The Banner Saga Previews
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In anticipation of the January 14 release of The Banner Saga, we have rounded up a large number of previews for the title we missed during the Christmas holiday, which should hopefully give us a clearer idea of where the game stands so close to release.
Strategy Informer:
While the decisions, dialogue and events take place in pop-out boxes with a range of replies, if you get attacked (by Dredge, bandits, soldiers, whatever) the game goes into a turn-based battlefield. You get several '˜hero' characters with various abilities, and after choosing their starting location the battle begins. Each character has health and armour stats, which both can be attacked and neither can be restored during an encounter. Obviously the lower an armour score a character has the easier they are to hit, and when their health reaches zero they're out of the battle. Varl are the powerful brutes, human males are quicker and have various battlefield skills, and women are skilled archers. In addition to attacking and moving each hero has a unique special move, including the ability to strike adjacent units or boosting an ally. So far, so typical.
What The Banner Saga introduces is the concept of Willpower, which is basically a resource that pushes a character to make a greater effort. While heroes can move to blue squares and attack normally without using Willpower, moving to a yellow square further on or using a special move does. You can even use Willpower to charge up your attacks to do more damage, and after ranking up a hero even special moves can optionally use extra Willpower to make them more devastating. Using Willpower wisely is often the key to winning or losing a battle, and while it can be regenerated through resting or by killing enemies you'll never have enough of it to make battles easy. It's just one more level of tactics Stoic have added to the turn-based combat, but I'm happy to report it all clicks into place very quickly. The battles are intuitive, occasionally nail-biting, and usually fun. Oh, and how many games have a '˜Pillage mode'?
The story is set around Viking clans and told from several viewpoints. Dredge, the demonic enemy invaded the land of Vikings and heroes are gathering to fight them in order to save their homes and protect peasants. Following Carl convoy and Rook's caravan, two parties located on opposite sides of the map, the story works on bringing them together by quests and animations of beautiful landscapes. They are fighting a dreaded enemy and trust me that is not an easy task.
So the journey begins with two parties set on a different side of the map and you get to play with both of them. Along the way you will be presented with various villages, quests, new characters, and much more. Travelling between locations is animated, no walking or exploring is present. Although while travelling, quests will appear giving you three answers to choose from. The way your journey continues depends on a chosen answer. Dialogues inside quests fit well into a Vikings' world, you will be presented with some strong language and hard choices.
Combat is delivered in a top-down isometric view something you would expect from this genre but the art style gives it a unique feel which makes it stand out, with the use of the foreground giving you a feeling of great height above the battlefield, like a god or, in some of the outdoor scenes, some guy up a tall tree. In a similar vein to games like Final Fantasy Tactics, units are deployed before battle, and move along a square grid, attacking when in range. The unique element of the combat seems to be in its use of armour and health: armour mitigates damage to health, and health works as both a measure of your attack strength and your hero's remaining life. This leads to some complicated combat as you try to balance attacking a target's armour with reducing their health. Each class has its own unique ability, ranging from setting traps on tiles to attacking multiple enemies at once, all of which can be levelled as a character progresses.
There are times when your caravan is attacked by numbers larger than just your party of heroes, leading to all-out battles using all of the forces at your disposal. These wars are presented as a mix of text-based strategy and a small hero battle as your heroes attack a strategically important area in an attempt to weaken the enemy. Effectively though, this becomes a choice of either taking on a huge number of enemies in a hero battle to reduce the loses to your caravan, or taking on smaller numbers and dealing with massive losses further down the line. It's a balancing act that had a real impact on the small portion of the game I played through, and I can see it having a much larger repercussions deeper into the story.
Luckily, when I get down to the nitty gritty of the game, the turn based combat, my enjoyment levels rise dramatically. Combat has quite a Heroes of Might and Magic feel to it, with each battle starting with a positioning phase that allows me to place my fighters in certain areas around the map. What differentiates The Banner Saga from other turn based games is that each character has both a shield and a health meter. The key to success is knowing when to attack which meter. If I get it wrong, I often find myself dying in short order. This game can be brutally difficult. While it clearly makes no apologies for this, I do hope that some of the more noticeable difficulty spikes can be sorted for the final release.
While I enjoy the combat side of the game, I do find the other elements a little lacking. The moments I find myself in the camp talking to others really come across as time fillers. Half the time it doesn't even progress the plot. The RPG elements are also very light. Progression happens slowly and there isn't much reward when I finally level up. Sure my existing stats are improved, but that's about it. No new skills. No new customisation options. It comes across as a wasted opportunity because a detailed levelling system could really help overcome some of the game's other shortfalls.
Those who dabbled in Factions will already know that The Banner Saga's battle system has some unique properties. Participants have both an Armour and Strength value, with the latter doing double duty as a hit point meter. Damage is determined by subtracting a target's Armour value from the attacker's Strength (though there's always a percentage chance to do at least 1 damage,) so as your heroes get hurt they also become less able to cause harm themselves. When attacking a foe, you can opt to target either Strength or Armour. Certain special abilities affect both. A limited Willpower resource can bolster attacks of all types.
So here's the dilemma: in every battle, you will be outnumbered. Your heroes will be taking damage no matter what, so although an attack to Armour can seem like a waste (why not just hit their Strength and leave them weaker?) you do not want to be left in a situation where your tired, wounded heroes can no longer cause a scratch the the enemy. This problem is compounded when you have a mixture of Varl and humans in your team, as the former will always hit with decent power, but the basic human warriors will need to whittle down some Armour in order to do much damage.
The further intricacies of this system haven't yet sunk in for me. There's clearly scope for laying down traps and using a well-timed special power for knocking people into them, as well as luring the opponent into a position where you can unleash maximum carnage upon them. During one battle, I was gaining boosts to Armour when I pulled men back next to one another, but I wasn't really sure why and couldn't replicate it in a later encounter.
After you've settled in and learned the how the isometric turn based combat works the game really begins. It's easy to think at first glance that this game is about the combat, most games are. In The Banner Saga though the real role of a leader is managing a group of people and keeping most of them alive. You're thrust into the role of leader whether you like it or not. As the Varl in charge you need to make the tough calls.
Each decision I had to make gave me pause, there seemed like no '˜correct' or .ood' choice. No matter what you do, someone is probably going to be unhappy. I needed to show my Varl soldiers that I was as strong and wise as our previous leader, I needed to keep a spoiled human prince happy to preserve an alliance, I needed to keep our supplies at good levels as we trekked across the snow-covered mountains, I needed to do this, and I needed to do that.
Some of these needs outcomes are mutually exclusive. When faced with the prospect of sending out a war band to rescue some villagers, I had to weigh the cost. Will our supplies hold with the increased mouths to feed and will my soldiers even stand a chance against the Dredge? Characters I came to respect and rely on in battle would leave me when I didn't align with their morals.
