The Banner Saga

Game key provided for free by developer

Never before has a game filled me with so much dread and stress and still become one of the games I've had the funnest time with. The Banner Saga always makes you second guess yourself and ask if you're making the right choice. Something you feel may be best in the short term can come back to bite you and greatly impact your chance of survival. In a beautifully crafted world filled with sweeping vistas, large mountains, and interesting scenarios, you never know what is coming next or how you'll make it through.

From the moment the game begins you see a large caravan treading through a snowy landscape. Some of the first words you hear are "the gods are dead". The sense of uneasiness begins. As you enter your first town you find a coup of sorts taking place. You step in and learn of a larger threat coming from the north, the Dredge, a race of hulking monstrosities with no other mission in life then to destroy everything that stands in their path. As you leave the town you are tasked with escorting the human price to the Varl capital to form an alliance between human and Varl (a giant like race) kind. 

 

The story switches to a couple of heroes to the east. (In the first few chapters you follow two groups but eventually become one large caravan). A father, Rook and his daughter, Alette who are seen hiding from a pack of Dredge. Here you learn more about the turn based combat system. Every single attack in this game feels impactful. Each unit has an armor and stamina meter leading to more strategic battles. Should you break away armor on an enemy you'll be able to do more stamina damage to them. Stamina acts as both your health and how much damage you do. I found it fun in the later game to send my tankier units to the front line and smash away large chucks of stamina while my ranger characters sat in the back lines almost able to wipe out entire armor bars by themselves. 

After battles, you are rewarded with renown. This is used as to both promote your units and improve their stats and used as currency to purchase supplies. Supplies are essential on your trek across the world to escape from the Dredge as your caravan grows. During my time with the game and especially in the later parts I was constantly balancing whether I wanted a chance to keep my caravan well or keep my warriors up to snuff with their opponents. 

My absolute favorite part about this game is the constant need to make choices, even though I never feel like I made the right one. As I type this I still feel like I made the wrong final choice, though both options were impossible to feel 100% great about. Along your journey from town to town there could be four or five small choices that will affect you. These could be a decision of what to do with a troublemaker in the caravan or which path to take at a fork in the road. One example that really sticks out to me was when a cart full of supplies was hanging over a cliff that was being held back by one of my characters and a dredge. Without specifics of what I did, the cart ended up falling to the bottom of the cliff. I decided to leave the cart be as I felt hanging around the situation could be dangerous. After a few minutes had gone by I got word that someone in my caravan had been sending people back to recover the supplies lost from the cart. Had I made that choice at the time who knows what would have happened both then, and later down the road. 

When you make a choice or something outside of your control happens to the caravan your morale stat either declines or improves. After every in game day it decreases, along with some supplies. I found myself just barely scraping by with normal morale and supplies towards the last few towns. Morale effects your will in battle, used to give your characters either more movement or extra attack power. It was more than a meter for me though. After every time I saw "morale declined" when making a choice it made me worry more about the next choice I would have to make and how it was going to affect those that have put their trust in me to lead them away from impending doom. 

One of the best parts about The Banner Saga is that it's just the first part of a trilogy. A game has never stressed me out more but I cannot wait to experience the rest of what this world has to show me. A beautiful world, with characters you care about, and a fantastic combat system lead to a game I could not put down. Those not fans of tactical turn based games should look past that just to experience a gripping narrative filled with impactful choices. I look forward to diving into The Banner Saga 2 right away so that when the finale of the trilogy releases next month I'll be all caught up and see how my choices impact the final story. The Banner Saga is an absolute masterpiece.