The Banner Saga Reviews
The Banner Saga does a lot of things well, the animation, music, narrative and combat is all neatly packed together to make a fun, working experience.
A beautiful journey with a few stumbles
The Banner Saga can be unforgiving at times but it is worth all the effort.
The relationships are strong right out of the gate and at times I felt like made a decision that I didn't want to make, but had to for the greater good.
The Banner Saga's strong narrative, exquisite visual design and distinctive thematic approach to RPGs coupled with its insistence on making every decision and conversation have an impact on player experience make it a must-buy for Strategy-RPG fans.
The game runs about 4-5 hours long depending on which difficulty you play and how long you take to make choices. Overall, if you are into tactical RPGs and like the whole viking aesthetic, you should enjoy this game quite a bit.
Despite spending most of my play time watching characters talk or travel from one side of the screen to the other, The Banner Saga includes an enthralling narrative and makes use of some inventive combat mechanics.
The Banner Saga is a good game when it comes to it's unique combat, art style, and atmospheric score but the awkward transition of the menus to console and the presentation of its plot hold it back from being great.
It has been a few years in the making, but the Xbox version of 'The Banner Saga' is a wonderful experience. I sincerely hope that Stoic releases the sequel on this platform as well, because they have a good thing going here and the more people who experience it, the better.
The Banner Saga paints a bleak world with its dialogue, artwork and soundtrack, one that engages the player with every tough choice that it presents. With each decision, the player helps to write their own story of survival against the odds, although the overarching storyline can at times pale in comparison to the struggles of the caravan. Thankfully, it also presents a tough tactical RPG that rewards the use of careful strategy and punishes those who rush in without a plan. Those with a penchant for a tightly woven narrative and tactical thinking will enjoy the deep layers that The Banner Saga provides.
Stoic's tactical RPG The Banner Saga makes its way to consoles, and still manages to deliver a fantastic, captivating story alongside a fun and challenging battle system.
In spite of the gameplay’s apparent limitations and the lack of excitement of reading the story when you could hear it or live it, the game is a must-play for any fans of the genre, the Norse mythology, compelling and mature narratives, and videogames in general.
Sure, sometimes the travel sequences can be boring and the combat isn't quite as fleshed-out as other games in the genre, but it still has that certain je ne sais quoi that makes you want to push on until you make it to the end
As a package, The Banner Saga is addictive, attractive, compelling, enjoyable, and truly challenging on the higher difficulty level. Some will find fault with the price, given that the Xbox One version is £15.99 and the PC and iOS editions have been available for a third of that in their time, but we say that the price is fair for what you get here. It's been a long wait, but there's nothing like kicking back and overseeing your merry band of fantastically animated fighters trekking across a frozen wasteland on a big-screen TV, or hearing the roaring clank of metal on metal as you fire in a battle-winning series of attacks.
A piece of art that asks the player to buy in to it's massive cast of characters and fall in love with The Banner Saga's involving story. Finding the perfect route will have players replaying The Banner Saga an endless number of times.
Released on consoles at last, this elegantly grim adventure at the end of the world is that rare contradiction: a nostalgic original.
The desolate landscapes, the constant fear of death, the beautiful artwork, it's all top notch stuff. I'm just not sure the core mechanics that make up the bulk of actual gameplay are strong enough.
If you are a patient person that likes this type of lore and gameplay style, The Banner Saga delivers on what it set out to accomplish.
The Banner Saga, for all its visual elegance, stumbles onto the PS4 with a very spare, workmanlike port that falls short not through any single big problem, but from the accretion of smaller issues. from the interface to the controls to the loading times. For all its faults The Banner Saga is clearly a labor of love.
Get used to the clumsy controls and The Banner Saga is a great role-playing ride right the way through to its conclusion. Meaningful player choice and engaging storytelling are broken up perfectly by bouts of enjoyable strategic combat, which creates a wonderfully paced experience that's very hard to put down. This is a banner that we want to see soaring well into the future.