Anyone else disappointed in this sequel?

[skyhrg]

Banner Saga 1 was awesome but BS2:

- The war factor, number of clansmen/fighters had no impact in the game
- There are so many things that don't really give closure, like Folka and Bolverik. No closure in any stories... are we seriously supposed to 1~2 years again for BS3?!?
- Let's face it, the ending totally sucked... seriously, what kind of end battle was that?
- Since you leveled up your characters in BS1, BS2 battles were SOO much easier.

I honestly was hoping for a better story. I think many game consumers are into the stories and characters, like Mass Effect 2. But this game just didn't bring much into the table. For example, there's Canary in the background of the menu, and in the trailer. But what the heck did she do in this game? You get like 4/5 into the game, she does absolutely nothing, and the game is over.

What do you guys think? Wasn't BS1 much better overall?

[onkl]

First I have to say, I love both parts and look forward to the third. TBS is a rare gem and you did a great job!

Yet, I also felt that part one was much tighter and straight forward - overall a more refined experience. Even if part two is the classic cliffhanger, you could've ended some subplots and fleshed out others more. There were so many interesting ideas like the horseborn, the old forest, or the kragsmen that didn't receive the necessary gametime to fully unleash their potential. So TBS2 was simply too short.

Gameplay-wise I also felt overloaded with characters and special abilities (at least with Rook). Which resulted in me feeling forced to play certain tactics. I realy hated to have to take the horseborn with me on certain battles, or that Bolverk's party was so limited. Not even a single archer (why didn't you make the bandit archer a possible candidate, forgot her name).

On the other hand, with Bolverk's party you realy made me feel the hard long march and some of the battles inside and after the cave tunnel were realy challenging on hard. The Ravens realy grew on me on this journey.


I agree with most of the criticism for the caravan system. So often I felt like "WTF, so 10 bandits just robbed my 500 clansmen of all supplies?!". Also while I like the idea that your decisions have consequences you have to live with, there were some moments you could have intervened to prevent a certain result. For example when you pick up the starving clansmen and a little later the kid steals rations. One wrong word and they all get banished for ever with no other option afterwards. That just felt limiting and unauthentic.


I did miss the second wave option from part one and the overall feeling of "fack it, let's break some more bones". But it reflects that TBS2 is all about being on the run.


I end with a short round-up on things I loved in TBS2:
- Rook+Odd, Bolverk+Folka <3
- Bromance moments with Rook, Iver, Hakon
- even more impressive landscapes and visuals
- much more diverse battles and enemies
- great take on "you can't help everyone"

And Rugga was completly right: I only ran after the horseborn to save Oddleif, which was a stupid tactical decision. And I only sided with the king because I didn't wanted to fight my homie Hakon. Well done Stoic!

[Petersaber]

I wasn't disappointed.
- TBS2 is a second game, it doesn't have the oomph the novelity of the first one had
- TBS2 is a second game in a trilogy, it's bound to be a bit underwheling story-wise, with multiple loose ends and characters splitting up
- combat was somewhat improved
- renown system not as annoying as earlier, you still don't get enough to level your party to max, but you don't have to


On the other hand, in TBS1 I was struggling to get supplies, but here, I was overflowing with them, and your caravan matters even less.

What I also disliked is that you could put a lot of renown in a single character (Iver, Eyvind, etc) and have them taken away from you.

[Zombiehampster]

Not disappointed at all and loving every minute of it. Great sequel, excellent story-telling, and love the larger combat maps and little additions/improvements here and there. The whole thing is just beautiful from the graphics, music, story, and the elegance of the game system. I'm looking forward to more.

[Mysti_Fogg]

I was mostly happy with the sequel.

Though I will say I thought it strayed pretty far on the side of easy. Despite dumping food all over the place when it came to the waterfuall and the dredge, I still had 26 days supply left afterward. On the second play through, I just didn't buy supplies until after I did the massive supply dump, and I had 16 days of supplies left. I couldn't figure out why, after having to plot so hard at supplying my caravan last game, Somehow I was living in the land of plenty. I mean, I figured the south was less pressed by dredge, but I shad more food than I could eat before I even went to a market.

I also didn't find the last game paricularly hard. And I say this as someone who plays RPGs, but doesn't consider herself particularly good at them. I actually even mastered that game on hard: it was all a matter of knowing when to hold'em and when to fold'em in battle, so to speak. It wasn't difficult at all until the final battle. That was was punishing on the hard difficulty and required me to go read strategy guides.

So, anyway, I liked the story with 2 minor quibbles that I've come across so far, I liked the nex characters, I liked trying to manage the huge party.

I disliked the lack of caravan management in this game. There was a good idea in training fighters, but the fighters didn't seem to do anything for you other than to eat more food. That felt like a really poor investment when last game I wished I could have trained more fighters to contend with the dredge. And, like I said, the food was ridiculously plentiful (or mayabe the people just ate less for some reason). I would have preferred the previous system of fighter battles with the additional choices from this game of training clansmen and having clansmen forage. Then I think it would have been balanced. If anyone tells you Banner Saga 1 is too easy, tell them to go play Oregon Trail to the end of the trail and see if they still think Banner Saga is hard.

I did like the varations of batle set ups in this game and how the landscape was worked into it to make the fights feel more unique and allow for a variety of strategies.. I liked the new character classes, although with so many different powers I wish that I had the ability to move and then guage if a target was in range for a special attack or not. I had a lot of problems with the horseborn trying to pull off their special moves. It seemed like I would be too close or too far away all the time. Mostly I just want the abilty for any unit to continue walking if they haven't made an attack yet.

Alright, my story quibbles:

1) the woman who follows Bolverk around and tries to steal his food in the middle of a blizzard no matter what you choose to do. It seems like the Bolverk thing to do would be to drive her off/kill her from the beginning. It just doesn't make for drama when someone used to beating the crap out of other people and who is trying to survive in difficult circumstances sees that he's being followed that he doesn't drive off or kill the follower.

2) Canary and her herd. I've outlined my issues in the thread about Canary and her herd. But for short: you're forced to take her along despite the fact Tryvaggi prophecied about her, your other horrseborn are uncomfortable about certain herds and wont explain their own history of why they might not be happy, and she frickin' attacked you for trying to cross a bridge and be on your way. I've left people to starve in the cold for much less. There's no way I'd let her travel with me, that would mean she'd be inside our defensive ring when we set camp and I don't trust her a jot. Why can't we really tell her no?

ETA: I forgot to mention the one on two with the dredge slingers over the deer. I liked the idea since it tied into Banner Saga 1 so well. I was just disappointed by the execution. I wanted Alette to leave the fight. She didn't want to steal their deer. As mentioned above, I was swimming in food. And the dredge didn't seem to be attacking her. I didn't see any reason she couldn't have just left them to their deer. I spent many many many terns taking no action in the hopes that this would allow me to get out of this fight, but such was not the case.

[Qu1cksand]

I have to say I'm quite disappointed..I blasted through it in one day.. it was very hard to stop because i really enjoyed the first one and wnated to see the end.
BUT.. my first problem was clear right from the beggining.. the clansmen,fighters etc. dont make any difference at all.. which make zero sense in the overall plot of the saga... I just let everyone die when I ran out of supplies..better to upgrade my heroes with the little renown i have..
next thing was that (although the reinforcements are cool and all) the endless mode battles aren't clearly announced.. i had no idea there will be wave after wave comming and never stop.. of course i wiped multiple times because of that..
and finaly my biggest problem with banner saga 2 is the overall plot integration.. it was really annoying me that i was forced to join Juno in her crusade to save her and her lover from the Serpent (btw. the coolest character)...
like seriously.. a stup1d f4ck1ng love story is behind this apocalypse, destruction and dying? And at the end she tells me to wait if they succeed? I wanted to kill her the entire journey.. or at least get rid of her and her nonsense.. but i was forced to follow her every decision and mood change..
it PISSES me off immensely that all the decisions i have made had no impact on the overall story at all.. in the end i still have to just wait for two side characters that took my RP character away from me and forced him to fight a pointless battle i purpousefully did nothing at just to see if Eyewind (or whatever his name is) and Juno finaly die..
im just sitting there like wtf... Ingver even heard they are behind all this bs and still had to blindly fight because .... because.. i dont f4king know.. i am really p1ss3d.. and the ending sucked balls..that wasnt an ending at all.. more and more questions,no new answers just clarifying that it really is a love story plot between two annoying characters that are also absolutely useless in battles
These are just my immediate thoughts and maybe there is more to my dissapointment than this but it just came to my mind.. i just ended the game and unfortunatelly dont see the point of returning for another playthrough..

[Myll_Erik]

We're working on some additional (and free) content for Banner Saga 2 - called Survival Mode. It's still in a beta stage, but we hope it adds some additional valye/replayablity to the game as well.

[Rakesh]

I would like if the choices presented to you, had some kind of indication as to what a possible outcome could be.
Like, of these 4 choices, these 2 will end the conversation outright, this one may lead to a fight and finally this one will continue the conversation.
The choices at this point, are not clear enough to decipher what it could potentially lead to.
The player imho, should be given more tools to decide on which choice to take.

Also, the barricade mechanic,imho , too was a pain and it meant having to take the long way around to hunt down the enemy. A better way to do it would be to give the player the option to choose where they want barricades.

[Aleonymous]

Qu1cksand a écrit :

I have to say I'm quite disappointed...

The genre of The Banner Saga is not easy to specify. I think some of the game's features have been miscommunicated (by reviewers, players and --to some extent-- the devs too) and thus some players end up not liking it, mostly because they expected something else.

-- They say it's an RPG. Yes, in part, but it's not like Skyrim where you can go about doing whatever you like, killing whoever you (don't) like etc. Its only RPG-related aspect is that you can promote your heroes and give them items and extra abilities. So in The Banner Saga, you are cast into the roles of fixed characters, whether you like them or not, and follow a predefined story with a few branching options.

-- They say it's a strategy/caravan-management game. Well, there are strategy elements (mostly in the tactical combat though) and there's surely a caravan. But, managing the caravan is far too simple for the game to be called a caravan-mgmt game. Not to mention that the caravan's welfare only marginally affects the story...

In this sense, I'd say TBS is more like an adventure game with tactical turn-based combat. Not at all a strategy RPG hybrid or something...

[SuperCamper31]

Loved it just as much as the first and I'm treating it as an ongoing experience. I loved the ending of the first more of course (Especially since my Iver outranked my Bolverk) but I'm definitely looking forward to an epic conclusion in part 3.

[Onion Donkey]

i dunno, i loved it, maybe even more the bs1, maybe i'm just a story nerd i dunno

[Fathom]

I think the banner saga is the same genre as Fire Emblem games, turn based strategy game? Obviously with RPG elements.

[Gay Actor Michael Douglas]

The Horseborn attack you at the end of the game, didn't they?

[Aleonymous]

Zardoz a écrit :

The Horseborn attack you at the end of the game, didn't they?

Yes. What is not entirely clear is Canary's role in this betrayal.

[Yellow]

Fringehunter7719 a écrit :

Myll_Erik a écrit :

We'd love to hear more feedback around the caravan aspects and the way we changed it to mean something this time around though - any more thoughts or opinions from anyone else?

Let me start out by saying that I absolutely loved both parts 1 and 2 of The Banner Saga and have been thrilled with the sheer amount of hours of entertainment I've had for my money. I could write a lot about the things I really loved about both parts from the art style, to the music to the mechanically creative and satisfying combat, particularly in part 1 where it was very finely tuned and challenging.

That said the caravan mechanic was probably the part of the game that, even after the improvements, I enjoyed the least. There are two primary gameplay systems that the caravan should intermesh with:-

1. Tactical combat, including hero leveling and management
   
2. Narrative experience, including story branches and text box choices

I seem to remember that a lot of the discussion around Banner Saga part 1 pointed out that the caravan had little, if any, interaction with those two systems. How is it that if everyone starved you still have to choose how to handle a dispute between two members of the caravan? Why doesn't Oddleif who has a strong matriarchal role with respect to her clan comment on the loss of everyone she cares about, why didn't that affect her relationship with Rook, at least with a single additional conversation? That kind of thing.

The same goes for battles. If I have a thousand fighters the size of dredge forces adjust to match the strength of my forces. If I have none, I meet only small amounts of dredge.

Whilst I understand that with a game that runs for 15 hours rather than 1.5 it makes no sense to have absolute fail conditions hinging on these numbers, which might reflect decisions taken many hours earlier, it does feel weird that there's no interaction between the caravan and the other two gameplay systems - doubly so since those mechanisms already interact with one another so well, and provide the framework for caravan interactions.

For example, in chapter 8 the heroes encounter a waterfall, a wonderful dramatic moment where the threat of those dredge that have been stalking you through the woods along the banks suddenly becomes an imminent danger. Caught between a rock and a hard place the party is forced to fight the dredge. Previous narrative choices suddenly have a role to play in the choice that comes up and the player can:-

• Order Oddleif to fire arrows at the dredge on the shore.
  
• Order Bolverk and his Ravens to help.
  
• Get Griss to carve an opening in the dredge ranks.
  
• Order a charge.

So previous choices about whether to recruit (or kill) a hero, in this case Griss, gives an additional narrative option, which in turn changes the mechanic of the upcoming battle. Great. Two systems interacting wonderfully. But at no point in the game is there any kind of check for the number of fighters. Wouldn't it be great if you got here (having followed the tutorial's advice and advice of at least two in game characters) with a lot of fighters, you could get an additional option based on that? Why not an option for "Order your fighters to shield the clansmen while they unload the supplies from the ships" for example? This could be triggered by a ratio of fighters:clansmen, or just absolute count (after all, there's even an achievement which decides the size of a large fighting force at 600). What about when the caravan reaches Lundar? There are two choices that specifically refer to the idea of trying to fight a war on two fronts (first fighting only the dredge/horseborn or both, second attempting to save two of the key areas of the town instead of only one of the market/houses/great hall)? Why not have options opened up, or closed off by the relative military strength of the caravan?

As it stands it feels like just before the first war (at that waterfall point), I make a decision to either have 100% of my clansmen as fighters - which maximises the number of people who survive or I make a decision to have 100% of my clansmen stay as clansmen - which maximises my bonus renown and foraging. It feels like a single, binary choice between which of two arbitrary numbers (renown/living souls) I want to use as a score for this particular run. The formula being used to determine war casualties appears to play into this polarising mechanic; rather than having some amount of casualties that is reduced by fighters (up to some cap and above some minimum) and then distributed across the population types of the caravan, it seems (from the numbers I tested) that having more people always results in more casualties, which doesn't create a gameplay incentive, or provide narrative satisfaction (why can the dredge kill 20% more civilians if 500 fighters protect 600 clansmen, than if they protect 500 clansmen?). Juxtaposed with events that occur when crossing the "bridge" that Eyvind raises to escape this is even harder to swallow. He struggles with the weight of 1,000 people and 300 units of supplies, just as much as with 300 people and 50 supplies. To help him we throw out "the rest" of the supplies, that's 15 units either way. Why do casualties scale, but a decision to throw out an "appreciable fraction" of the weight he's carrying doesn't?

The other way that interaction feels like a "natural fit" would be in terms of the pool of random events. It doesn't make sense to be resolving disputes among caravan members about whether to sleep in a great hall if almost everyone is dead. It doesn't make sense for a caravan of 1,000 souls to be intimidated by a handful of 10 bandits. Why not have "high population" and "low population" thresholds that add or remove events from the random event pool? Maybe if you've got only fighters and few clansmen you get an event concerning how militaristic things have become, where you have to resolve a conflict between fighters who feel their status is too good to forage, or look after animals and the need for those things to get done? Maybe if your population falls below 100 people Hogun's kid starves (along with all those other poor people) and he finally loses his remaining faith in your leadership and strikes out on his own, leaving as a hero?

At the moment it doesn't feel like getting to Arberrang with 2,200 living souls is any different to getting to Arberrang with 400. It would be really nice if in part 3 there were consequences. Presumably defences must be built, order must be kept, factions will have to negotiate. It would be nice if the souls in the caravan became more than just numbers on a screen, that they might give you votes in a kingsmoot, or encourage a powerful political player like Rugga to have to negotiate with you. Or to open up an option of putting men to work on building barricades like Bolverk did in Old Ford. Just an extra option here or there, that creates additional tactical or narrative variations, as the presence or absence of heroes does, would go a long way to integrating the system and making it feel like part of the game and not just "keeping score". Especially if it has consequences. Not enough men to build those defences? Krumr dies (again). Not enough clansmen to act as lookouts and policemen? Oddleif leaves the party to look after the common folk full time.

Anyway, sorry, I've gone on far too long and been far too negative. Love the game, love all the hard work the team put in, looking forward to part 3.

Very well writen! +100

[geltian68]

Wouldn't know, getting stuck with Falka and Balverik nd mercenary band killed game for me at start. the concept that sold me on game on supposedly controlling caravan composition and first day I loaded with selfish mercenary that's already reneging on deal and threatening to kill menders. I went back to xcom within an hour. Just knowing I forced to keep viper in camp that I know is going to screw me later removed all motivation to play because foundation I building from is already bad.