There are three common explanations for beginner’s luck. The first is how novices feel no pressure when going up against experts, but experts overthink their strategy to avoid losing to a newcomer. The second is centered around problem spaces: novices don’t know what actions are typically ineffective, so they’re open to more possibilities than the limited set internalized by a veteran. Finally, the most common of the bunch is that experts try to predict what the other player is doing, and when a novice breaks their heuristics, the game plan begins to break down. At the root of all these explanations is an asymmetry between mindsets, where the ordered thinking that comes with experience clashes against chaos, which can lead to some amazing upsets. You might expect I’m trying to explain how I got through a difficult game with no trouble, but instead, my goal is the reverse: explaining how this game used asymmetry to beat me.

So, how is luck possible when a game is a machine with set rules? Well, consider this scenario the game presents you with: a poetry competition breaks out in your little journeying caravan and you have the option to either join in with a verse of your own, just cheer from the crowd, ignore it and listen for danger, or break it up and tell everyone they should be on guard. If you’re concerned about the safety and morale of your people, the best compromise is probably ignoring it and staying vigilant. However, that’s the second worst decision you can make. The actual best possible decision is joining in with a verse of your own. Now consider a second scenario: you encounter wild fruit that no one recognizes and apparently tastes funny, but people want to collect it for the food supplies. Do you just start eating it anyway, or discourage people from doing so? If you thought it might be best to exercise caution, you’ve picked the worst option. Admittedly, not even the majority of the game’s events work with such questionable logic, but the inconsistency is high enough to disrupt informed decision making regardless. The developers were able to construct events with full knowledge of what would motivate me as a player, but the inconsistent results give me no comparable understanding of how they're thinking. It creates the sort of asymmetrical mindset that makes me feel like the game is just getting lucky shots against me, with the ordered approach failing against a chaotic system. The counterargument might be that the entire point of the game is overcoming a harsh situation, and how real-life choice and consequence is never cut-and-dry. However, I think a good response to this comes from another game about leading a wagon through the dangerous wilderness: The Oregon Trail. When reaching a river crossing, the choices would be to ford straight through, caulk the wagon, hire a ferry, or wait for conditions to change. All these options carry their own risks and tradeoffs, but as a player, I understand all of them. If I decide to go straight through and lose many of my supplies, it feels completely justified. When hiring a ferry, I fully understand that the loss of cash could impact me later. The Banner Saga succeeds in creation of a bleak tone with its chaos, but how am I supposed to feel connected to my decisions, when the decisions themselves aren’t consistently connected to certain consequences?

The combat has the same sort of asymmetrical chaos that makes it hard for me to connect. With its turn-based grid combat one might recognize from Fire Emblem, some restarts and failures are expected, but the logic behind the enemy behavior is a tactical black box. Enemies might completely ignore a powerful caster one shot from death to go target someone at full health, turning their imminent victory into a defeat. Sometimes they do the opposite, immediately focusing their fury on a single strong hero and crippling my strategy in the first few turns. Fire Emblem may seem random with its percent chances to hit, but enemies will reliably chase down the hero they would be most effective against, and that’s something I can at least plan around. Meanwhile, in The Banner Saga, sometimes it feels like I’m the AI and the game is the player. I’m making consistent decisions based on which enemy unit moves next and what they’re weak against, but the AI follows a logic known only to itself, breaking my heuristics and creating chaos. Sometimes I beat difficult fights with ease, sometimes the AI would happen upon genius tactical gambits, and another disconnect begins to form as a result. How am I supposed to feel connected to these battles, when my tactical choices don’t have consistent results?

As questions like these kept recurring to me, the best answer I could come up with was to just… let go. Let the AI occasionally get lucky upsets. Let some events play out in ways that seem illogical. I forced myself to fully embrace it as a set-character RPG, where I simply made the choices I thought the player character might make, even if they seemed wrong. The art and well-constructed drama still made that a pleasant enough way to play, but it’s disappointing how the potential for sharing the journey with the characters was lost thanks to chaotic rules and inconsistency. The question I’m left asking myself after that ruling though is whether I’ll go on to play The Banner Saga 2 and 3, since this first game isn’t a self-contained story; the plot is far from resolved and many decisions only pay off in subsequent games. If each of them were unrelated stories, I would probably skip out, but the promise of refinement and a payoff to the drama is a concept that interests me. The Banner Saga was a Kickstarter game from an entirely new studio, so I can understand some of its floundering when trying to establish something as complex as a choice-focused trilogy of RPG's. Beginners may not always be lucky, but I have some faith that their skill will shine through in the end.

Note: This was another game taken from my recommendations list, from user Ninjabunny. I’m sorry that this review came out sounding so negative! I hope there’s consolation in the fact that I enjoyed it enough to mentally commit to the sequel, and that I already owned the game anyway, but had never gotten around to it. Like you mentioned in the recommendation, the aesthetic was incredible, and I loved a couple characters like Oddleif and Iver. Maybe now that I have my bearings, the sequels will be much more pleasant.

Good
- Good Artstyle.
- Good battle mechanics.
- Good story with 2 defining routes for TBS2.

Meh
- Performance a little wonky.

+ El apartado artístico es precioso.
+ El combate es interesante.
- Te vende que "las decisiones importan" pero ¿realmente podemos considerarlas "decisiones" cuando en su mayoría tienen consecuencias imprevisibles (o incluso se ignora tu decisión)?
- Las unidades (o efectos) pueden llegar a taparse unas a otras en la batalla. Entiendo que no se pueda rotar la cámara pero deberían haber encontrado alguna otra solución.

No sé si jugaré el resto de la saga.

The Banner Saga has you leading a group of warriors and civilians to escape the horde of Dredge that have been making their way through Human and Varl lands. You have to make choices and watch your supplies throughout your journey that will effect your caravan and the lives of those that fight in battle with you, certain choices can lead to characters leaving or being killed.

Making certain choices and winning battles will gain you renown which you can use to buy items in markets, buy supplies, or level up your characters. The renown system is one of the things that could use work as you never really have enough or have any need to buy items from the markets (except for supplies), characters that you spend a large amount of renown on can be killed or leave based on your choices or from story events, and there are a lot of events and stretches of area where supplies are scarce. Running out of supplies means that morale will go down, which effects the willpower stat in battle and will cause civilians and soldiers to die every day they go without food. Civilians aren't actually used for anything though and soldiers only matter when you run into large groups of enemies where you will enter a "war" and have to choose how to fight, you should always take the option to charge your enemies with your main characters because it will gain you the most renown and lose you the fewest soldiers, making the choices very uninteresting. Even the finale of the game that has you holding a town for a few days gives you a lot of what should be interesting options but the best thing to do is to always fight on the battlefield.

The battle system is turned based and has some good ideas, such as characters having armor and strength where strength represents how much damage someone does and their health. They also have a stat that shows how much armor they can break and willpower that can be used to fuel their active class ability and that can be used to move further, increase armor damage, or to increase strength damage. Trying to do strength attacks on a unit with higher armor will only do one damage and their armor may deflect the attack completely. It's a good system but is kind of ruined by the weird meta game it creates where you want to run around wounding all of the enemies instead of killing them due to the terrible turn order system the game uses. The turn order has one of your men goes followed by one of theirs, what this means is that if you are down to two enemies left they will keep getting turns while you have to play through your six characters, some that might be too far away or too wounded to attack the enemy. Luckily when you get down to one enemy your entire force gets to move before they do. Characters that lose all their strength in battle are wounded for 1-3 days and have their strength reduced by the number of days if they take part in a battle again, it's more of an annoyance than anything else, often they will heal during your travel between fights and it seems to go against the feel of the game where anyone could be killed. Battles are often very easy as well, which makes the war battles even stranger when hundred of enemies fight your hundreds of soldiers, and you easily win often losing only losing a dozen NPC soldiers by the end.

The game has you controlling two different forces throughout it and you end up not getting much time or interaction with most of the game's characters. Battles can still be fun when the turn order isn't causing problems and the game has great art, music, good writing, an interesting world, and some good choices to make along the way. Hopefully the sequel will give you more time and conversations with your main soldiers, improve the battle system, and allow for better and more detailed choices.

Screenshots: https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/721872859811872769
https://twitter.com/Legolas_Katarn/status/721878285886496769

the banner saga is the fantasy epic of our times. visiting it again, my appreciation for everything it achieves grows deeper. games as economy require clever solutions for costly goals, and the format of traveling via a caravan allow the fantasy of a world fully immersed and realized for the player. indeed, the game evokes a long history buried in the deep snow of the north, one of a fragile peace subsiding once again to old war and devastation, and seemingly even further: total annihilation. we see only the edges of this in this game, and the ending haunts of what is to come.

on this playthrough i played the campaign on hard difficulty, and the emphasis on attrition of resources became even greater. the tactical combat layer to the game i think is misunderstood and i think even underrated, but it is understandable. in traditional turn-based tactics game, the meta is undoubtedly to focus a single target, whittling them down one-by-one. the banner saga's combination of health and attack power into one stat dramatically changes this. indeed, there is little point to killing an enemy who has one strength left, or more importantly: an enemy who has less strength than any of your roster. if you waste your resources on inefficient targets, you can easily find yourself at the end being picked off by those you left alone.

the game is richest when you're in this cycle of carefully utilizing your resources. renown can be used to buy supplies which keep the caravan strong and thriving, but also to buy trinkets or direct upgrades for your troops. there are many optional battles too that may reward renown and supplies, but fights can be costly and you can rack up injuries on your troops which dramatically undermine their combat ability. in many tactics games you often maintain a single roster, but on hard difficulty it askes you to be effective with many. most games struggle to have meaningful difficulty, i feel, but banner saga realizes its metaplay quite well and it feels fair all around.

i move now to continue the series with the banner saga 2.

I don't know why but I had notion that Banner Saga was some indie masterpiece so that explains why I'm more than a little dissapointed. The art style is stunning and the world building is fairly unique and well done, I specially like how the map is used to convey the lore in 1 or 2 setences. The combat felt alright if a bit lacking so my initial impressions were quite positive. But the more I played the more I realized something about the whole experience wasn't quite grabbing me.

The lack of many enemy types and abilities made the combat feel quite stale. Whatever abilities you do get isn't interesting enough to vary how you approach fights, positioning being the main factor to consider. I think the game wanted the experience to one of survival on a long arduous journey but the whole injury mechanic coupled with morale didn't really impact my playthrough in any meaningful way. Maybe I just got lucky in my choices or maybe the mechanics shine on hard difficulty. The writing while quite good on the surface felt too dry for the lack of a better word. Events happened, characters died and people just moved on without much deliberation. I feel odd complaining about that as it fits the tone of the story but it also make me, the player feel like a distant observer to the events rather than intimately engaged in their story.
I've seen people praising the story and since I haven't finished it, I'm hopeful it will get better. I'll give it another shot when I'm less burnt out on viking media.

A beautifully animated story-driven strategy game. The first of a trilogy.

Story is pretty good, albeit predictable, and the start not being that engaging until you get introduced to Rook and Alette. Through the game, you follow two separate groups, Vognir's and Rook's, each with their own caravan you have to manage. Each day costs you resources and morale, and random encounters can cost both resources but also your soldier's and clansmen's life. The game is filled with weighty choices, and some of them heavily impact the story, since the choices you made in the first game also carry over to the next one. Gameplay is pretty bare-bones, reminiscent of the Shadowrun games, but simpler. It's decent, and it had some intense battles, but I realized the game actually punishes you for killing enemies. An immersion killer, in my opinion. I wonder if it was an intentional choice, even. You'd think killing enemies as fast as possible sounds logical, but I guess not. The music is good, but most importantly the art style is FANTASTIC, clearly inspired by classic Disney movies. It really carries the game, sometimes I stopped just to admire it. Probably one of the prettiest animation styles I've seen in a video game.

Gameplay might not be much, but I think it's worth trying for the story and visuals alone. I'll probably go straight to the next one. I'm between a 6 and a 7, rating might change after playing the trilogy.

★★★ – Good ✅

Edit: From a 7 to a 6.

Banner Saga was an entry point for me to its genre of turn based tactics and managing a small army, but I had no issue with quickly understanding and being invested in all of its systems. And it was a great experience, excellently intertwining its gameplay and narrative to immerse me in its tale of fighting desperately for whatever it is you value as the world comes to an end.

The star of its gameplay is the armor/health system, where all units have 2 health bars that each have unique properties. Armor gives a flat reduction to regular damage, making high armor enemies immune to almost anything you throw at them until you chip it away. All units can do specifically anti-armor attacks instead, doing a much smaller amount of damage directly to it, but this is necessary to be able to later do significant damage to high armor enemies. Where it really shines though is that every unit's health is also its attack damage. So it's not only a decision of how to most efficiently kill an enemy, but when you can weave in direct damage so that it will be less dangerous. Doing some small chip damage to an enemies' health might be less efficient than armor damage to kill it, but can prevent it from getting an attack through the armor of one of your units. These decisions become all the more meaningful with later enemies that have huge amounts of health and armor, where you'll have to chip away huge amounts of armor, but for as long as you don't do direct damage, they can one-shot your units. This also puts an exceptional value on a few abilities that can do direct damage ignoring armor entirely.

This is in addition to all of the vital strategy of positioning. Units normally can't move through each other, and many powerful abilities have limited fixed ranges. This makes some clever positioning and manipulation of enemy move and attack ranges able to make your damage much more efficient, force enemies to attack your tanks, or even skip their turns entirely.

This natural depth to the combat made me excited and engaged in every single fight. There isn't a ton of variety in enemies and enemy abilities, only at the end of the game do we get a few more complex ones that I might've expected, like enemies with passive buffs to their fellows until you kill them, and spells that do damage over time. But I didn't mind that most fights are against the same relatively simple enemies, because the depth of the gameplay is in its basic systems, such that there's a lot of meaningful decision making even fighting just big stat sticks. At normal difficulty you do have a comfortable margin for error, but I'd be interested in a replay on hard to be forced to play as efficiently as possible.

I've went this far without mentioning the story, which certainly bears mentioning. It tells a story of two races, men and Varl, a race of huge, long lived ox men. Although previously in conflict, they've come together in the face of worldwide calamity, from an incursion of a race of violent stone skinned creatures, and more mysterious and celestial signs of the end times. The main character perspective changes intermittently, giving you the points of view of both men and Varl.

It's this use of perspective that was the most engaging part of Banner Saga for me. The most main protagonist is Rook, a man who's inherited the responsibility of leading a village of hundreds of peasants on a journey through desolate mountains and the crumbling remnants of civilization, now inhabited by vultures looking to pick you for scraps, and beset by monsters that far exceed your human stature.

These parts of the game give an immense immersion of Rook's desperation, your caravan is just barely holding on by a thread, every risk needs to be calculated, but you won't be able to survive without large risks. This is impressed on you by the gameplay, with your team of largely vulnerable archers, facing down and defeating hulking brutes that can club your head in with one swing, through the cooperation and ingenuity of mankind. It's also impressed on you by the out of combat decision making, as you're faced with constant dilemmas--do you take these men with you, or leave them to die, when they'll take more food and might betray you? How do you settle disputes within your caravan to maintain order and resources, while still maintaining morale? Do you risk going through enemy territory, or take the long way, losing precious time and food? I felt the game was constantly calling attention to Rook's character, what is he really fighting for? What is he willing to sacrifice? I felt the weight of his life, and those of everyone he was protecting hang in the balance for all of these choices.

Compared to the intimacy and palpable mortality of Rook's story, the perspective of the Varl is distinctly different. Armed with the confidence and wisdom of hundreds of years of life, they feel much more detached. Many of the Varl have isolated themselves, living in small communities in the far north. You feel that solemnity in the historian Ubin, who may be the oldest living Varl, and even in the great warrior Hakon. They react to the impending apocalypse with more of a grim resignation. You particularly sense this in the immense value they put on historical landmarks and achievements of their forefathers. In the vast scope of their lives, men will live and die quickly, but a monument that stands for centuries is far more meaningful.

I haven't yet started the second and third games as of writing this, but I'm excited to. Banner Saga is an excellently cohesive experience that I'd recommend to almost anyone.

Banner Saga is a super unique blend of styles that creates a game unlike most I’ve played. Filled with a branching narrative, evolved Oregon Trail style travel, resource management, and grid based strategy combat, I had an absolute blast with Banner Saga.

First off, the presentation is excellent. Austin Wintory’s score is at times haunting and at others triumphant. I loved how well he executed something that was so different from what I’m used to hearing from him. The art and overall atmosphere was awesome too. My journey really did feel almost hopeless, and I really felt a connection with the characters as we struggled through our journey. The lore too was surprisingly deep. I had fun pulling up the map to check out the backstory of the places I would be traveling by or even to just take a look at other parts of the world.

The combat is similarly well executed. Think Fire Emblem with its hero characters ducking it out on a grid but with its own twists. First, units on either side alternate turns by unit and not by team. So instead of one team going and then the other, it swaps between your unit, enemy unit, your unit, enemy unit, and so on. This makes paying attention to the turn order even more important than normal and creates some distinct challenges. Also each unit’s health is also their strength in addition to armor. Take too much damage, and you can’t deal as much back or even break through armor.

Combat on Normal was exhilaratingly challenging. It definitely didn’t hold back which contributed to the atmosphere of the whole game but it wasn’t so overwhelming that I felt like I couldn’t win. I definitely pulled out some close calls though. Only exception to this is the final boss which was cool in concept but terribly aggravating in execution. Doesn’t help either that targeting enemies could sometimes be hard to decipher, and I ended up hitting the wrong enemy a couple times because it was just so hard to see where my unit was targeting.

As a whole, you’ll be going on journeys with different caravans filled with different characters, all of whom will come across all sorts of obstacles and encounters. It’s up to you the player to not only keep supplies up to support your caravan but also make difficult decisions. There are some pretty dire consequences if you choose wrong. I’d know since I made some pretty idiotic choices myself looking back. There are also some potentially great rewards too though. I never felt cheated by the choices either as results felt fair to each choice, and I looked forward to these tricky conundrums.

Overall, The Banner Saga is a great strategy narrative game that truly pushes the boundaries of creativity. There are some rough edges to sand off, but I think if the rest of the trilogy really improves on this, it could turn into an all-time favorite for me!