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.

Overall, this was a great game that was really effective at closing out an epic story with its limited budget, although it does falter a bit in the last half hour due to those same limitations.

Strengths
Tension Building
This is the last act of the story, and it definitely feels like it. Compared to the first 2 parts, where you're mostly just fumbling in the dark and trying to stay alive, the stakes are finally clear and there's an actual goal to build towards. Better yet, the amount of time you spend on your journey actually matters and can have terrible consequences, much like the time-sensitive storyline of the original Fallout game but handled much better. Although there is kind of a big plot revelation towards the end of the game, I felt that the most impactful part of the game is when it suddenly cuts to black and tells you that Arberrang will fall unless your heroes can make it in time, and starts listing out almost all the choices you've made up until that point and how much time it can buy you. With just some simple numbers and animated text, it was able to arouse feelings of dread and excitement, which is no small feat indeed.
Best combat in the trilogy
People seem to have mixed feelings about the combat in these games, but I've always found them really addicting since I'm not exactly an expert strategy gamer and am easily engrossed by any combat system that requires even a modicum of brain power. The combat in this third entry is easily the best in the series since by this point most of your characters are at a pretty high rank and you can really unlock their full potential using the new "Title" system that lets you choose a title for your heroes that gives them specific buffs. With your heroes at such a high power level, some of the most powerful and satisfying kills in the trilogy are achieved here (there's even an achievement for dealing 100 Break damage, which I can't even imagine). Of course, the enemies will be tougher as well although thankfully you're never forced into fights that come close to Eyeless in the second game. A new wave-based system is introduced where in most fights you can choose to flee after defeating the first wave of enemies, or continue fighting (with the option to switch out heroes) until a boss enemy arrives that will drop special gear. I myself never tried fighting more than 1 wave since my heroes were getting absolutely battered, but I'm eager to try holding out longer when I do play the trilogy again.

Weaknesses
Stoic faces
Although the visual-novel style conversations work well enough for the most part, they definitely suck out a lot of gravity from some of the more "epic" interactions because all the characters constantly wear a static, unchanging expression on their face. While this works well for the varl characters, it does not for the human characters. There's a very important talk between Iver and Eyvind at the end of the game, and Eyvind should be a complete mess yet he's still wearing the exact same expression while he's making the most difficult choice of his life! I know that this is a result of the limited budget, but it definitely takes away from what is otherwise a great conclusion (at least on paper). Games like Disco Elysium manage to circumvent this by having the camera be far enough from the characters that a lot of the character's expressions can be left to the player's imagination, while in this game the character's faces are front and center.

No Ending Slides
This is more of a personal nitpick, since the developers seemed to intentionally leave the state of the world after the climax up to the player's interpretation (that, or they ran out of time). But I really wished that the ending was longer and more drawn out, especially since we spent 30 hours across 3 games building up to this moment. I don't have exact measurements, but the ending of the game probably lasts little more than 5 minutes and all we get is that the world's been saved and the surviving characters will have to work together to rebuild it again (at least in the ending I got). Seeing as the trilogy begins with scrolling text that tells us about the state of the world, it would have been fitting to close it out with text that changes depending on our choices. It really feels like a missed opportunity, because the game's engine could clearly have supported something along the lines of the ending slides of Fallout or Dragon Age.

"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.