On paper Banner Saga (BS) should be right up my alley. It’s a beautifully hand-drawn indie game, with its gameplay based on real time strategical combat. Plus, it has a semi-historical setting, which again screams an Adam game to me.

However, my first experience with BS was actually back on the PS4 after the release of BS2. I’d bought the games in a bundle and dived head first into BS, as I’d heard so much about this indie gem. Nevertheless, after about an hour of playing, I really couldn’t get into the game, I put it down and never returned to it.

Despite not liking it back on PS4, when Age of Boredom came on The Switch Indie Fix Podcast and sang the praises of BS2, I decided to give the original another chance. Furthermore, the week after the podcast I had a trip back to England planned, so I knew I had plenty of time to play it!

The Story

Stoic Studios have crafted a beautiful and rich world in BS. Based on Nordic folk lore, the developers have taken these old tales and moulded them perfectly around a very grown up and serious narrative. The world is stuck in perpetual twilight as the sun never sets in the long cold winters. In this over arch of potentially world ending events, there are smaller two stories, which ultimately merge together to form the epic saga that is the Banner Saga.

The first of which is that of Ubin the Varl. The Varl are a type of giant race that live alongside humans in semi-alliance against the other evil races of the world. Ubin, with his caravan of tax collectors, stumbles across a party of old friends that are escorting a young human prince called Ludin to the Varl capital of Grofheim.

Along the way Ubin and his companions firstly discover that the human Prince is a brat and that something very wrong is happening in the world. An ancient and banished race known as the Dredge have been spotted in Varl and human lands. In a skirmish with these evil beings, one of Ubin’s oldest friends is killed, confirming to the Varls and humans alike that this the start of the third Varl-Dredge War and the end of the world.

The second tale is that of Rook, a hunter and father who’s just trying to make his way in the world. Living in the small village of Skogr, Rook’s main problems are usually the wellbeing of his daughter Alette and making sure his village has enough food to last the winter.

Be that as it may, their world is drastically changed when they encounter a single Dredge on one of their hunts. After successfully killing the creature, the pair return to Skogr to consult the village’s only Varl Iver on what they should do next.

However, when they return they find the village has been burned down to the ground, with their chieftain killed and Iver doing his best to hold back the Dredge. Assessing the situation, Rook takes control of the remaining people of Skogr and fights off the Dredge. Knowing that their village is no longer safe, Rook and Iver decide that the best course of action is to pack up their belongs and head to the Varl fortress of Einatroft. Nevertheless, along the way the caravan comes across countless challenges and obstacles which through your own quick thinking, you the player must overcome.

The Game

BS has some unique game genres that are all mixed together. With the story the game has a sort of ‘choose your own story’ mechanic, where the player can choose different branching answers that affect the result of the story. This means that each player should have a different experience, but every player is brought back to one of two endings. Nevertheless, though I liked the variety of choices, I always felt that there was no real consequences to them (until the final choice). It made me think that though the story makes you want to believe your actions have huge impacts on the world and story around you, it actually doesn’t effect it that much. At least in this game anyway. The Banner Saga series is one long story, with BS being only the first 7 chapters. So maybe your decisions will impact the story later on in the the sequels.

The combat was actually the thing that first put me off BS when I played it the first time on PS4. Nevertheless, I’m so glad I gave it a second chance as I thought it was so much fun to play!

In each battle the player can choose up to 6 characters to have in their team. Each character has an armour, strength and willpower stats. The armour stat is pretty self explanatory, but it also has an effect on the character’s strength stat. Strength contributes to both the character’s health and damage. However, if a character has a lot of armour, enemies’ attacks are weaker when they attack a character’s health. Therefore, the game wants you to attack armour first and then health to finally knock out an enemy. This is possible as the player can choose which of these two stats they want to attack first.

Willpower is basically a mana stat that lets characters use their special attacks. Special attacks buff team mates, push enemies around the battlefield and do RNG damage. In an RPG style, players can upgrade and level up characters using renown, which is rewarded to you when characters have killed a certain amount of enemies. So if you use the same team over and over they can become very powerful.

The battles are grid and turn based, with it the player and AI taking one turn after another. The battle system totally made me do a 180 with my opinion of the game. When I played back on PS4 I thought it was too in-depth and unaccessible. However, after spending more time with BS on the Nintendo Switch, I realised that the combat also has some puzzle aspects to it. For example, if you group Dredge together your attacks will cause a chain reaction to all Dredge touching each other. Thus, if they are all grouped together you can do damage to every single unit whilst only using one turn. Little tips and tricks like this really helped me in the combat and progression of the game. Overall, I’d say combat is challenging, but once you’ve mastered the systems the game wants you to learn, it becomes much more managable.

The third mechanic (and my least favourite of the game) is the resource management of your caravan. As I said in the story section, Rook leads a caravan of people off towards Einatroft. Within the caravan are Clansmen, Varl and Fighters, which all play into the games battle system. To feed all of these people you need to buy supplies. Supplies can be bought from Markets and can be traded for renown. If you run out of supplies, your population of fighters and Varls will slowly decrease until you top up your supplies again. As you watch your caravan move slowly from one side of the screen to another, random events will occur which will lead to combat, items being found or supplies being gained or lost.

Honestly, the caravan portions of the game were the weakest for me. At times they felt like loading screens between the story beats and combat. Though it did look stunning to see your character move across the beautiful countryside, towards the end of the game you can basically put your switch down and let the game play itself. There is so much of the caravan just moving from town to town. I thought this made the game drag towards the end, as there really wasn’t that much game to play. This is because I’d ran out of supplies and was just sat watching my population slowly decrease.

Furthermore, the decrease in population didn’t really seem to have any effect on the battles in the game anyway. This is because I usually would just charge in to the battle and fight the same enemies over and over, it didn’t matter if I had more or less men than the enemy. I thought the battle mechanic was a cool idea, but just executed badly. I’m excited to see if Stoic tweaked it in the sequels.

Art and Music

The art and music in BS are absolutely phenomenal! The hand-drawn characters look amazing and having played the full game in handheld mode, I can safely say that they pop on the Switch’s screen. From close ups of the characters to the more zoomed out view of the caravan, the game is stunning.

However, I really would like to see some character models added in the sequels, as each character only had one character model in BS. It’d be cool and a bit more refreshing if characters mirrored their surroundings instead of always looking the same.

The nordic influence not only effects the lore of the world but the music too. Especially when you visit God Stones in the game. The music slowly escalates from gentle background music, to burly Vikings chanting. Playing the game with headphones on is definitely the best way to experience it.

Problems

The only real problem I had with the game was that by the end I felt like it over stayed its welcome. Partly this was to do with the long caravan sequence, however, mainly it was because of the final battle. In the final battle you fight a boss who has a ton of armour. The aim of the battle is to get all of his armour down to zero, then you have to shoot him with a special arrow. Getting rid of his armour isn’t as easy as you’d think though because he does a ton of damage, often 1-hitting team members, especially the human ones (which I had a lot of).

What I found annoying is that once you hit him with the special weapon the battle is basically reset. This means to win you have to get rid of all of his armour AND all of his strength before he knocks out your team. As I said, I had a lot of humans in my team so they were killed in one hit. Plus, there are other enemies you have to deal with on the battle field. So putting all of this together I just got extremely frustrated with the game- I just wanted to be finished! In the end I had to put the difficultly down because I couldn’t beat the second stage of the boss! Every other battle in the game is manageable at normal difficulty, except from this one! The final hour of the game left a bitter taste in my mouth- it frankly goes from boring to frustrating. Although, the story beats towards the end are ok.

In addition, there wasn’t too much variety in enemies. After the fourth or fifth fight with the Dredge, I feel like you’ve seen every enemy type. Nevertheless, I’ve been assured more enemies are added in BS2, I just wanted to point it out here.

Summary

To conclude, Banner Saga by Stoic Studios is a very good game. It’s not quite great, but I’m excited to see how Stoic builds on this solid foundation in Banner Saga 2 and 3. The art style and music are beautiful, putting the look of BS on a pedestal above other indie games on the Nintendo Switch. The combat is challenging, however, I feel like the game does an excellent job of teaching you how it wants you to play it, making most of the battles manageable for even novice real-time strategy players.

The world Stoic has created is rich and full of lore. It makes you feel like events happened in the world before you (the player) were there and that events will happen after you’ve left the world. This is emphasised with the game’s story, which you are given full control of via branching dialogue trees. However, I felt that though there is a lot of choice within the game to create your own story, there are not that many consequences to your decisions. With the game ultimately leading players to one of two endings.

My least favourite part of the game is the caravan system that totally overstays its welcome in the last hour of the game, making me feel like I was just staring at a pretty loading screen. Plus, the last boss was so frustrating!

Should you buy this game? Yes- the world is gorgeous and the story is interesting enough to make me want to find out what happens in the next game. The combat is a challenge but fun!

The final hour however, is a bit of a let down but I’m excited to see how Stoic evolve the Banner Saga series in Banner Saga 2.

Therefore, I give Banner Saga by Stoic Studios my rating of

Have you played Banner Saga? If so did you enjoy the challenging battles? Do you like the hand drawn art style? Let me know over on the Switch Indie Fix Discord server or hit me up personally on Twitter or Instagram

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