It's rare that a game so simultaneously artful and fun to play comes along and ticks every conceivable box for me, but The Banner Saga has done it. While I had heard for years about this series, I wasn't certain if it would be up my alley, primarily because tactical RPGs are not my bread and butter. I often feel awkward and lost at sea when I jump into such a game, but The Banner Saga has helped me make the jump into its world quite easily.

The two main draws of the game are its gorgeous art style (inspired greatly by the stylized impressionism of Eyvind Earle) and its brilliant writing. The story is stock enough in its general set-up, but the snappy dialogue of the main characters, as well as the how the story changes based on player choices, elevate the writing overall to something impeccably replayable and entertaining.

The game is also not too relentless in its combat sections. Yes, it's typical strategy, grid-based RPG goodness, but it doesn't feel terribly punishing to the less-initiated. While there is perma-death in the game, it never occurs from mistakes made in battle. Instead, if a fighter falls during combat, that counts as merely an "injury" that one can quickly recover from by resting at camp. The perma-death mechanic actually stems solely from choices made through dialogue and actions outside of combat. And in those scenarios, it feels much more fair when a player is punished in this way for making a dumb choice rather than losing a fight despite doing one's best.

One of my favorite RPGs of all time, now. Gorgeous. Memorable. Fun as hell. Unique enough to have its own distinct identity. Required playing.

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 tried to play The Banner Saga when it initially released. The art and story really intrigued me, but I wasn't into tactics or strategy back then, so it sat in my pile of shame for the longest time. This year I decided to dive back in, and while it maybe hasn't aged the best when it comes to features and variance of encounters, it still captures the dread and sense of being hunted better than almost any other game I have played.

Taking your caravan across the lands, being stopped by an endless list of challenges, surprised, and genuinely shocking moments was great. I am really looking forward to continuing the saga with the sequel next year.

Also if you stick to the main line, you are looking at around 7 hours for completion. That's a pretty decent run time for a tactics game to get a quick taste on what is on offer. I played the entire thing on Steam Deck too, and that was a really nice way to experience it.

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.