I hate this 'game'.

[Twice]

But I love the story it's trying to tell...

Too bad the tactical gameplay portions of it just soo.... Sooo poor, I compare it to games like XCom and Wasteland, or even Heroes of M&M, it lacks depth.

I feel like it's because there's a lack of restrictions on the board as both the player and the enemy is free to just... Do whatever you want, attack whoever you want as long as you're in range, don't worry about walking past this giant enemy into the pile of enemies, especially if you're a tank, don't worry about flanking or anything of that sort, it doesn't exist and doesn't do anything for you. The chess-based turn system definitely doesn't do it for me either, because you cannot effectively react to anything being thrown your way, because even though you can spot a bad situation coming a mile away, the guy you have that could turn that around won't be available for another 10 turns, yours and the enemy's, and by then it's far too late.

I just find it so lacking... But in all fairness, I am comparing it to 60 dollar greats, and this is a ... 'game' I got for about 15 dollars. Feels more like an interactive book.

Artists, great job. Soundtrack designers, great job. Writers, wonderful.

Gameplay designers... I hope the sequels improve, because despite your flaws, I will keep playing to see this story to the end.

[Aleonymous]

Well, yes, the tactical combat component of the game can feel a little "lacking" to hardcore strategy players. I'm not one of those, so I thorougly enjoyed the battles and the differences (e.g. the turn system that furstrates some hard-wired XCOM types).

For the record, battles in the (free) online PvP little brother game called Factions
http://store.steampowered.com/app/219340/
can be much more fun, due to the human player opponent.The AI and the difficulty of the single-player games are kinda pitched to a broader audience, including casual players that come just for the story.

[Twice]

Well, worst case scenario if I find I can't put up with the gameplay anymore, I'll just turn the difficulty down to finish fights faster so I can move on with the story. I like everything else about the game, and just because the gameplay doesn't click for me it probably does for others if there's a multiplayer game dedicated to it.

[The real Norm Macdonald]

A reasonable person on the internet?
Good on you :)

[Buzzerker]

the tactical combat sucks hard. what pisses me off is when I have female archer characters that are kinda weak I don't want to get them killed off and guess who the Dredge go for every time like they were hungry rednecks going after a piece of fried chicken. So I put my two melee dudes in front to protect them and then put the archers behind them and when I go to fire at the dredge when they close the distance the arrow goes through my front dude too and forget about angle shots , you can't always take them. It's like this game is wired to kill off your characters and that pisses me the hell off. In one match a dredge got right up on this tiny female archer character and he just battered the living crap out of her getting like 4 attacks to my one. it disgusted me so much I deleted the game and quit playing it. In fact I haven't even bothered to check out BannerSaga 2 because I figured the combat is just as stacked against the player as this game is so why bother. I don't care about your stupid art or your stupid story if a game is going to cheat me before I even start to play it. Who likes a game that kills off your characters? Why is it you have so few warriors? They give you the Chieftans wife and a teenaged girl ...lmao...I mean holy crap....what about the damn cowardly Chieftan? What about some more of them horn headed giant dudes? You dorks. why don't you just give me a dozen blue smurfs armed wiith butterfly nets? lol..this way I don't care so much how many of them the game knocks off. Can you even rotate the map?

[Aleonymous]

Someone got grumpy at Valentine's Day evening it seems

Concerning archers and melee units, you'll have to be more careful about positioning and ranges! You can check enemy movement range by clicking on them; this way you can position your archers on tiles that are safe from attack.

Another thing to pay attention to is the turn-queue in the bottom of the screen: The team with fewer units is given an "advantage" of effectively taking more turns, because of the way the two parties are "interleaved" *(I-go-you-go). You can make this work in your advantage by not killing enemy units, just maiming them (reduce their Strength), or bringing fewer but stronger Heroes to a fight.