Stoic Games’ denouement to their beautifully animated, Viking-inspired epic contains, in heaping doses, more of everything that made the first two turn-based tactics games so strong. The Banner Saga 3 offers a bloody and satisfying conclusion to the trilogy with plenty of tough choices, challenging encounters, and vivid characters. At the same time, it also fails to address the series’ few weaknesses: Rote combat, an avalanche of side characters with little importance to the plot, and a short adventure. Still, it spins a good yarn and delivers immediate consequences to your decisions in such a way that I was left wanting more.
The Banner Saga 3 brings the conclusion to the story of the Vikings. Just like the previous entries in the installment, this is a game places heavy emphasis deep stories which are shaped by player. Full list of The Banner Saga 3 achievements and guides to unlock them. The game has 49 Achievements worth 1000 Gamerscore. Note: Care has been taken to avoid major specific spoilers for The Banner Saga 1 and 2. The broad narrative setup for The Banner Saga 3 is discussed. The Banner Saga 3 begins just like the last. The Banner Saga 3 is a great game, and crushing enemies both small and large, human and supernatural is still just as fun. You can also equip one of your troops with a calming statue of a cat. Review: The Banner Saga 3. Jul 26, 2018 The Banner Saga 3 would have been better served by making combat itself more nuanced and engaging than simply adding a mechanic to lengthen encounters that soon grew boring at their standard length. The Banner Saga 3 marks the end of Stoic’s trilogy, but there’s more than one end to this strategy RPG. There are five different endings to see, but thankfully these endings are not tied to. In case you missed it. The final part of the Trilogy, The Banner Saga 3 has been released (July 26, 2018)! [Official website] Join The Banner Saga Community Channel and Chat with the Devs on Discord!
It is the little details that lend weight to the stakes facing this beautiful, hand-drawn world. The devastation beyond the darkness as Iver’s band travels further into the belly of the proverbial beast is unnerving, almost haunting. The fates of his band of Ravens felt as immediate as the grander mission, with simple tactical decisions as we plodded along carrying immediate life-or-death outcomes. I chose poorly more than once, but each time I did so it felt fair. Whether they were a result of ignoring the advice of a seasoned companion or just misreading a situation, in hindsight it was clear that the failures I suffered were mine alone.
The fates of my allies, both in The Banner Saga 3 and those who perished in the two previous installments, served as an apt metaphor of a world on the brink, and I felt the urgency behind the band’s push forward into oblivion. The absolutely shabby, frayed state of Arberrang and its citizens, told both in vignettes as Rook’s (or Alette’s, depending on who survived in your game) caravan passed through drove home that this was a city about to break under the weight of the end of the world, and that if I couldn’t hold it together and preserve it somehow there wouldn’t be a world left to save. As the tension mounted and the pace of the story accelerated, I found myself realizing that I had developed a profound empathy for the decision-makers in this tale: The burden of leadership, of carrying on in the face of mistakes or pyrrhic victories, sat as heavily on my shoulders as it did in theirs.
The Banner Saga 3 Game Guide
This brevity aids in replayability, certainly, and The Banner Saga and The Banner Saga 2 are of similar length. There are enough points of divergence in this trilogy that make a second or even a third playthrough worthwhile, just to see everything that might happen. Still, seeing the end credits play so quickly after I’d made some devastating choices with real consequences couldn’t help but numb the pain of those results for me. A fighter knows that any gut punch, no matter how devastating, is rendered more palatable by the final bell.
The battle before that ending is beautiful and powerful, however. The Banner Saga’s most enjoyable feature is its story, and the tale told in this finale is a tremendous achievement. By pairing the resource management and RPG advancement mechanics with story decisions and powerful vignettes, I found myself rapidly absorbed into the unfolding drama, battles, and character progression. The principal city of Arberrang is shown to us as a big and believable painting of devastation and suffering wherein we can resupply the caravan, level up and manage our heroes, and select districts of the city that have been highlight to continue the story. From there, we travel into the famous side-scrolling landscape from the first two installments. From left to right, the caravan of our heroes travels the wartorn Arberrang or apocalyptic landscapes while important decisions and vignettes are presented to them as they go. They are also far from trivial: The fates of characters can be determined by any one of them, as can the resources and population of the caravan, which become far more than mere numbers as the story unfolds. These narrative asides can seem like small moments but can transform into quick and unexpected knives to the gut. Walls fall, fires erupt, and battle cries add to the din of chaos around you. The world-building on display here is truly impressive.
In most cases, though, I found it underwhelming in practice. My heroes were all so powerful by this stage of the story, and I was so comfortable and secure in their optimal use, that the items I was being rewarded with weren’t making that huge a difference. Before long, doubling and tripling the length of battles only served to keep me from the story that had me hooked.
Banner Saga 3 Ending
The Banner Saga trilogy offers challenging combat – at least when the somewhat inconsistent AI actually goes for the kill – but the lack of variety can lend a rote effect to them. The environments are new and visually interesting for each fight, set in places like a ruined and warped great hall that’s fallen to darkness or a sea of bodies near a breach in Arberrang’s walls. But the battles themselves often unfold similarly, even taking around the same amount of time to complete. Certain heroes rapidly accumulate kills, and other heroes render unto them the same buffs, battle after battle, over and over. A few encounters add additional objectives like protecting a unit or targeting a specific enemy or additional obstacles like fire or barricades, but the large majority are simply a race to clear the map. The Banner Saga 3 would have been better served by making combat itself more nuanced and engaging than simply adding a mechanic to lengthen encounters that soon grew boring at their standard length.
Not much can be said about the aesthetic trappings of the Banner Saga 3’s world that has not already been said about its predecessors: The beautiful, hand-drawn animation never dips in quality, the cutscenes look as if they belong in some cartoon masterpiece from the golden era of 90s animation, and each character is penned to look unique and striking. The Banner Saga 3 offers a darker feel to accompany a darker journey, trading some of the vibrant and spectacular imagery present in the first two games for fire and ice, tableaus of bloodshed, and the warped purple oddities within the darkness. At several moments, I found myself leaning back and simply enjoying the striking artwork being presented. In many ways, this is as beautiful as this series has ever been, and the animation team cannot be commended enough for the towering achievement this trilogy represents.