Ekkill
Ekkill’s Guts ability knocks back enemies, clearing some space on cramped battlefields. Just be careful he doesn’t hit one of your own side.
Nid
This late-game recruit arrives with a bundle of points to spend, turning her into your deadliest asset. Her Puncture passive is ideal for finishing off crippled foes.
Eyvind
Your party’s healer. Ensure Eyvind is well-protected and he’ll keep your party alive, while conjuring lightning bolts that damage enemies from a distance.
Egil
Far from your strongest warrior, but it’s worth trying to keep Egil alive until the end, as you’ll get an Achievement for doing so.
Harder than you think.
72 APRil 2014
Hurrah for the return of parallax scrolling! We’ve missed it.
Pausing at these monuments to the gods is oddly comforting.
You’ll want to punch the unbearably smug Prince Ludin.
You can set up test battles to try out new characters.
“No, no. These are small, those are far away.”
Winter is comi— oh wait, it’s already here.
Nid: silly name, great archer.
Gentle giant Ubin is the saga’s narrator.
No one takes Gunnulf’s Mr Stabby.
april 201 73
Eyvind prepares to do his best Gandalf impression.
It’s a shame there’s not more enemy variety.
She’d be a shoo-in for The Hunger Games.
You can’t catch him, he’s the ginger beard man.
Even seemingly insignificant encounters flesh out the world.
Sometimes doing nothing is the best choice. Or is it?
74 april 2014
review
There are deeper strategy
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games, but few where you’ll feel quite so invested in the outcome.
Recommended.
◆ Expect to pay $25 ◆ Release Out now ◆ Developer Stoic Games ◆ Publisher Versus Evil
◆ Multiplayer None ◆ Link www.stoicstudio.com refreshing to find a game that doesn’t try to sugar-coat them.
These dilemmas aren’t the only interruptions to your journey. Every so often you’ll be thrust into battle, tackling a selection of Dredge (or, less often, human and Varl opponents) in short, grid-based skirmishes. Select your party members—up to six—and you’ll be given a limited space to position them before it all kicks off. Then you’ll take it in turns with your enemy to move each unit, choosing whether to attack or use that character’s special ability. Special abilities cost willpower, a finite resource that can be regained by resting for a turn, or by slaying an enemy. You can also use it to boost your movement range or increase attack power, which opens up a number of tactical possibilities.
When attacking, you can opt to target a unit’s armor or its strength.
Armor points represent the amount of damage that can be nullified, while the strength bar also acts as a health meter. Reduce the latter and you’ll debilitate them, lessening the impact of their attacks. Get it down to zero and they’ll collapse dramatically to the floor. Even with fewer foes, every other turn will belong to the enemy until there’s only one left, at which point you can mop up the last one standing with whichever team member you choose.
Party members can only be promoted to a new level—earning two points to spend on boosting their stats each time—once they’ve slain enough foes, so it often pays to soften enemies up with stronger party members for the less experienced units to earn the kill.
The combat is fairly basic in concept, but there are tactical nuances to be found within. Varl fighters take up four squares, enabling you to set up a defensive barrier for archers, yet with two or three in the field, not to mention the larger variants of your statuesque foes, movement can be severely restricted. Abilities can quickly turn the tide of battle: corral enemies into a tight space and a Warhawk’s Tempest attack will let them whirl their sword clockwise through the group, damaging several enemies in a single swipe. The Hunter can mark his prey with a minor blow to his
opponent’s armor, prompting any friendly units within range to immediately launch an attack of their own. Consider, too, the Dredge’s tough outer shells, which deal damage to adjacent allies when you connect with an attack.
Maneuver them into a line and the armor-piercing Thread The Needle skill can easily puncture a row of three enemies, leading to a satisfying domino effect.
A pity, then, that the stakes aren’t as high during combat as they are elsewhere. Surprisingly, there’s no death here: what looks like a fatal blow only results in an injury to the fallen, and while you’ll need to wait some days for those units to recover before they can fight again, it hardly feels like sufficient punishment for carelessness, particularly in light of the far-reaching consequences to your actions outside battle.
Encounters offer a welcome challenge, but the game’s need to keep narrative-crucial characters alive is somewhat at odds with its often punishing nature.
Kicksaga
The game occasionally breaks its own rules, too. At one stage I’d run out of supplies entirely, having spent all my renown—Banner Saga’s all-purpose currency—on leveling up my two archers. With morale at rock bottom, and humans and Varl alike dying en route to the next settlement, I was offered an unlikely lifeline when the next narrative quandary centered on the theft of...
supplies. Chasing down the guilty parties, I recovered enough of these non-existent goods to make it to the next village.
That’s among the most damning evidence of the game’s budgetary constraints; Kickstarter cash can only fund so much, after all. There are signs elsewhere, too: it’s a shame to see character models repeating, particularly when your most recent recruit ends up firing arrows at an enemy doppelganger. And while the Bakshi and Bluth-inspired art is strikingly beautiful, the static dialogue sequences can feel a little flat, no matter how good the writing is—and happily, it’s very good, with just the right dose of dry gallows humor. However much of the money went to Austin Wintory,
on the other hand, the investment was worth it. Rich, evocative, and laden with portent and melancholy, the soundtrack is more than a match for the majesty of the
environments.
Indeed, there’s a certain quiet grandeur to your party’s march across the parallax-scrolling wastes, dwarfed by the world they inhabit and the enormity of their situation.
These non-playable sequences give you time to reflect on events, on decisions you’ve made and allies you’ve lost, while conveying both the passage of time and the sense of journey in a more convincing manner than almost any other game. Perhaps that’s The Banner Saga’s most remarkable feat of all:
this saga may be over within a dozen or so hours, yet it still has the weight and feel of an epic.