The Banner Saga: Factions Preview
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The combat which serves as the game's centerpiece is deceptively simple. Each combatant has a Strength stat, which serves as their attack power as well as their health; and an Armor stat, which mitigates damage done to Strength. Almost every attack and skill in the game can target one of those two main scores, making each strike an important decision: Do you weaken their attack power while bringing them closer to death, or help a teammate set up an even more powerful strike in the future?
Other stats are equally valuable, such as Break, which determines how much damage a character can do to Armor, and Willpower, which can be spent during a battle to increase movement speed, activate abilities, or provide a one-time boost to an attack.
In Banner Saga, these values are anything but abstruse, thanks to their universally low maximums very few of a character's stats can make it into the double digits. Players can allocate points into those stats using Renown, the game's only currency, which can be earned by defeating foes in battle or acquired through microtransaction. However, each stat has a cap which regulates how high it can go, and each character has a cap for how many points can be allocated to him or her.
The result is each of the game's 16 classes four base classes, each of which can be upgraded to one of three advanced classes can be outfitted in completely different ways. You could load up your Axeman with high Armor and Break scores, turning him into an anti-armor machine. Or you could apply a bunch of Willpower and Strength, making him a frontline-breaking Zerg-rusher.
