As far as tactical gameplay, health and strength occupying the same function is brilliant, and the way armor and strength affect damage dealt is ingenious. Willpower and exertion are further interwoven, creating depth. It's fantastic and it works to provide the best tactical aspect of the game.
However, combat design overall often feels a too raw and underdeveloped at higher levels. For example, why can't I check out my characters' stats while deciding who to use for the battle? Isn't that sort of important? Why isn't there a range attribute? Am I just missing it? I understand that shieldbangers move more slowly and have less range than other units due to their heft, but it'd be awfully handy if I could tell just how far they'd be able to move when placing them. Same with enemy units. There's just too much missing here. The basic premise involving strength, armor, exertion, and willpower is solid and incredibly innovative to the genre, but some major fleshing out needs to happen in order to get me more invested into the tactical combat being presented here. I often feel like I'm floundering, like I don't I have enough information to even begin to approach a battle tactically. It takes me out of the experience and I just tend to float through battles rather than plan and execute an actual strategy. And that's a very, very bad thing for a tactical RPG.
I also question the system of having each side alternating moves, rather than assigning characters a speed attribute and having that govern when turns are taken and by whom. There's a huge missed opportunity here that would greatly affect the Man vs. Varl unit selection and it would help to balance the two units. Instead it seems they tried to balance them by making the Varl bigger and less maneuverable, but I don't think this works nearly as well. I ended up selecting mostly Varl units in each battle simply because they were the hardiest and I often didn't feel the desire to try and play tactically. Just roll the Varl out there with an archer or two and have them smash heads while the archers wear away the opposing units armor. A speed attribute would have added a great deal of depth: Do you opt for speed and maneuverability and quickly bring the fight to the opponent? Or do you go with a solid front line, advance slowly, and wear the enemy down while tanking through whatever damage they deliver? It would have added a ton of tactical depth that this game is missing.
The interface has some issues. You'd better be 100% on-point with your mouse clicks, otherwise you'll have to try and figure out where you went wrong, select the same unit again, and start from scratch with whatever you were trying to get him to do. It's way too easy to click the wrong thing, and just not intuitive enough to prevent regular frustration from occuring when you're trying to get your units to do what you want. There are similar issues with selecting units and placing them prior to a battle. This is a minor gripe, but by the end of the game it was incredibly frustrating to miss a click on a willpower star by a fraction of an inch, and have to select the character and tell him what I wanted him to do from scratch.
Though the art is very well-done, I felt some of the character designs were too generic and too difficult to tell from one-another. There are a few Varl units who are basically just palette swaps from one another with very minor differences in facial features. Due to this, and not being able to view any details about a unit prior to selecting them in battle, I had a lot of trouble keeping the characters straight and often made mistakes during deployment that could have easily been avoided had I been allowed to view more details about which units I was actually selecting for battle. I mean, it doesn't even tell you which class a unit is on the pre-battle screen -- Just their name, level, and a picture of their face. No class, no stats, nothing.
Weak characterization makes the problem even worse. I often confused Griss and Bersi, and by Chapter 5 I had no idea which one was which and often made mistakes in deploying them. I found it hard to get invested in any of the characters. None of them show any depth, and the only one written with any panache at all was Ludin. Poor dialogue exacerbates the characterization issues.
Decisions are too frequently unclear about what you're actually selecting. I don't mind having things blow up in my face, but I need to be adequately informed on what it is I'm choosing to do. For example, you arrive at a fortress and enter, only to have enemies immediately attack it. You are given a choice as to whether to rest in the fortress, or immediately attack and attempt to break out. This choice is followed by another, in which you choose the actual tactics of your breakout. So you've got two choices to make at the same time, but you have to choose whether or not to rest before you're able to see what your options will be during the actual attack. Jeez, this is getting complicated... Still with me? Basically, you're forced to make an initial choice (whether or not to rest first) without adequate information to make the decision. If I had known that I'd have liked to charge the enemy and attempt to eradicate them all, I'd definitely have rested first. If I was going to try and distract them and get away, I'd have chosen to attack immediately to prevent more from arriving. The character I'm playing would have had all of this knowledge in his mind while making the initial decision as to whether or not to rest -- Why don't I? This kind of thing is present too frequently, and it leads to way too much frustration. It cheapens the decisions you're making.
Losing characters to decisions made through the game, rather than in battle, is something that keeps the intensity up, but overall I don't think it works nearly as well as Fire Emblems system of permadeath within combat. It puts too much of the onus on the story sequences and takes away from the importance of the battles. If you're in this for the story, that's fine, but it lessens the importance of the tactical game and makes it too easy simply to trudge through battles without really caring what happens. Halfway through the game I began to just autopilot my way through battles. I lost my sense of investment in my units and my tactics and started to get bored of the entire actual game. I bought this for the tactical gameplay, not the story, and so I came away very disappointed.
In conclusion, the landscapes are beautifully rendered, the lore is surprisingly well-written, and though the characters are pretty weak, the story is engaging. Unfortunately, the tactical combat as a whole leaves a lot to be desired. It's solidly constructed at its base and its key gimmick (strength and health occupying the same stat, and weaving armor into the mix) is incredibly innovative, but too often I felt there wasn't enough detail or I didn't have enough key information to dig in and play tactically, which lead to me becoming utterly disinterested in the actual tactical gameplay about halfway through. I ended up switching it down to easy and blasted through the game just to see the story.
If you're looking for an engaging story framed in a beautifully constructed world, then you'll probably enjoy your time with The Banner Saga. As a tactical RPG, though, it's seriously flawed. The systems in place are intriguing but ultimately too raw and undeveloped for me to really endorse. So as a longtime fan of the genre, it's hard for me to recommend this game.
⭐⭐
