Banner Saga 2 continues the epic viking-inspired tale wrapped in a hybrid of Oregon Trail, Fire Emblem, and Mass Effect with some interesting additions. Some of these worked really well, while others... not so much.
The core gameplay remains largely the same, and I really appreciate that. Managing your caravan as you travel the lands, participating in grid-based battles with your heroes, and conversing with your allies and enemies to make incredibly difficult decisions is as fun as ever. The story too, took some wild turns I really liked despite how brutal they could be.
The presentation remains stunning as well with some upgrades. The art is still lush and the soundtrack still haunting. The UI still has some of the problems from the first game, like overlapping stats making it basically impossible to read health stats or see how much damage you'll do in preview, but it works for the most part. What really helped elevate this entry were the added animated cutscenes. There were just a couple in the first game, so having more is definitely a treat. Helps they're very well done too.
In addition to the UI nitpicks though, there were other problems I had with the combat especially. The balance just didn't feel as consistent as the first game, with some nasty spikes and a weird dip that made it particularly easy at the end. Basically once you beat a certain difficult boss, the game is mostly a breeze to finish which is disappointing.
On the flipside, some battles were just ridiculously stacked against you. It felt like some fights just slammed a bunch of chonky enemies in a small arena where you basically had to just slug it out to see who was left. This sucks, as I particularly like to have a mix of different classes in my party, and certain support and/or ranged characters really suffered in these fights. A fight preview would've been nice, as I could've seen the type of fight and chose accordingly. As it stands, I felt like I was needlessly punished because of the developer's lazy design in a small pocket of fights instead of my own decisions. It doesn't help that most fights can be lost without ending the story, so I rarely had incentive to go back and redo those fights. For the ones that did result in a Game Over screen, it actually helped mitigate the problem as I felt like I was more able to learn from my mistakes or the setup and get the outcome I wanted through my own actions.
There were just some weird bugs present too. Two of my horseborn characters just randomly lost one of their abilities for their final chapter. That sucked as it particularly crippled one of them, turning them into an average fighter. This apparently has been a known issue too, and the fact it hasn't been fixed is pretty baffling.
On the positive side for combat, I did love the new classes added. The newfound variety here was incredibly fun to play with, and while not all of them really worked super well for the game, the ones that did added a lot. I had a blast figuring out fun, unique party compositions that could win me fights (assuming I wasn't thrown in to one of those haha small arena big bois go brrrr fights that fucked over my ranged/support characters).
Maybe some of these issues I had with this entry in particular existed in the first game too, and I just didn't notice behind the novelty of the game. That's warn off though, and overall I'm still left with a good game. It's just one that has more issues than I'd have liked.
The core gameplay remains largely the same, and I really appreciate that. Managing your caravan as you travel the lands, participating in grid-based battles with your heroes, and conversing with your allies and enemies to make incredibly difficult decisions is as fun as ever. The story too, took some wild turns I really liked despite how brutal they could be.
The presentation remains stunning as well with some upgrades. The art is still lush and the soundtrack still haunting. The UI still has some of the problems from the first game, like overlapping stats making it basically impossible to read health stats or see how much damage you'll do in preview, but it works for the most part. What really helped elevate this entry were the added animated cutscenes. There were just a couple in the first game, so having more is definitely a treat. Helps they're very well done too.
In addition to the UI nitpicks though, there were other problems I had with the combat especially. The balance just didn't feel as consistent as the first game, with some nasty spikes and a weird dip that made it particularly easy at the end. Basically once you beat a certain difficult boss, the game is mostly a breeze to finish which is disappointing.
On the flipside, some battles were just ridiculously stacked against you. It felt like some fights just slammed a bunch of chonky enemies in a small arena where you basically had to just slug it out to see who was left. This sucks, as I particularly like to have a mix of different classes in my party, and certain support and/or ranged characters really suffered in these fights. A fight preview would've been nice, as I could've seen the type of fight and chose accordingly. As it stands, I felt like I was needlessly punished because of the developer's lazy design in a small pocket of fights instead of my own decisions. It doesn't help that most fights can be lost without ending the story, so I rarely had incentive to go back and redo those fights. For the ones that did result in a Game Over screen, it actually helped mitigate the problem as I felt like I was more able to learn from my mistakes or the setup and get the outcome I wanted through my own actions.
There were just some weird bugs present too. Two of my horseborn characters just randomly lost one of their abilities for their final chapter. That sucked as it particularly crippled one of them, turning them into an average fighter. This apparently has been a known issue too, and the fact it hasn't been fixed is pretty baffling.
On the positive side for combat, I did love the new classes added. The newfound variety here was incredibly fun to play with, and while not all of them really worked super well for the game, the ones that did added a lot. I had a blast figuring out fun, unique party compositions that could win me fights (assuming I wasn't thrown in to one of those haha small arena big bois go brrrr fights that fucked over my ranged/support characters).
Maybe some of these issues I had with this entry in particular existed in the first game too, and I just didn't notice behind the novelty of the game. That's warn off though, and overall I'm still left with a good game. It's just one that has more issues than I'd have liked.