Banner Saga Review
I have to admit: I'm a little out of loop when it comes to games and pretty much anything else these days. I'm a practicing Buddhist and might become a monk one day, plus there's been a lot of life changes that make me less likely to play games now. I'm getting old. The dawn of my second decade living is nigh, and I have horrible pains that will only end the second my last breath is cast into the soothing wind.
So it's obvious that my first real game review will be Banner Saga, available on pretty much every platform, including mobile. The game is like $10, and for this day and age, it's a steal. I'm being asked for $60 for like 4 hours of garbage and screaming. This game is the cost of a music CD, with just as much entertainment. Or if you're like me, it's cheaper than the starting price of JavHD.com. I enjoy how JavHD has everything uncensored, because I enjoy the view of asian pussy. Sometimes they are dark, but that's normal, I'm not knocking points off their smash value just because of a tint they can't control.
Unless they are black. There's just no going back, as the young people say.
But before I get too ahead of myself, I need to summarize the game.
A Norse mythology world has the Gods dead. This means no mention of Odin or Thor or Baldr or Loki. Just good old fashion vikings in a magical world. They get a new foe called The Dredge, who are like the stone creatures from Disney's Atlantis, but with swords and crystals. At first I thought it was weird, and I wished they included Frost Giants, but after a bit I accepted it and just enjoyed the ride.
I also have to be honest where I say that the game had a bad opening. I didn't enjoy the opening because it was really easy, but I was an idiot and didn't wait like 5 minutes for when your caravan starts migrating to a new town. In this game, your caravan takes up most of your time as it ventures to safety, and away from the Dredge horde, as you encounter a new conflict every chapter. There's 7 chapters and the game praises itself for being highly replayable.
This means, you're meant to fail and do everything stupid on your first playthrough, and then remember all your mistakes for the next go around. Or if you're a bitch, you can look up the right choices as you pee sitting down.
The game is a turn based RPG with a grid and group system similar to games like Final Fantasy Tactics. So if you like FFT, you'll like this game right from the get-go, but be warned. This game has something we don't see anymore: it has difficulty. And I'm not talking about difficulty like the battles are hard, but it has difficult choices.
The choices will fuck your ass as you think you're doing the right thing and you end up doing everything wrong. Most of the choices go around in the circle of:
-selfish and evil
-good and sacrificial
-avoid and do nothing you lazy shit
You can guess that you later on get the endings of either good, bad, or neutral. Or at least I think you do, because I have yet to beat the game as of writing this. I'm having too much fun with the combat. This combat is awesome. it rapes you in the mouth and slaps you like the pussy you are, and I love every second of it.
Every character has their own "class" which just means they will have a different type of special attack and stat max. Not every character will act the same, and you can only place 6 on the field every battle, and you'll be glad it's that small. Anytime one of your guys falls in battle, which is common, they will be injured, and be missing like 3 STRENGTH until you rest your caravan. Most guys have around 12 or 14 STRENGTH, so being at 75% when the battle starts is something out of Dark Souls 2.
I could explain the fighting, but there's little to explain that the game doesn't at the first screen. You have an ARMOR bar and a STRENGTH bar. STRENGTH is both your attack and your health, meaning the lower it is, the closer you are to sweet death and the less you can do to fight off the globalists. Your ARMOR is your defense, meaning high ARMOR makes it easier to avoid damage by a percentage once it's above the opponent's STRENGTH. A little confusing at first, but that's the beauty of it, it's different.
This game wasn't really game of the year material, because it was a small kickstarter that was really a passion product from ex-AAA game designers from Bioware who I think are dudes who worked on Star Wars KOTOR. When you play the game, you can get a feel of dialogue and events that feel like Dragon Age. Personally, I like this world more than Dragon Age, especially since Inquisition is hot garbage, but I might talk about that thing later.
Some things I like that nobody really mentions is how the game keeps mages weak and they require a lot of energy to just heal an arm wound. It's great to see a weakness in every character, including the Varl, who are these giant horned dwarf looking people. They look like if someone combined a Gimli with a goat, and I love these guys, even though they are a little too retarded in their historical background nonsense. They act like Elves, but fight like dwarves, and the are an interesting race to dive into that I'm not used to.
I read that there is a race called the Horseborn, who are like Centaurs people, but I've reached Chapter 5 and still haven't seen head or tail of them. There's 3 "sagas" of the Banner Saga series, making 22 chapters in total, and Banner Saga 3 just barely came out last July.
Seriously? Nobody has been talking about this game! I played the first one again after several years of having it grow dust in my GOG library, now I find out there's 3 of them and the series just barely finished a few months ago. I love this game. It's worthy of being a timeless classic. It's not a cash grab, and the art combined with the music is some of the most inspirational work I've seen in a while.
I hope every indie game developer sees what these guys did, follow their example, and do something very similar with their RPG maker works. We have to stop with these final fantasy style nonsense, and get more down to earth with RPG games that can really wow us. I think the only real problem with this game is that the caravan moves slow, on purpose of course, they want you to enjoy the background they took so long to drawn. But even then, it's not really a complaint from me.
The game is great. Great combat, great story, great characters, great replay value, and if all 3 games are bought, it's the same cost as a normal game, but with everything wonderful that american RPG gaming has built up since Baulder's Gate came out. If I had to rate it, I'd rate it maybe a 9/10, but that's mostly because I wish there was more to enjoy. They give you this big map and you can't choose where to move. If they came out with a new game that allowed you to explore the world, I'd give it a 10/10 for sure.
Trust me, this game is awesome. It's super sugoi. If this game was a woman, it'd be Asami Yuma.
9/10