Review of The Banner Saga

First and foremost Banner Saga is a beautiful game. The graphics are perfect for the kind of it tires to tells, it has a timeless and epic feel...sort of. The qualifier comes into play because this is not a saga. Frankly it is a half complete game and when you get to the end (of which there are some interesting twists) you will absolutely be left asking "is that all there is?" I have no issue with splitting a larger story arc into multiple games, but Banner Saga ends on such a note that it feels like the developers just walked away from the plot or expect this incomplete game to be enough.

Let us get into the guts of Banner Saga. The character building is okay and the choices you make definately have an impact though what a character can or cannot do is railroaded or platued. The combat is fun, at first, but it gets very predictable and repeditive. Attack armor, attack health on occasion do something interesting with an ability. The AI is predictable, simple and will spike their own units as often as doign it to your's. What usually happens is enemies are going to try an dog pile one PC and don't really do anything interesting or neat. As well, there is no concept of area of control, charcters can move willy-nilly. The pooled willpower (the stat that allows for extra effort / actions) is a neat concept that can tilt a battle.

Banner Saga's story is incomplete, but even with that huge detriment there are lots of interesting dialogie options and choices. Some only come to fruition much later. There are also some bugs or very poor design choices. For example waiting for a certain PC that never shows up. A quick prodding after a day or two would have helped that, but the game will absolutely let you wait until you lose. Likewise there are plot points where it feels very procedural and check list. If you do stuff out of sequence or not in a way the developers dictate you will lose the game. With modern programming and design this is a cardinal sin.

Lastly a minor gripe is that the dialogue, at times, is hard to follow. Banner Saga does not do a good job making sure it is clear who is saying what. Many of the dialogue options are filler and only tell a story animated cut scenes would have been just as effective as you never really impacted the plot.

The brass tax? Banner Saga is worth picking up? Yes, if it is on sale. By on sale I mean for about five bucks as it left me wanting more in a bad way.

It is not a very long game when you consider outside of fighting some very repetitive battles and some annoying long cut scenes (get used to lots of scrolling that you cannot fast forward through) it is about an hour long game.