INTRO:
It has taken Stoic Studios many years to complete The Banner Saga. The game may have been a crowdfunding success, but in those days, many indie developers had underestimated the complexities of game development (and others that would appear later continue to do so). The Banner Saga had to be divvied into three instalments, each with its own price tag.
Fortunately, the developers have kept the IP’s most important aspect – its storytelling – somewhat intact throughout the series, though it has to reuse quite a lot of assets.
PREMISE:
Things have gotten from bad to worse in the second entry, and the third entry has them at their worst.
The encroaching darkness, in all its amethyst-hued terror, has made itself visible to not just the Dredge, who were the first to flee from it. The darkness does not destroy, but rather, warps whatever it overwhelms into hideous mockeries that then come together to become a shambling horde.
The Dredge, in their anger and desperation, are revealed to be furious refugees, led into a suicidal migration-war by the giant Sundr, their forebearers. They are not the only ones making incursions into once human-held territory: the horseborn has also come north from the south, fleeing from Dredge that have appeared there too.
The city of Abberrang is the only bastion remaining, and even then it is a seeming death-trap. Its surrounding seas have been turned into poisonous acid by the bleeding of the colossal serpent that has been wounded in the second entry. The Dredge are right at the city walls. There are tensions between the myriad species. There is bad blood between the clans of humans, and between the tribes of non-humans as well.
A terrible end seemed certain for everyone that the darkness has not yet corrupted. The protagonists’ only hope is that that they could hold out in Abberrang, while another group of protagonists journey deep within the darkness to its source in a quest to end it.
LESS PRESSURE ON SUPPLY MANAGEMENT:
Although food is still scarce, the city of Aberrang has a lot of refugees that came in with their own supplies and the city itself does have considerable stores. Furthermore, the non-Dredge survivors are having their hands full with defending the city from the Dredge.
As for the other group of protagonists, they are no longer a caravan, and their journey is being helped by the magic that the magic-users among them can apply.
Therefore, gameplay-wise, the player no longer need to worry about supplies so much. The most that the player would do with supplies is to pass days in order for injured characters to heal, and to restore morale. Even so, this is only applicable to the group at Arberrang. The other group – led by Iver, Juno and Folka – does not have to contend with any element of supplies; they have something else to worry about instead.
PURSUIT:
Iver’s group is being hounded by a revived Bolverk, who has since become the agent of the god-serpent that Eyvind wounded. Bolverk can command warped people; having retained his tactical acumen, he will have the group whittled down.
Gameplay-wise, this means that bad things happen to the group if they tarry for too long. If they have to camp to rest, camping for too long results in an attack that wounds one or two units, or even kill them.
UNIT LEVEL ADJUSTMENTS:
All units start at rank 8, at the lowest. If the player imported a game-save from the previous entry, any units below rank 8 are promoted to that rank after having their kill counter adjusted. This is generally a profit if the player has been focusing promotions on specific units.
The beginning of the playthrough would have the player allocating points here and there. However, this would eventually lead to an issue with the third entry of the series.
MUST INVEST IN “TALENTS”:
The second entry introduced “talents” that can be obtained after a unit has maxed out its primary statistics. These “talents” are not really that potent; all of them require a percentage-based roll to be passed before they come into effect. Some players can avoid having to do this, especially if they have been distributing promotions evenly.
However, in the third entry, the player has no choice. Units will max out their primary statistics soon, and eventually points will have to be put into “talents”.
HEROIC TITLES:
Upon reaching level 11, a unit gains access to “heroic titles”. These grant more passive abilities; these happen to be more potent and reliable than the aforementioned RNG-based ones.
However, instead of spending stat points on these, the player would be spending Renown. Spending more Renown grants titles with better bonuses. Like the talents, the player can only pick one title for each unit. Furthermore, selecting a title for a unit will deprive that title for other units. Therefore, the player will want to be especially careful with his/her choices.
LESS OPPORTUNITIES FOR AUTO-SAVE UPDATES:
The third entry retains most of the code from the previous entries. This ensured that the save-game import function worked.
Unfortunately, this retention of code also included the code for updating the current auto-save in a playthrough. In the previous entries, camping updated the auto-save; this is still the case in this camp. However, the third entry does not give the player a lot of opportunities to camp, due to the urgency of the protagonists’ situation.
Therefore, this means that the player resumes a playthrough from the points in the story progression that are coded to have save-games. This can be irksome, in the case of some tough fights (especially for Iver’s group). Furthermore, the player has to watch the caravan inch forward every time, and the dialogue scenes that happen before battles.
FOREWARNED REINFORCEMENTS:
In the previous entries, most fights happen such that they end when either side is completely wiped. There were some fights where reinforcements come in, after some turns have elapsed.
In the third entry, the player is introduced to the mechanism of forewarned enemy reinforcements. There are many battles in which there are “waves”. The progress of each wave is measured in the number of turns that have elapsed, including those of enemies and those of all units during Pillage mode (the latter is particularly important to keep in mind).
If the player could not eliminate all enemies before the number of turns are up, enemy reinforcements appear. Obviously, this is bad; the player’s units are not likely to be in a condition to deal with these additional enemies.
RE-DEPLOY, OR FLEE:
If the player eliminates all enemies in time, the current wave is over. The player gets the chance to withdraw any battered units, and deploy fresher replacements. The player also gets to relocate units, often to locations that are not in the starting deployment zone. The player can do this if he/she wants to continue the battle.
Alternatively, the player can have the caravan flee the battle. Of course, the player gives up the opportunities to get greater rewards.
CONTINUE TO FIGHT:
If the player chooses to continue the battle, the next wave begins and enemy reinforcements will arrive. An enemy unit always gets the first turn in this new wave. Furthermore, the turn order of the player’s units is scrambled for two alternating turns before the sequence that the player has set is resumed.
The composition of reinforcements appears to be fixed, but their starting locations are randomized. However, they always appear from edges that have been marked with red triangle, so the player has an estimate of where safe locations in the deployment zone would be.
REWARDS OF PERSEVERANCE:
The last wave of enemies in any multi-phased battle always includes one particularly powerful individual – usually one of the bigger Warped creatures. This individual is carrying a relic and has all of its benefits too, thus making it more challenging to defeat than the rest of its kind. Defeating this creature grants the relic as loot immediately.
Of course, if the player defeats all the waves, the player gains a lot of Renown to spend.
HOLDING OUT:
Eventually, at one point in this entry, all of the gameplay elements in the Oregon Trail portion of the game are reduced to just one: the number of days before Arberrang begins to be overrun by the darkness.
The acquisition of these days is done through a mathematical script that considers the integrity of the outermost walls of Arberrang, the number of clansmen that are under the protagonists’ banner and such other elements. When the days run out, things get worse at Arberrang.
The player does have opportunities to get more days after the first set of days have run out, but there are only a few of these opportunities. Each opportunity comes with more story-telling though, so the player might want to tarry if only to see what happens next.
ENEMIES ARE STILL DUMB, BUT MUCH STIFFER:
The first two entries of the series have laughably dumb enemies that are incapable of capitalizing on their advantages. The CPU-controlled opponents in this entry are no smarter.
However, they do have additional challenge, in the form of much higher stats than those that enemies in the previous entries have. This is due to the warping that is wrought by the darkness, which made them tougher and more dangerous. Incidentally, this also contributes to the challenge posed by the wave-based battles.
DECISIONS IN THE FINALE:
The finale of the series does refer to a few of the player’s decisions in the previous entries, especially if the player has imported game-saves. However, not every decision will be accounted for, because the ordeal in the finale involves only two characters (one of whom is mentally unstable).
This might not please every player, because their choices at these particular decision-making moments might well shoe-horn the player into one of a few probable endings. Still, at least the player’s experience throughout the series does matter to some degree, which might satisfy players who expect such a game design from people who are formerly of the old BioWare.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
The third entry features more of the same style of artwork seen in the series. There are some modified versions of existing artwork, such as an even-more aged version of Eyvind. There is also artwork for the Dredge characters that can join the player’s caravans. This artwork shows that the Dredge are indeed flesh-and-blood humanoids, albeit with the physique to wear stone-hewn armor.
There is the warped landscape where the darkness has enveloped. These are bizarre and nightmarish regions, something that might be familiar to players that have experience with Warhammer 40K or Lovecraftian illustrations. The artwork for these places is nothing new, but they are a notable contrast to anything in the series thus far.
SOUND DESIGNS:
Most of the sounds in the third entry that is not heard in the previous entries are the otherworldly and inhuman noises that are heard in the aforementioned warped landscapes. There are a lot of howls and roars, and due to the cavernous environs, there are yawning echoes and reverbs too.
There are also additional music tracks. The ones for the warped landscapes sound appropriately foreboding. There are also the tracks for the ordeal at Arberrang, which fit the desperate situations that are occurring there. Finally, there is the Icelandic song with a bittersweet tune that plays as the credits roll.
Again, there is little voice-over. What there is, happens to be for Iver, whose part of the story is most important to the wrapping up of the series.
SUMMARY:
As the finale of the series, the third entry of The Banner Saga finally lets the player make use of multiple types of units, while also working the narrative excuse to get such unlikely allies together. Of course, the theme of common survival and desperation makes for a convenient excuse to have such an amusing but rather oft-used plot twist. Some vestiges of BioWare-style writing is also in the culmination of the story, for better or worse.
Gameplay-wise, the third entry retains the designs from the previous entries, including the dumb enemies. The game does try to pose some challenge by using enemies with bloated statistics, however. Still, there is satisfaction to be had from overcoming enemies with such advantages.
Overall, the series has been an experience of an attempt at trying to provide good storytelling and decently complex gameplay with a very limited budget. The lack of money shows and the game’s presentation does suffer for it, but there is next to no impression that the developers had been lazy at utilizing whatever they have.