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The Banner Saga |OT| Here come the vikings!

Corto

Member
Haha you're too kind. "Everything I've done" is too broad ... I promise there is plenty of terrible music lying around :)

Just to add to the praising crowd! Fantastic soundtrack you've composed to this game Austin, really great stuff. And sorry to bother about your Bandcamp recommendations on The Guidonian Hand but have you ever heard of Edmund Welles? Really similar powerful music.
 

Ketch

Member
I just played like 4 hours worth. It's really good. Somebody already said, oregon trail meets strategy rpg in a deep original Norse mythology with beautiful art and music. It's really really good.
 

Archurro

Member
I'm really loving this game. Setting and story are really interesting(although I mix up a lot of the characters from chapter 1 and 3), combat is the right amount of difficuly and complexity for me, and I love the Oregon Trail aspect of it. Anyone have any idea how long this game is?
 

Kuroyume

Banned
I'm digging it. Kind of hard to follow with the names though.

I have two questions:

1. What do the stars above a character mean when you're about to attack them? It was covered in the tutorial but I can't remember.

2. How do you know how much health a character has? Is there a way to heal them?
 

mjc

Member
I'm digging it. Kind of hard to follow with the names though.

I have two questions:

1. What do the stars above a character mean when you're about to attack them? It was covered in the tutorial but I can't remember.

2. How do you know how much health a character has? Is there a way to heal them?

Yeah the names of the characters and other things are hard to get straight.

1. They're extra attack points basically. You can either attack for the listed damage or add stars for extra damage. You only get a limited number of those each fight I think.

2. The shield is the blue meter and strength is the red one. If the red meter gets to zero the character dies. It also determines how much damage that character does.
 

Grief.exe

Member
I'm digging it. Kind of hard to follow with the names though.

I have two questions:

1. What do the stars above a character mean when you're about to attack them? It was covered in the tutorial but I can't remember.

Willpower

You can perform special abilities by using Willpower. For example, moving onto the yellow squares or doing extra damage when attacking.
 

jediyoshi

Member
I'm digging it. Kind of hard to follow with the names though.

I have two questions:

1. What do the stars above a character mean when you're about to attack them? It was covered in the tutorial but I can't remember.

2. How do you know how much health a character has? Is there a way to heal them?

1. The stars are willpower. If the unit has any available, you can click on how much you want to "add" and they increase the attack by +1 for each willpower point you use. They're also what you use to use abilities and move extra distances. You can gain these by resting your character.

As you kill enemies, your horn meter at the top fills up with extra willpower. When you click on it, it adds an extra willpower point to the current unit.

2. Blue = armor, red = strength = health. Strength also dictates how much damage the unit can do, ala the max damage you can achieve will only be as high as your strength.
 
The art style of this game was inspired by one of my favorite artists, Eyvind Earle.

eyvind-earle1.jpg


carmel-gold.jpg


Eyvind-Earle-5.jpg


grazing-in-peace-1970.jpg

I backed the game on this principle alone.
 

Metzhara

Member
In some weird way, it brings a smile to my face when I see "website currently unavailable".
I haven't been this excited for a PC game since Xcom.
It just looks beautiful.
 

Ryne

Member
Pre-ordered the soundtrack edition from Gamefly for 19.19, just about to jump in. I couldn't wait, just wanted to run out of work today.
 
I've been playing this for a few hours now and it's incredible. I didn't even know this game existed until a couple weeks back when I purchased it on the art style alone.

To say that the developers completely nailed the art in this game would be an understatement. Everything fits so well, from the characters, both on and off the battlefield, to the beautiful animations, the environments scrolling past you, the menus, the text. Everything is exactly as it should be on the visual front.

The battles, so far, are somewhat simplistic. That's not to say they are bad, but people looking for a really complex strategy game might not be fulfilled by this. Each battle takes place on a flat surface with no obstacles or hazards to get in the way (at the point i'm at anyway). Each character has 1 ability which you can activate using your willpower. You can upgrade your units in a straightforward manner like giving them +1 strength, +1 armor, etc. The battles really bring nothing new to the genre, but they also don't need to. I have yet to find myself frustrated or bored with the combat which is more than I can say for many games.

Every choice you make in this game matters. I have stared at the screen on several occasions trying to carefully choose my next action. Some choices I've made have had immediate effects and some I can tell are just going to come back to bite me in the ass. I'm looking forward to continuing the game and seeing the consequences of my actions (or non-actions).

The story, or more specifically, the characters in the story, are a bit confusing at first. It really helps to read the brief character bios on their stat pages if you are feeling lost. I wish they would have a summary of what happened so far, including the personal choices you've made during the game.

Also, the lack of subtitles is disappointing. My speakers are terrible and the audio that plays during certain cutscenes just had me kinda sorta knowing what the person was saying.

I really hope this game does well for them. They've created something pretty spectacular here.
 

llamarawk

Member
So I'm about an hour or two in and this game is everything i hoped for and more so far. However, I realized I'm confused on episode structure. I believe only the first episode has been released today and that we paid for all episodes (assume there's 5 cause that seems to be a standard now) with the 15-25 dollars we spent. Please correct me if I'm wrong

On game length
it appears most steam reviewers played it for 11-12 hours before review. is that the complete length of the game or that of episode 1? Thanks.
 
So I'm about an hour or two in and this game is everything i hoped for and more so far. However, I realized I'm confused on episode structure. I believe only the first episode has been released today and that we paid for all episodes (assume there's 5 cause that seems to be a standard now) with the 15-25 dollars we spent. Please correct me if I'm wrong

On game length
it appears most steam reviewers played it for 11-12 hours before review. is that the complete length of the game or that of episode 1? Thanks.

From what I've heard, this is just the first game in a planned trilogy, it's not episodic like tell-tale games.
 

Herla

Member
This game is amazing, so glad I backed it for $50. 4 hours flew by like nothing, only games like Civ or Mount & Blade manage to do this to me.

And I love how paranoid it makes me. So far I think I've been making the right choices, but I can't help but think "there might've been a better way". This game is Alpha Protocol's Gelato Shop with Vikings.
 

Frologic

Member
I'm not really a fan of turn based tactical rpgs but that art, music and overwhelming sense of dread, despair and bleakness makes me want.
 

Metzhara

Member
When did crest design happen for backers? I help kickstart the game and don't remember hearing anything about it.

I'm with you. I think the deadline was something like December 6th. I submitted mine December 8th but I think the deadline was a hard deadline. I noticed the email in my inbox late and a few interesting personal weeks prior.
I don't know if they still have the "include your own crest" option, but you had to go to stoic's site and upload it from there.
As for whether my own personal crest was accepted... I've got to wait until I get to play the game later today to find out!
Their communication was great for the masses, not so much if you didn't make it your number one priority. I can't say I blame them though.
 

Gothos

Member
Question about the moment when you encounter those armored guys for the first time:

Is the death of that king character scripted? He fell in the battle when that human prince encounters dredge in the second town and I don't if it's scripted or what because when character falls in battle he's usually injured and not outright permanently dead...
 

Laieon

Member
Oh man, why have I not heard of this game until now? It looks absolutely beautiful. Heavily considering picking it up. Does anyone know how long it is?
 
Been playing for an hour so far and the game seems great. I did back the kick-starter (seems like forever ago), but I haven't really kept up with the project at all. Glad to see they were able to make a game that so far seems to have lived up to the pitch.
 

RK9039

Member
Oh man, why have I not heard of this game until now? It looks absolutely beautiful. Heavily considering picking it up. Does anyone know how long it is?

Apparently it's meant to be 12+ hours, but I only just started. Also it has a branching storyline so you could play this multiple times, not sure how significant the choices are though.

ed: The world map looks big, and there are a lot stuff to read on the map, very nice.
 

Smash88

Banned
The only reason I bought this game is for the art style, and story.

I usually don't like these type of games, but the art style got me.
 
I like the Monty Python like traveling and the map. I'm not really digging the rest of the art style.

So far the battles are pretty boring too, but I'm only on chapter 2. Do characters get more than 1 skill?
 

Necrovex

Member
I wasn't able to get my Steam code today due to Stoic's site being down. I plan to play through the first episode once I finish Rising. Pretty damn excited to try this out.
 
I have one very important question in order to make my purchase: are all the party members unique? Or is it more of generic classes?
 

Victrix

*beard*
Still can't get through their webpage registration to get my key. This is my punishment for backing the game on kickstarter :<
 
Just started but... man, the lack of subtitles seems pretty unacceptable. Especially considering the characters have fairly thick accents. What were they thinking?
 

Enduin

No bald cap? Lies!
The map made me all tingly in my special place. I must have looked over the whole thing and read every entry. Best map ever.

So far I love the game. Just a bit past the start of the 3rd chapter and everything so far is great. Still getting the hang of combat so it's nice that falling in combat doesn't equal death for a character because things can go south pretty quick for character. What I love most though is the out of combat encounters and decision making you have to do. I also like the character encounters. Tryggvi was pretty amusing as was Oddleif, and Yrsa the red witch was fantastic.

Also thank god for the constant auto saving cause my game has crashed like 6 times now. I don't think it plays well with dual monitors or something it seems if I try and do anything on the other or something is happening in the background the game will eventually just crap out on me.
 

llamarawk

Member
I always play with subtitles and its not a big deal not having them here. I bet it will be patched into the game at some point so you guys could wait for that.
 

Alastor3

Member
Also thank god for the constant auto saving cause my game has crashed like 6 times now. I don't think it plays well with dual monitors or something it seems if I try and do anything on the other or something is happening in the background the game will eventually just crap out on me.

The game play well with one screen and alt-tab
 

LuchaShaq

Banned
This game runs great on my windows 8 tablet Asus transformer (with keyboard attachment on for this obviously).

really surprised/happy.

Super unhappy about no subtitles 90% of the narration I can't hear shit.

Super impressed by the art/like the combat/like the story so far.


Have no idea how to get my pre order bonus on steam?
 
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