Whats your opinion on the Deluxe/Legendary content?

[dynastystar]

By that, I mean the(and this is a copy and paste): "Eternal Arena DLC, Survival Mode DLC, Shadow Walker Heroic Title, Petrie Clan Ring Item, and "The Gift of Hadrborg" novel by James Fadeley; plus Deluxe bonuses: Soundtrack, Gold Wasp in-game Item, Digital Wallpaper, and Digital Map", I've never played the game so I don't know the context behind any of this, and/or if any of it would be anti-consumer or what.

[fabula_rasa]

Let’s start with the easier ones:

• Petrie Clan Ring and Gold Wasp - are pieces of equipment you can put on your heroes (each hero can equip one item at the time). Gold Wasp is, in my opinion, a pretty good one. Weather they are worth the money, depends on your personal opinion on the validity of paying for additional in-game goodies. There are basically a lot of equipment items available in the game, so additional are not necessary at all. But they are nice :).
  
• Shadow Walker Title – Titles are a limited resource in the game. At a certain level, you can assign a title to your hero – this will give the hero certain bonuses. But it will also permanently assign this title to the chosen hero and you won’t be able to give it to anybody else. In conclusion, having additional titles to chose from is great. But still – not necessary.
  
• “The Gift of Hadrborg” novel – I did not read this one yet, so can’t really say if it’s good. But I did read “Only Bjorulf Knows” by the same author and I enjoyed his style and worldbuilding. So I’d say, a novel is a nice thing to have if you want to immerse yourself in the story of the world some more and get to know the characters.
  
• Soundtrack – music in the game is good so soundtrack is good as well. However, it’s obviously only worth it if you are the kind of person that listens to game music outside of the game. I generally don’t but I do during DnD sessions :).
  
• Wallpaper – it’s a nice wallpaper and comes in many resolutions.
  
• Digital Map – It’s a hit and miss in my opinion. The resolution is to low to print it biiiiig in nice quality to hang on my wall. And I personally don’t see much reason to referre to it during the game. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice looking map. It just should be biiiiger.

And now for the main dish :).
Eternal Arena and Survival Mode are additional ways to play the game. They are separate from the main story, from the main game and do not affect the main game at all. Both of them are purely focused on fighting. Both of those modes are only worth the money for people who enjoy the fighting in Banner Saga and want to try different strategies, heroes, combination of abilities etc. There is absolutely no story here, just fighting. There are also leaderboards (that tally your points and compare them with others) for those who like competition. Personally, I don’t care about leaderboards one way or the other, but they do provide additional fun and incentive to play for those who do.

• Survival Mode – Here you are thrown into a series of 30 pre-defined battles which you have to get through all the way to the end. You chose your starting heroes and difficulty. During the playhtrough, you get a certain number of retries (called “reloads”) – so if you loose one battle, you can use up one of those reloads and try again. However, if you loose a battle and have no reloads left – you loose and will have to try again form the beginning.
  
• Eternal Arena – This mode provides small, one-shot battles called Challenges. New Challenge appears every week and each one pits you against very specific conditions to test if you can win and how well you can do under those certain circumstances. The variety here is huge (different enemies, different maps, different conditions etc.). This mode also allows you to create your own battle challenges, tailored just how you want them.

In my opinion, both of those are worth the money as they provide nice tactical challenge and a lot of re-playability. Survival mode can get a bit old after 10+ wins on the same difficulty as the maps and enemies there do not change. However, even there you can give yourself a completely fresh playthrough by just choosing a band heroes that you never played before. The Eternal Arena was practically just released, so it’s hard to say how it will hold interest in the long run. But for now, the enormous variety of possible challenges seems great and I think it will provide a lot of re-playability.
But both Survival Mode and Eternal Arena have little to do with the story-heavy main game – so it can be not what you expect form Banner Saga.

[shpasic]

does Banner Saga Stoic Edition pack contain the same gameplay related features as Legendary edition?

[FatalFrosty]

Originally posted by dynastystar:

I've never played the game so I don't know the context behind any of this, and/or if any of it would be anti-consumer or what.

None of it is anti consumer, and it's all worth it. However if you never played the game, you should be wondering about trying the first 2 parts before wondering if you need the extras of the 3rd. Then you'll probly want them ;)

[Jactar]

It really depends what type of gamer you are if you like Banner Saga tactical combat then that deluxe content give you more things to play but if you mainly got this game becouse of story content then those deluxe stuff wont add that much to you. IMHO

[dynastystar]

Originally posted by Jactar:

It really depends what type of gamer you are if you like Banner Saga tactical combat then that deluxe content give you more things to play but if you mainly got this game becouse of story content then those deluxe stuff wont add that much to you. IMHO

I don't have the game yet, I was looking through my wishlist for what I wanna grab on the Steam Sale, only buying stuff that is below $20 for the most part(one game I bought was like 30 cents over), and this game fell below the $20 mark, so I was just wondering if I should buy the base game, buy the Deluxe Edition, or hold out for the Legendary Edition for when it goes below $20(it costs about $26 for Legendary Edition in my currency). Just looking to weigh the versions against each other. The DLC sounds nice, I'll have to look up the soundtrack as I do like some videogame music. I highly doubt I'll get around to reading the novel, I don't personally care for the Digital Map or Wallpaper, and I'm unsure of the items.

Originally posted by fabula_rasa:

Let’s start with the easier ones:

• Petrie Clan Ring and Gold Wasp - are pieces of equipment you can put on your heroes (each hero can equip one item at the time). Gold Wasp is, in my opinion, a pretty good one. Weather they are worth the money, depends on your personal opinion on the validity of paying for additional in-game goodies. There are basically a lot of equipment items available in the game, so additional are not necessary at all. But they are nice :).
  
• Shadow Walker Title – Titles are a limited resource in the game. At a certain level, you can assign a title to your hero – this will give the hero certain bonuses. But it will also permanently assign this title to the chosen hero and you won’t be able to give it to anybody else. In conclusion, having additional titles to chose from is great. But still – not necessary.
  
• “The Gift of Hadrborg” novel – I did not read this one yet, so can’t really say if it’s good. But I did read “Only Bjorulf Knows” by the same author and I enjoyed his style and worldbuilding. So I’d say, a novel is a nice thing to have if you want to immerse yourself in the story of the world some more and get to know the characters.
  
• Soundtrack – music in the game is good so soundtrack is good as well. However, it’s obviously only worth it if you are the kind of person that listens to game music outside of the game. I generally don’t but I do during DnD sessions :).
  
• Wallpaper – it’s a nice wallpaper and comes in many resolutions.
  
• Digital Map – It’s a hit and miss in my opinion. The resolution is to low to print it biiiiig in nice quality to hang on my wall. And I personally don’t see much reason to referre to it during the game. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice looking map. It just should be biiiiger.

And now for the main dish :).
Eternal Arena and Survival Mode are additional ways to play the game. They are separate from the main story, from the main game and do not affect the main game at all. Both of them are purely focused on fighting. Both of those modes are only worth the money for people who enjoy the fighting in Banner Saga and want to try different strategies, heroes, combination of abilities etc. There is absolutely no story here, just fighting. There are also leaderboards (that tally your points and compare them with others) for those who like competition. Personally, I don’t care about leaderboards one way or the other, but they do provide additional fun and incentive to play for those who do.

• Survival Mode – Here you are thrown into a series of 30 pre-defined battles which you have to get through all the way to the end. You chose your starting heroes and difficulty. During the playhtrough, you get a certain number of retries (called “reloads”) – so if you loose one battle, you can use up one of those reloads and try again. However, if you loose a battle and have no reloads left – you loose and will have to try again form the beginning.
  
• Eternal Arena – This mode provides small, one-shot battles called Challenges. New Challenge appears every week and each one pits you against very specific conditions to test if you can win and how well you can do under those certain circumstances. The variety here is huge (different enemies, different maps, different conditions etc.). This mode also allows you to create your own battle challenges, tailored just how you want them.

In my opinion, both of those are worth the money as they provide nice tactical challenge and a lot of re-playability. Survival mode can get a bit old after 10+ wins on the same difficulty as the maps and enemies there do not change. However, even there you can give yourself a completely fresh playthrough by just choosing a band heroes that you never played before. The Eternal Arena was practically just released, so it’s hard to say how it will hold interest in the long run. But for now, the enormous variety of possible challenges seems great and I think it will provide a lot of re-playability.
But both Survival Mode and Eternal Arena have little to do with the story-heavy main game – so it can be not what you expect form Banner Saga.

thanks for this, this was very informative. Questions specifically pertaining to the items, how well are they balanced to the rest of the game? I don't really like it when games sell OP items that make the game easier, but if they're on the level of the rest of the equips in the game and just gives you more options and thus makes the game more fun, then I'm not as bothered by it.

[fabula_rasa]

Not to worry - items are definitely not overpowered. They exactly remain on the level with the rest and just provide you with more options to choose from.

[dynastystar]

Originally posted by fabula_rasa:

Not to worry - items are definitely not overpowered. They exactly remain on the level with the rest and just provide you with more options to choose from.

okay thanks :)

[Aleonymous]

Thanks for helping with the detailed descriptions, fabula_rasa :)

[Jactar]

I think there was also some extra characters you can get in deluxe edition but generally even in non deluxe edition you have a lot of characters where to pick witch to use.