A-Z Backlog challenge: Banner Saga
Banner Saga combines a choose your own adventure style visual novel with tactical battles.
The story has a Viking legend setting and the story alternates between you controlling two caravans containing various heroes as well as a number of Varl, fighters and other men.
One of the caravans sees Varl (Giant humanoids) accompanying the human prince to the Varl capital to make an alliance against the monstrous dredge who are moving south to threaten all as they had done in the past.
You are introduced to a lot of characters very quickly and I feel this takes a bit away from building a connection with them. The second caravan is a more personal story. Here we meet a hunter, Rook and his daughter who find dredge close to and later attacking their home town. They lead survivors across the continent in search of a safe place to resettle.
While travelling various semi-random events will occur and you will have to choose how to respond to them. Some will lead to possible losses or the gaining of men, morale or resources. Others will lead to battles against the dredge or bandits
Battles are fought on a grid. Each character has a strength and shield value. Strength is both health and determines the damage a character does (minus the defenders shield value). You have the option to attack an enemies strength to weaken or kill him or attack the shield so other characters will do more damage later.
There are a number of different classes such as archers, warleaders, spearmen and raiders who each have different passive and active skills. Archers for example do extra damage on turns they do not move, while shieldbangers do 1 point of shield damage to all who attack them. You gain renown form winning battles and through other successful actions. This is the currency which can be spent on levelling charactes (if they have enough kills to be eligible for promotion) , buying food and special items heroes can equip bonuses to stats. When you level a character you can increase their strength, shield, battle morale, link or shield break. Link is the number of morale points you can spend per turn to give you extra movement or damage. Morale is used up in this way but can be replenished 1 point for each kill and in full between battles.
You can have a maximum of 6 heroes per battle so there is a lot of opportunity to try out different combinations to find which suits your style best. I didn't find the battles difficult on medium level- only losing two. The first was when I went with a lot of my low level guys in an attempt to level them and the second was the final battle of the game.
Although I didn't like the setting that much I enjoyed the art style and found myself more interested in seeing how the plot developed as the game wore on. The human characters in particular were well developed. There is also some replayability due to the random nature of events- you are unlikely to meet or integrate all possible heroes into your caravans in one playthrough. I look forward to playing the sequel and what else comes from these developers.
Released: 2014
Steam price: $19.99
Cheapest sale price: $4.99 (75% off)
Rating 7/10
The story has a Viking legend setting and the story alternates between you controlling two caravans containing various heroes as well as a number of Varl, fighters and other men.
One of the caravans sees Varl (Giant humanoids) accompanying the human prince to the Varl capital to make an alliance against the monstrous dredge who are moving south to threaten all as they had done in the past.
You are introduced to a lot of characters very quickly and I feel this takes a bit away from building a connection with them. The second caravan is a more personal story. Here we meet a hunter, Rook and his daughter who find dredge close to and later attacking their home town. They lead survivors across the continent in search of a safe place to resettle.While travelling various semi-random events will occur and you will have to choose how to respond to them. Some will lead to possible losses or the gaining of men, morale or resources. Others will lead to battles against the dredge or bandits
Battles are fought on a grid. Each character has a strength and shield value. Strength is both health and determines the damage a character does (minus the defenders shield value). You have the option to attack an enemies strength to weaken or kill him or attack the shield so other characters will do more damage later.
You can have a maximum of 6 heroes per battle so there is a lot of opportunity to try out different combinations to find which suits your style best. I didn't find the battles difficult on medium level- only losing two. The first was when I went with a lot of my low level guys in an attempt to level them and the second was the final battle of the game.
Although I didn't like the setting that much I enjoyed the art style and found myself more interested in seeing how the plot developed as the game wore on. The human characters in particular were well developed. There is also some replayability due to the random nature of events- you are unlikely to meet or integrate all possible heroes into your caravans in one playthrough. I look forward to playing the sequel and what else comes from these developers.
Released: 2014
Steam price: $19.99
Cheapest sale price: $4.99 (75% off)
Rating 7/10
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