as your story unfolds. Not everyone will survive, but they will be remembered.
An epic Viking saga brought to life in 2D glory – beautifully hand drawn combat sequences and animations, accompanied by an evocative score from Grammy-nominated composer Austin Wintory, will immerse you into a fantasy realm inspired by Norse mythology.
Over 25 playable characters from 2 different races, human and varl, the horned giants – embark on your epic journey with a variety of characters from 7 different classes, each with unique abilities and upgrade options to fit your play style.
Strategic combat with consequences - victory or defeat and even the permanent loss of a character depends on which characters you choose to take into battle and what decisions you make afterwards.
The journey is as important as battle – your role in building and managing your caravan as you travel the vast frozen landscape is critical to not only your own survival but the survival of an entire civilization.
Please be advised that Windows 10 operating system will receive frequent hardware driver and software updates following its release; this may affect game compatibility
Recommended system requirements:
Please be advised that Windows 10 operating system will receive frequent hardware driver and software updates following its release; this may affect game compatibility
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The game is beautiful. It's sometimes nice to play for it's gorgeous presentation.
The strategy elements come from managing your character (one point progression and different class types to choose from) upgrades. The game is largely fair, you can predict with a little experience the outcome of individual situations and occasionally the composition of the opposing squads.
Unfortunately the game's variety is limited and the game begins to feel like a grind. You might enjoy it enough to never feel this way, as other reviewers are expressing excitement.
I had to boot Windows because the Linux port isn't available DRM-free, wtf? GoG, please do something about it, the Linux port of Larry Reloaded is still missing after years too.
This and a few minor bugs aside, it's a very good and unique game.
It is a genre-mix of "turn based strategy" and "interactive book" with a bit of micro-management. The visual and audio design is stunning. The characters are drawn and the landscapes are pixel art in very high definition. Along the way you constantly have to make hard decisions, often all of them leading to undesirable results or leaving a bad taste. Times are hard, there will be losses and you can't save everyone, be prepared. My ending was really sad.
The fighting system has one big problem/deviation, your and the enemy units as a whole get one turn each but each character still has a turn order. This leads to the problem that if you go the sensical way to kill off the small enemies fast in order to be able to focus on the big ones, the big ones get more turns - making it even harder. So you need to get the enemy units to 1HP (which also makes their attacks weak and useless though) and kill them off when all are weakened. I didn't get this until right before the end.
Since your decisions lead to slightly different stories, the replay value is quite high and I will definitely play it again.
Unfortunately the devs have announced, that they are not planning to release episode 2 and 3 DRM free since they are convinced, the DRM free release of the first one has led to lost sales (which is bollocks imho, but there you go). Hopefully they'll rethink their decision and I hope that the Linux port of the first episode won't stay Steam exclusive like many others.
I had heard about this title when it was first coming out, the general stuff that it was visually pleasant and had an original take on things. And obviously again for a bit with the King nonsense, but then it kind of dropped off my radar and I didn't think much about. It only came back into my consciousness when GOG sent me one of their sale lists and I thought 'Yeah, okay. For 60% off I'll try this game.'
Even though I had heard good things about the game, my expectations were far exceeded.
For me, this game reminded me of what I always wanted from those 90s edutainment visual novels from when I was a kid. I have no problem with story taking precedence over game play, with a little bit of play on the side to keep things moving along, and that's what I got here. The focus is on the story, the atmosphere, the world-building, and you push things along through the battles and interactions with the micro-stories that require your input.
This is definitely a reality you should be apprised to before going on, I could see disappointed expectations souring the experience if you're thinking there'll be more battle here.
With that awareness though, the experience is a great one and I felt genuinely moved at times by the consequences of my choices. The way you make decisions feels very organic and immersive. Though I do confess there is always the feeling that you should try some of the strange options because there might be an interesting reward on the other side.... This is caused by knowing your playing a video game but the lesson of 'nothing ventured, nothing gained' isn't a terrible one to take away with you either.
In the end, it's a beautiful game that I found myself wanting to share with people, most particularly people who might not normally play games or introducing someone to hobby (lifestyle?) because it has an easy curve and accessibility and could be a great chance to connect with others.
Looking forward to replaying again with different choices.
The gameplay has its flaws, but the decisions you make might help you OR bite you in the ass later in the game, with no point of return, which is great, although some people might dislike that.
But the key feature is the story of the game, while not fully unfolding yet and with an open end, it is full of epic encounters and you get a glimpse of the rich universe of characters, gods and giants with potential for a even more epic storyline next time. I really look forward to the second part, i hope they make it!
While The Banner Saga is an incredibly pretty game with a stirring soundtrack, the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. In fact, I would've preferred it if they just made the game into a visual novel since at least they would've been able to introduce multiple endings dependent on character interactions. Ultimately, it's just a numbers game and 95% of the game is inconsequential. All that matters is how well you do in the very difficult final battle and that's it.
Would I recommend people to buy this game? Only if you're really good at turn-based tactics games or you appreciate a beautifully crafted but almost linear story (just be sure to play it on Easy difficulty if you're not used to strategy games).
Would I purchase the sequel? Only if Austin Wintory is doing the soundtrack since I'm not going to lie, his soundtrack is probably one of the only reasons I ended up buying The Banner Saga in the first place.
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