"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.