Review for The Banner Saga 3. Game for Android, iOS, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 26/07/2018
"It's not the end of the world, but you can see it from here“, He said we don't really know who. In The Banner Saga 3, however, the end of the world is not only visible but also real, in the form of a wall of darkness that is not too slowly approaching Arberrang, humanity's last refuge. Let's find out together the conclusion of the Norse themed trilogy created by Stoic Studio, four years after the beginning of the journey of Rook and Alette.
If you do not know the names just mentioned, it is good that you leave this page and dedicate yourself to reading this review, since The Banner Saga 3 is not a title that can be played without knowing the rest of the story. In fact, the saga picks up the narrative exactly where the predecessor ended, giving the player the possibility to import the saves or, alternatively, to choose a protagonist with various pre-selected narrative choices in support.
Whatever the choice, the starting situation will still be chaotic, as expected after The Banner Saga 2, which made players discover that the rock beings called dredge, the main enemy since the beginning of the series, are nothing more than the symptom of a greater problem that is threatening not only humans and allied races but all of life as we know it.
Also in this episode the game is divided between two groups of characters committed to tackling different problems but linked by a common thread, with one fundamental difference: for the first time, one of the two groups will not move. On the one hand we have the bearers of the banner, forced within the walls of Arberrang to organize the defenses and try not to plunge the city into civil war, on the other we have a heterogeneous group of races and entities with supernatural powers that travel among the darkness to try to save the world.
The latter will soon make the acquaintance of a new enemy far more dangerous than the dredges, or the distorted creatures created by the wall of darkness that is enveloping the world.
The Banner Saga 3 maintains its identity as a turn-based strategic game and the gameplay mechanics that made it known, “limiting itself” to adding some new features. The new enemy is one of the main new gameplay elements: they are humans, varl, dredges and other creatures already met but changed in appearance and equipped with new offensive abilities that force the player to consider tactical approaches different from regular encounters.
Of course, there is no shortage of new unit classes and evolutions for the existing ones: with a level cap raised to 15, the fights of The Banner Saga 3 take on a tactical scale never seen before thanks to the multiple active and passive skills added in this episode, which allow you to specialize old and new characters with devastating effects on opponents (who will not be less difficult to deal with, on the contrary). As for The Banner Saga 2, the third episode also increases the type of battles that can be faced compared to the base game, presenting the new wave mode: these are clashes in which after eliminating the first round of opponents it is possible to flee or face one or more additional rounds, replacing one's wounded units with the others available; completing all rounds will give you powerful new equippable items.
We previously mentioned how one of the two groups of characters will not travel outside the city: in the previous episodes the journey offered elements of management gameplay that directly impacted the fights, influencing the morale of the units, the resources that could be spent to increase the statistics of the characters, and their willpower. However, as long as we didn't get to negative resources resulting in game over, the system seemed rather an end in itself - and it continues to seem so up to a certain point in The Banner Saga 3, where it turns out an incredible fact: the entire management system, from the beginning of the first episode until that moment, will serve to determine the survival of the group within the city until the end of the game.
The Banner Saga has always given a lot of importance to the choices of the players, however The Banner Saga 3 takes this aspect to the next level: we have been for a long time used to series where the choices had only an apparent impact, often enclosed within the secondary parts of the game , or just make one character appear at the expense of another without particular deviations in the course of events (yes, Mass Effect and The Walking Dead, we are talking mainly about you).
For the first time in our memory, a video game will give weight to the player's actions to the point of making it potentially impossible to reach certain endings (obviously there are several) based on the appropriate play style in the following chapters. It may seem disheartening to the casual gamer, but after all this isn't a title for everyone: beyond the brightly colored graphics and classic Disney-inspired style we've always praised (and which is of course no less in this episode ), The Banner Saga has always been characterized by a depressing and apocalyptic atmosphere, with constant attacks on the player's mood through catastrophic narrative events or combinations of choices that lead to the death of characters that you may not only have been fond of, but which you may have spent hours of development and large amounts of resources on.
Drawing on past experience, The Banner Saga 3 takes everything positive that was done in the first two chapters to create a satisfying and never repetitive tactical gameplay experience thanks to new combat modes, new units and new customization possibilities. , but above all bringing to a close this narrative cycle that has kept all fans in suspense for so long - an epic closure, full of emotions and touching moments, determined by the choices players have made throughout the entire series.
► The Banner Saga 3 is a turn based-indie-RPG-Strategy game developed by and published by Versus Evil for Android, iOS, Mac, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 26/07/2018
