The classic version was fun, but they appear to have dropped support for it so hard that, unless you bought the DLCs beforehand, you can't use them with it anymore and, even if you did, you need to use innoextract to manually unpack and install them because the DLC installers can't find the Zip-provided Classic version extra. I brought this up with GOG, but they said the devs have final say, and I brought it up with the devs, but they pointed me at Galaxy and then went silent after I mentioned I'd solved it in a "just for me, as a highly technical user" way by innoextract-ing the DLC installers and dropping the relevant files into what came out of the Zip.
While it got annoying at certain moments when the player character refused to go down a path I "had no more need for at that point in time" or an NPC said "Hey, get back here and check this out first", it was, overall, a charming game that I'm happy to have played. I just wish that the secrets were better implemented, given that they aren't just Steam-esque achievements but actually unlock a bonus location with things like concept sketches. I didn't even know there WERE secrets until the snowman near the end of the game, some of them are things you'd never think to try, and it doesn't let you free-roam areas you've been before in order to go back and find them through any means other than the "New Game > Chapters" option you get after beating the game the first time.
Overall, a beautiful puzzle platformer. Visually, I'm left feeling that it's what the 3D Rayman games would have been if the available technology at the time had been more capable of expressing the necessary art style. I love that each boss has their own song and, aside from one line in the plague nightmare's song which I think is in poor taste, I like them all. As for the puzzles, I'm not a huge fan of the timed puzzles in clockwork town (especially the one where you have to race the clock AND dodge the razor-sharp clock hands), and I'm also not a huge fan of the "Sokoban the shield around while saying protected from the waves of despair puzzles", but I had no complaints otherwise. I did notice a couple of times when a boss got stuck on geometry for a second or two during a cutscene and then teleported to the next keyframe'd position, but, otherwise, the game has been solid for me. The choice to end on a movie-style "song with vocals playing over a stylized credits crawl" left me feeling "Now THAT was how you do a game which aspires to movie-like storytelling without making the player grow to resent what cutscenes there are!" NOTE: I play my platformers using an XBox 360 pad, so my rating doesn't take into account how the game may control without one.
The art in the game IS beautiful and, when it's doing the kinds of puzzles it excels at, it's well-done... I gotta take a couple of stars off for the skill-based minigames that are mandatory to progress the game... especially when one required me to find an online A.I. that I could pit against the 5x5 tic-tac-toe game to progress. ...and the arcade... why do you make a point-and-click adventure gamer who likes puzzle-solving play arcade games for coins? Why not just have the coin already be in the coin return? It also doesn't help that they don't always make it clear what's interactible, so I needlessly opened the built-in walkthrough just to discover non-obvious game mechanics.. sometimes because they require you to manually walk over to things before you can use items on them. (And deselecting an inventory item when you're too far away to use it has too many steps. Why not just a right-click like in so many other point-and-click games?)
When I was a kid, these were always the kinds of games I was curious about but never had (aside from Mario RPG), so I can only critique from a modern perspective..It's a charming little isometric puzzle-platformer that, as Temko.841 said, it full of references. (Specifically, references to the 1980s) For whatever reason, I didn't encounter any of the graphical or input glitches some of the other reviewers complained about. In fact, the Linux version worked flawlessly for me, aside from an oddity in the gamepad mapping UI where it called one of my buttons "Action 2" at first but then correctly gave the X-Box 360 controller button name when I asked to re-map it and pressed the button that was already the default. With a gamepad, the controls are generally good and I really like the support for customizing how they map to the isometric axes... but the block-pushing+hopping puzzle in the ice area is a frustrating momentary difficulty spike. You should NOT have to do precision jumping on slippery ice blocks that will push and shatter if your attempt to overcorrect causes you to push them by mistake... and I find playing a little Getting Over It with Bennet Foddy every day to have a relaxing zen to it! (no joke) The fact that there's a delay before the "respawn block" button will work just adds insult to injury. It does have some unskippable mini-games (eg. a minecart stage), but they're fairly easy and I'd have preferred if it didn't hide the total number of some of the collectables. The most glaring wart, in my opinion, is how it starts you out by asking you to pick a gender and color, then requires you to spend a minute as an ultra-generic kid walking to the Tron-esque digitizer before the game starts. It's pointless, feels very tacked-on, and gives a poor first impression. That said, pixel-art would have been better. Whatever it is that my childhood has left me wanting from these games is tied to the distinctive isometric look that I would sometimes glimpse.
The Banner Saga was the second thing I ever backed on Kickstarter after Double Fine Adventure introduced me to the platform and, as a fan of both tactical RPGs like Final Fantasy Tactics and Eyvind Earle's art, the game felt like a match made in heaven. Unfortunately, that view has been soured by my further interactions with the developers. On release day for the sequel, we backers who pledged $50+ (and, thus, were promised all three episodes) and preferred DRM-free games were informed that they had no plans for a DRM-free release of episode 2 and that all obligations on their part beyond SOME form of key for episodes 2 and 3 were limited to the first episode. Worse, while saying that, they also said "We sadly saw increases in piracy once we had a DRM-free for Banner Saga 1. Can't speak for the global game market nor other game developers but it's what we saw first hand over 2 years ago. " 10 days later, after having their game cracked on release day and experiencing a relatively dismal first week of sales on Steam, TBS2 has showed up in GOG's upcoming list without acknowledgement or explanation and, despite my spoon-feeding them examples of ways they can say "no comment" diplomatically, they continue to act like politicians or robots in the backer-only comments while dismissively blaming us for being dissatisfied, for thinking their mention of DRM-free and piracy in the same sentence meant anything, and for and expecting anything more than the most conservative legalese interpretation of their Kickstarter promises our dissatisfaction. I think I'll go re-play my copy of Final Fantasy Tactics instead. Instead of having emotional baggage, that's nostalgic and it's also a complete game. If I didn't have a strict policy of taking the moral high ground and excommunicating DRM-only games, I'd consider pirating the copy of TBS2 I'm supposed to have already paid for out of spite.
Beautiful soundtrack, but making it paid DLC is insulting. If you missed the Humble Bundle which included the game, OST, and artbook, listen on YouTube and wait for it to show up in another Humble Bundle.
