The Banner Saga 3

released on Jul 26, 2018

Banner Saga 3 is the final dramatic chapter in the mature, story-driven Viking RPG series which has won over 20 awards and has been nominated for 4 BAFTA awards. As the world continues to crumble around you, who can you trust, how will you protect your allies and what choices will you make as the Darkness draws near?


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Beautiful and moody.

It took me ten years to go through this trilogy, for me it symbols both how impressive and mesmerizing it is but also frustrating to play.

Part 3 offers a few new mechanics but its short running time doesn't let them shine. Waved battles lets your b and c teams see some action. Unique titles let you customize your most used characters with additional abilities. Cool feature but personally I reached the end with most of them unused.

Combat remains unintuitive but it's manageable and leads to a lot close calls. It serves the theme at least.

Characters and dialogue remains the strongest aspect of the game. I chose to play through them with a guide so I could get the most out them and lead the narrative - there are a few characters that close a nice arc in the finale that could have died randomly at ten different occasions. I get that losing characters to bleak events fits the world but if I were to design this series I would intentionally give players clear awareness about the consequences of their choices. Let them write their own stories onto the banner.

Part 3 length and pacing feels like budget issue rather than a choice. Not all characters gets the spotlight but there are a few nice moments woven in between story beats.

I like the world of Banner Saga a lot. I hope stoic would get to revisit it in the future.

This review contains spoilers

"Damnation... We'll have to live, there's no way around it now."

despite all the various lacks i felt with regards to its predecessor, banner saga 3 thoughtfully takes what you've been building and implements a whole system around it. iver's caravan heading towards the source of the darkness, all while arberrang, the human capital city, faces destruction both from within and the impending darkness. the accomplishments you've achieved in the form of your caravan, the people you've fought to save, now equate to days left before total destruction. it's a clever give and take: iver's caravan requires days of travel to get to the final objective of the game, if they take too long, you return to the other side of the world to arberrang, and you have to make perhaps costly decisions that give iver's crew more time. if you were too efficient at the game you may never actually return to arberrang, missing out on a bulk of the game's actual content.

the series after all is about embracing failure. the personal failure of eyvind in his grief to allow juno's death, the catalyst for the world to end. what an interesting shape that a game ought to take that to see all the narrative depth of the game, you personally have to fail. very few games can accomplish this on a mechanical level, let alone the whole game, just due to the economy of it all. i think this give and take, as well as a return to form on focusing on the characters, really sends this series off on a high note. all on top of the combat finally paying off on having a huge roster with the waves system, multi-stage battles where you can bring in fresh fighters to fight further waves for rewards.

i do wish there was a deeper epilogue. what a trilogy though! i must note though the amount of bugs and quality of life issues are just, unreal. stoic, please remaster this series, throw in the QoL it desperately needs. cheers.


slayyyyyy but unsatisfying ending

Characters, I remeber them all for years. Good ending for the great trilogy

This review contains spoilers

This was beautiful. I got a pretty bittersweet ending - the world saved, but still broken and the fate of those at Arberrang unknown with Rook dead - but despite this very uncertain end for everyone, it's hopeful. The world lives on, and that in itself is INCREDIBLE. The imagery of Iver coming across the banner, worn out but still intact, has so much meaning. Oddlief, Rook, Alette, Ludin, everyone lives on in the tapestry. You spend the whole trilogy reminiscing on dead gods and forgotten heroes, and in the end it's implied that your story - your banner - will be added to that pantheon of legends and serve to inspire and unite those in the generations to come. This is the most reflective of the trilogy. Every choice and conversation comes with the knowledge that it's unlikely anyone will make it out alive. It feels like if you took that one scene before the Battle of Winterfell of everyone sitting around a fire talking and stretched it into a whole game. The tension, the sorrow, the regret, the hope, the rare moments of joy. The combat's the same: slow and heavy, with never enough time or supplies to heal after a gruesome battle. It's The Banner Saga at its most ruthless and hopeless, and whether you get a happy, sad, or somewhere in between ending it has such a masterful grasp of its themes and ideas that it feels perfect any which way. What a trilogy.

Enjoyable narrative, engaging gameplay.