Back in the early 2000's, superhero-themed videogames had a really bad reputation for being either cheap movie tie-ins, or mediocre licensed games that relied on its superhero title for name recognition. Freedom Force was arguably the first good superhero game to come out, and it was addictively fun. First of all, the art style is amazing. The game is brightly coloured and corny, and the over-the-top voice acting and "secret origins" of the characters really evokes the silver age of comics. Each mission feels like playing through an actual issue of a real-life comic book: the missions are decently diverse, and cover a range of stereotypical comic-book tropes. By not relying on licensed DC or Marvel superheroes, the game devs were free to create their own hilariously campy cast of heroes, each with their own unique set of powers and playstyle. A large part of the game's appeal is learning to use each hero's power set as part of a larger team. Not all heroes are available for every mission, so the game encourages you to mix it up and try different team configurations. This kept the gameplay fresh and always exciting. Unfortunately, there are a few minor issues that prevent the game from achieving all-time greatness. Sometimes your heroes just won't register commands the first time. The UI can also be a bit clunky. For example, swapping between a given hero's powers can be a bit of a chore, as you have to select the new power from a drop-down menu. Ranged attacks are also not automatically continuous; to get a hero to repeat their ranged attack, you have to click once again on its target each time. These and other issues make it so that you'll need to pause the game frequently in the middle of big combats in order to update/reissue orders. The game also doesn't seem to like running on modern Windows systems; I experienced a few game freezes and CTDs. Still, the game is fun enough that I was willing to put up with these issues in order to play through the campaign.
It's been about half a year since I played this, and I'm finally about to start the second game in the trilogy. However, I haven't been able to stop thinking about Banner Saga 1 in all that time. This game is probably the best use of a Viking/Nordic setting that I have ever experienced. It's made crystal-clear that this is a world that's slowly but inevitably dying. The elder races are dying off, the weather is eternally winter, people struggle merely to eke out a basic existence. Even if our protagonists manage to escape their current threat and reach their end goal, will they truly be safe, or are they just living on borrowed time and postponing the inevitable? Is there anywhere in the world that's truly safe? The game starts off bleak and never lets up that tension throughout its runtime. I loved the game for this. It made the roleplay decisions you're face with all the more agonizing and meaningful; you can't save everybody, so what do you prioritize? The art style and the music also really help sell this feeling of forlorn desolation: the music in particular relies mostly on (I'm assuming) traditional Scandinavian folk instruments, which adds to the melancholy atmosphere. In terms of gameplay, the game experiments with some innovative and unique mechanics, for better or worse. Overall, I thought the gameplay was fine, although the random placement of enemies at the start of battles can wildly affect the difficulty of combats. I also found the "race against time" element of the game (where you have to manage your supply of rations) to be stressful - although I suppose that was the point. As you can carry over your savefile between games in the trilogy, I probably was more cautious and conservative in my playthrough than I would've been had this been a standalone game. If you're looking for a RPG with deep gameplay and an impactful storyline, you can't go wrong with Banner Saga. Looking forward to playing BS2!
I had such high hopes going in to this game. I'd heard it would be an emotional game that dealt with mental health issues, which sounded really interesting and unique. I was excited to play it. If only the game had focused on that, instead of trying to shove in action and puzzle elements as well, I'm sure I would've loved it. Instead, I uninstalled it after 3 hours of play. I will say that they nailed the atmosphere for this game. The graphics are gorgeous and moody, the sound design is also appropriately unsettling. Unfortunately, the combat controls are clunky and slow, making fights a chore to get through - even on easy mode. Even more annoying, each boss fight is accompanied by a long unskippable cutscene beforehand, and with the way the autosave system works, you're forced to rewatch them if you decide to exit out of the game and come back to the fight later. Eventually I realized that I wasn't even that invested in the main story either; I was far more interested in the Lore collectibles telling the mythology of the Norse gods, than I was of the actual game's story itself. Senua's story is your typical fantasy quest of a warrior who has to fight/get revenge on the gods in order to rescue her lover. The mental-illness selling point of the game involves Senua hearing voices in her head...wow, how original [/sarcasm]. Honestly, by the end of my playtime, I was more annoyed at the gimmick than emotionally invested in Senua. The developers might've have some interesting ideas, but IMHO the game was marred by clumsy execution. If they'd focused on fine-tuning the story rather than trying to wedge in the action elements, it might've been a good game, but as is, this game isn't worth my time to finish.
Let me start by saying, I was excited for this game initially. I'd gone into it having heard that it was a moody, emotional, narrative game (in much the same vein as Gone Home or Life is Strange). The intro certainly hooked me in and made me invested in the characters. Given the player character's backstory, I was expecting the game to be a deep, psychological mystery, and exploration of themes of loss and loneliness. As the game headed toward its ending and answers started being revealed, however, I bounced HARD off of this game. All the mysteries ended up being tied up in a neat little bow, and had practically nothing to do with the 2 main characters; the game seemed to be hinting that the mysteries had to do with the main characters' backstories... but nope. There was a whole lotta setup, but little to no emotional payoff at the end. This was exacerbated by all the needless wandering and backtracking the game makes you do. Many missions literally tasked you with making your way from one corner of the map to the other, for no other good reason than to increase the game's runtime, with little to see and nothing interesting happening along the journey. Compare this to something like Gone Home. Both games are "walking simulators", but GH didn't force you to walk through swaths of empty landscape, and when you did have to backtrack in GH, there were always neat shortcuts and things to discover to make the process easier. GH kept its gameworld tight, and as a result, it never felt like the game overstayed its welcome. By contrast, in Firewatch I found myself just wanting to get the whole game over with by the end.
