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Despite its flaws, The Banner Saga official site is one of the most memorable indie releases of 2014, and now the second act is here to push the story to even more desperate frontiers.But does The Banner Saga 2 improve upon its predecessor’s lackluster strategy combat while still expanding on its promising story? The Banner Saga 2 is a mesmerizing and engaging turn-based RPG with powerful storytelling. It may be a couple years old now, but it’s an impressive Switch port with zero compromises.
The game opens amidst the aftermath of a massive battle from — The Banner Saga 2 literally begins at Chapter 8 and goes from there. In this game filled with fantastical creatures, there’s an apocalypse coming. People are dead, lives are upended and you have to move forward into the story without any time to catch your breath.Throughout the next 10 hours, as you lead a caravan of refugees to what is thought to be the last safe place in a world being swallowed by a Darkness, Banner Saga 2 weighed down on me more and more. And somehow, I welcomed it.
As you negotiate through conflicts, a small slip of the tongue can result in the deaths of dozens, or even launch you into a battle that you can’t win.For the uninitiated, Banner Saga 2 is a tactical, turn-based strategy game that features the end of a Viking-inspired world. The characters, a mixture of humans, Varl (giants) and, later in the game, centaur-like horseborn, are seeking Aberrang, the last safe haven from the oncoming 'Darkness.' As your caravan treads through the apocalyptic wasteland that was once your home, you face threats outside your understanding and within your own ranks. Stoic has created a large, oppressive worldBanner Saga 2 revels in its foreboding atmosphere. Developer Stoic has created a large, oppressive world, where friends and enemies alike face the end of all things. The Dredge — the rocky, seemingly mindless foes that you commonly battle against — are also on the run from this Darkness and are just as desperate as you are.
As you travel and shed members of your caravan, the situation becomes even more desperate. As I was racing to stop a Dredge sundr from bringing back the dead, it truly felt like the end of the world.This is reflected in The Banner Saga 2's art direction. Your small clans and groups chug through large, abandoned and torn-up landscapes. Villages are empty and covered in smoke. The ground is rocky and broken, but elements are able to make it seem less dreary. One sequence that brings your caravan into the mines is dark and cramped, but the little bits of light that shine in through the cracks in the rock wall are placed exactly to illuminate your little group hustling.
Sometimes, however, the amount of detail in the environment gets in the way of the important aspects of a scene. A loose branch on a tree can obscure half of a battlefield. Natural obstacles in the path of characters can block out some of your smaller players, which becomes a bigger problem when you have giant Varl in your party that can block out part of the battlefield with its bulk.
The darkness of the Dredge — figures almost entirely clothed in black — also can mess things up when they fade into objects or other characters.However, it’s easy to forget little annoyances that appear in battle when everything else works to the game’s aesthetic advantage. When you come across any of the large, intricate Godstones depicting ancient legends line your path, and as the poet Aleo relates the world’s mythology, it introduces needed bits of hope, as well as a needed break in the action. After coming out of a tough battle and sitting at the base of one of these statues, it’s relieving as you gain bonuses from just being in its presence.
The battles themselves are also a welcome distraction from environmental annoyances. They’re complex and vary in each situation, which helped to keep me on my toes. The Dredge have multiple types, which makes for puzzle-like battles that forced me to devise new parties and strategies with each fight. I needed to create variety in my party, place them appropriately on the battlefield and in turn order, and make sure that I could account for any surprise mechanics. I often employed a couple Varl, an archer, a raider, and some kind of support, but this could change.
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When the horseborn were introduced halfway through the game, I began to utilize their unique skills, whether it was long-distance attacks or their ability to run away following a melee. It forced me to live with drastic and usually negative consequencesThere are many new characters to take advantage of, such as Aleo and the horseborn, but many have been following you since the original Banner Saga. Depending on the choices you made in the first game (or if you played the first game at all), the stories can be vastly different.
You can start the game as Rook, a seasoned hunter, or Alette, Rook’s daughter.I didn’t play much of the first game and I think my experience suffered for it. Explanations of its turn-based combat system and the characters are ample enough in Banner Saga 2 that I felt less lost, but there was always a slight sense of something missing. Many characters, especially ones that were introduced earlier, don’t get enough screen time to validate some of their actions. I’m not sure if this is due to paths and side stories I may have missed, but some arcs come out of nowhere — including one moment where I was surprised by professions of love from a party member who I didn’t interact with at all.
Despite a reliance on the first game that often left me somewhat disoriented, The Banner Saga 2's narrative drew me in and never really let up. Alette must learn to lead in the immediate aftermath of her father’s death, but those responsibilities present a harsh truth: you can't please everyone. While I hoped the choices I made as I progressed would strengthen my characters, I struggled with forces beyond my characters’ understanding, and with problems I was powerless to fix. The lack of manual save points — which I use a lot in choice-making games to see all options — drives this point home. It forced me to live with drastic and usually negative consequences, and even the final moments of The Banner Saga 2 felt a bit like a sucker punch. Those uninitiated with the series, like me, can’t be fully prepared for what’s to come during the next 10 hours. Even once the realization that it was all going to end poorly dawned on me, I couldn’t accept it.
When I was given the choice to talk to the Ravens as Bolverk about a looming death, I couldn’t bring myself to stay in character as the gruff, insensitive varl. I wanted to tell everyone that it was going to be okay. Wrap Up: The Banner Saga 2 is a well-crafted, gut-wrenching taleThe Banner Saga 2 is familiar enough for those into fantasy, but Stoic manages to craft a complex narrative within those genre conventions.
The combat sequences are elaborate enough to provide a sense of depth and reward that tricked me into having fun, but even battles won or choices that seem smart can't prevent things from ending horribly. Even though I tried to parse together the emotions I felt about the gameplay or the art design, I couldn’t get past the despair I felt when the credits began to roll.I didn’t like this feeling at all — in fact, I felt terrible — but I can’t deny that the game provides powerful storytelling for an emotionally rich experience that’s rare to find in any medium.
The combination of gameplay, character building, strategy, and narrative highlights the power games have in telling stories, and that experience is uniquely Banner Saga — even if I have to wait until the third installment to see if anything pays off.The Banner Saga 2 was reviewed using a Steam code provided by Stoic. You can find additional information about Polygon's ethics policy.
Despite its flawsis one of the most memorable indie releases of 2014, and now the second act is here to push the story to even more desperate frontiers. But does The Banner Saga 2 improve upon its predecessor’s lackluster strategy combat while still expanding on its promising story? Here’s wot I think. (Note: there are spoilers for the first Banner Saga’s ending).Let’s cut to the chase: The Banner Saga 2 is much better than the first one. But just as much as the heroes struggle to reconcile their place in a dying world, so too does The Banner Saga 2 sometimes struggle to reconcile its different parts. It’s still flawed, beautiful, and most of all, memorable.
And whether or not you finished the first game, the improved combat alone makes The Banner Saga 2 worth coming back for.The immortal Sundr, Bellower, is dead, and his host of dredge routed. But that victory means little as a mysterious darkness continues to spread from the north and a rampant giant serpent tries to gobble everything up. Picking up almost immediately where The Banner Saga left off, the second act is an even bleaker exploration of a dying world. You’ll pick up the story playing as either Rook, the humble hunter-turned-chieftain, or his daughter, Alette, depending on which one survived the encounter with Bellower. With the loss of their only family still fresh, there’s no time to mourn as the caravan sets off for the supposed safety of the human capital of Arberrang.In many ways, The Banner Saga 2 is a direct extension of the first game.
The formula of travelling, fighting, and decision-making has changed little between the two—at least when viewing them from a distance. Unlike other story-based trilogies, like Mass Effect, both acts of The Banner Saga could be played back-to-back as if they were one game.
But looking closer, The Banner Saga 2 introduces subtle tweaks that make it a much more enjoyable experience.Arguably the worst aspect of the first Banner Saga is the combat, which starts off promising before devolving into a samey slog as you battle the limited combinations of dredge again and again. Thankfully, The Banner Saga 2 does a much better job of living up to its strategic potential.Playing out on a grid-based map, the turn-based combat will still challenge you to decide between attacking an enemy’s strength or armour.
Since strength represents both health and how much damage a character can dish out, the temptation to go straight for blood can be strong. But playing more conservatively and chipping away at armour in order to line up some more devastating blows later can be a much more sound tactic—especially against the stone-like dredge.The improvements to The Banner Saga 2’s combat don’t shake up its core formula but expand on it by adding a wealth of new classes and enemies. It was an excellent surprise to feel like each battle contained some new wrinkle keeping me on my toes. New enemy types range from variations of already established classes, like different types of dredge slingers, to entirely new creations. During one fight, I squared off against a group of unsettling monsters that were able to temporarily forge a link with my heroes and sap their strength. Even worse, should I attack one of them while the link was active, they would transfer the damage to whichever hero they were linked to.
Considering how much the first Banner Saga reused the same foes again and again, I was shocked when I never encountered any of these monsters a second time.The horseborn are the most prominent addition to the mix of human, giant-like varl, and dredge. The centaur-like creatures quickly became some of my favorite to use and fight against due to their ability to take a second movement action after attacking, making them deadly skirmishers. From a narrative angle, their introduction is less noteworthy, as they tend to feel like a cliche of primitive aboriginal cultures, which feels out of place next to the more subversive nuances of the varl and human societies.Increases in the variation of enemy units and the strategies aren’t the only refinements, either. Unlike the first game, where the fights always feel distinctly separate from the story, the lines between the two have been better blurred. Choices leading up to battles have a greater impact on the outcome—for better or for worse.
There’s also a much more fluid nature to combat that makes it unpredictable and often tense. Win conditions have been expanded beyond “kill everything” and are much more dynamic. In one fight, the rules changed suddenly when a new enemy stormed the field. If I could kill it, the other dredge would retreat, but doing so was a brutal gambit as more and more enemies flooded the map with each passing turn, requiring attention of their own.Fortunately, your own strategic options have also been expanded. There’s still the same routine of levelling up heroes, increasing their stats and unlocking new abilities, but there’s plenty of new classes to play with.
Many of them are more utilitarian than the rabble of warriors you had to choose from in the first game, and I loved experimenting with all of the new abilities and discovering powerful synergies. The poet is easily my favorite new addition, as his insult skill allowed me to push a specific enemy’s turn to the back of the queue, effectively preventing them from making a move.Sadly, the new potential in combat isn’t always used skillfully, especially when it matters most.
During one of the final battles, the moment was ruined because, suddenly, the rules were bent to make the fight more challenging. Without explanation, damaging the boss’s armor had no effect, and I flailed around helplessly for a few turns before realising the poor attempt to usher me towards dealing with that boss in a very specific way.
Given how much freedom I had in previous battles, this suddenly narrow approach to combat felt jarring. It’s also annoying that The Banner Saga 2 would so carelessly rewrite its own rules. Fortunately, these slips feel small compared to The Banner Saga 2’s larger successes.While the combat is greatly improved, the same can’t really be said for the caravan management, which still struggles to feel necessary to the rest of the game. Like The Banner Saga, I spent long stretches watching my caravan venture forward along a two dimensional trail while occasionally pausing to rest or make choices that impacted the wellbeing of my clan. But The Banner Saga 2 struggles to make many of these decisions meaningful. Buying supplies, managing morale, and balancing how many warriors and clansmen you have feel like they could be mostly ignored without much consequence as their impact on the combat and the story is, at times, negligible.There’s still that awkward tension between telling a somewhat linear story and giving players the freedom of managing their caravan, and too often The Banner Saga 2 sacrifices the latter to protect the former. During one nasty stretch of my trip, a series of bad decisions led to my troops having no food for almost a week.
As morale dipped and clansmen and warriors died from starvation each day, there was barely any perceivable impact. Once I made it to the next village, I stocked up and replenished my ranks as if nothing bad had happened.That isn’t to say that The Banner Saga 2 isn’t incapable of presenting interesting choices, but it does have a hard time making all of them feel like they’re not just thin illusions. Later in the story, when the stakes were higher, I was painfully aware of the mortality of the people in my party. Choosing to send one of my heroes to hold off a group of oncoming dredge was a decision that filled me with dread as I knew they might never return. When they did, I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders.
But that tension can be ruined when you realize that these moments are predetermined. The Banner Saga 2 can sometimes feel like playing a session of Dungeons and Dragons with a spiteful dungeon master; no matter how well thought out a decision might be, if The Banner Saga 2 wants you to bleed, you’ll bleed.While the time spent with the caravan is the weak link in The Banner Saga’s chain, it’s failure as a system mostly feels like a missed opportunity rather than a thorn in my side. It’s easy to forget about once the story picks up steam. Early on, the narrative splits between Rook (or Alette) and Bolverk, the savage leader of the Ravens. While the shifts in perspective from the first Banner Saga don’t always feel natural, The Banner Saga 2 makes much better use of the technique to deliver two stories that throw one another into an intriguing contrast.Rook’s journey south to the human capital of Arberrang is still just as desperate as it always was, and the pain of losing his daughter creates some tender moments that gently prod the reality of grief and responsibility. But it was the chapters following Bolverk that I truly adored, as the brutish mercenary fights between his vicious nature and a mysterious weakness. There’s enough freedom in his dialogue choices that let me shape Bolverk as a character, and I loved the way my decisions seemed to slightly melt his icy heart, making rare moments of vulnerability feel even more poignant.
Bolverk also becomes central to the mystery surrounding the darkness engulfing the north, and the small teases of his relationship with a certain dredge are one of the plot threads I can’t wait to see resolved.In, Adam had argued that the second half becomes a slog largely thanks to the combat, but I’m pleased to say that the same isn’t true for The Banner Saga 2. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
The second half had me so wrapped up in wanting to see what happened next that I sprinted to the end credits over a single six hour stretch, enjoying each fight along the way.The somber worldbuilding of the first game dramatically shifts during the second half of The Banner Saga 2, and the gorgeous artistic style flexes its muscles to deliver vistas that filled me with both awe and dread. Being the second act of a trilogy, I was concerned that The Banner Saga 2 would feel inconsequential to the greater arc of the story, but I can safely say that really isn’t the case.
While major revelations about the darkness that is forcing everyone south still remained unanswered, there are enough threads teased out that I’m satisfied. Most of all, the final quiet moments before the climax instill a powerful sense of distance. I was reminded of the the effect that the Lord of the Rings movies so elegantly accomplished and truly felt the many miles that had passed behind me.The Banner Saga 2 is a beautiful sequel. There are moments where, as I watch the drama unfold in the dialogue and cutscenes, I almost forget I’m playing a game that came out in this decade. There’s an evocative sense of timelessness about the story and world that few RPGs create.
And now that the combat has become a strength and not a weakness, immersing myself in the richness of The Banner Saga’s dying world is almost as enchanting as cracking open the weathered pages of my favorite fantasy novels.is out today for Windows and Mac.
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