Favourite characters? (mostly battle-wise)

[Iso Koala]

I mainly say from Banner Saga 3, as I dont remember he first one so well anymore.
Contains some spoilers if you havent played BS3 yet.

Personal favs:

Ekkill: Stats dont seem thaat great, but he is just a mad mad killer. All the way from BS1 to 3. Great willpower and ex means he will be doing ex3 attacks pretty much every turn. Good movement. And you can pick the axe storm skill for him too, which can 1 shot many enemies. But his guts ability is just crazy good, one of the best abilities in game. With str items, you can brute force full armor anemies with it, and even with only 1 str left, you can still get guaranteed 5dmg hits and push enemies to your warhawks. And yeah, its aoe too. My tactical favourite character! I also liked his attitude and blinking eye. Feels like a main character to me in many ways.

Canary: Perhaps biased because she is kinda cute and hot furry, but I like this one. Great movement and attack range, no weaknessess except somewhat limited armor. She has ridiculous str for a ranged character, and abusing this by giving her str items and titles, whohoo, str 21 ranged character with good movement! Even at weak str can do some harm by poisoning enemies. And she feels unique, and has good lore too, even though is not main character oddly.


No brainers:

Bolverk (in BS2) : well, he was ridiculous in BS2, you go into battle with 6 members, end up watching Bolverk killing 2-3 enemies in his turns, others just weaking armors a bit for him. Well, he turned into a last enemy you face because he is such a badass. Too bad I wasted all that renown to boost him up... :)

Iver: The behemoth of the Varls, great stats, great break. No weaknesses. Can brute force enemies alone and also guard himself compared to pure dmg dealers like Hakon. No brainer and strong, since he is main story character.

Rook: Mark Prey, the strongest ability in the game when combined with a varl and a ranged char. Also has ranged and melee both. Also a no brainer and strong, since he is main story character.

I somehow didnt care too much for support characters like Sparr or Aleo. Or even Folka- she is just defence, when attack is the best defence most the time. Juno and Eyvind are good though, and add tactical elements to the gameplay. So does that Dredge who has the +5 str move and explode below 10 str Dredges moves (I forgot his/her name...). I remember the spearmen being good with their impale in 1st one, but against later enemies they dont pack enough punch with their low str anymore. Dytch seemed the most useless one to me, I tried to use him, but getting any dmg out of him takes 2 turns, and even then he is just a one shot glass cannon, when others can take and land hits every turn.

[FatalFrosty]

Folka had a cool story, and could fend for herself pretty well. She could be pretty useful when needing new high armor characters as reinforcments.

I wish there had been more backstory to Ekkill. Canary is indeed pretty cool, her strenght being so high turns her into a high damage war machine you know can always count on with less chances of being injured, especially if you give her a range extending item.

Ubin, Kivi and Petrus were the most interesting additions to the 3rd chapter. Alfrun was the most disappointing, but her story was pretty cool.

[Iso Koala]

Yeah, Alfrun was good story character and had cool unique skill, too bad her second skill was meh, and besides doing easy and cheap 3dmg, she was of little use. Especially since using her lighting skill kinda is best when you are far from everyone, yet using the other skill requires you to be close to friends.

Folka was good story character, her defence-only approach just didnt do much good for me. But not useless at all though. Also even with the 17 armor, some enemies would just still use 3ex and do 4 dmg to you even at low str themselves, making her unable to do any dmg herself quite fast, since her abilities arent made for hurting, just support.

[FatalFrosty]

If Alfrun just had a little more maximum Willpower I would have used her more. Just the fact the healing was half her Will made it be too weak the only times it could have made a difference enough to be used, because the maximum was so low.

[Cú Cuinn]

Spoiler warning

1. Tryggvi. Tryggvi is okay in combat, he is one of the three spearmen. He packs a punch and you'd be suprised how often that +1 increase in range comes in handy, or how useful Embolden is in sheild wall tactics. Tryggvi has that necklace, based off of that techno viking meme, but it isnt really that useful, though it latter is upgraded.
The real reason why I love Tryggvi is his writing. Tryggvi, the insane mustached viking, is one of the few acurate insane people in games, or any medium. I am a writer, so I'll teel you that its actually pretty hard to write crazy characters. You'd think it isnt, that you could just say some random nonsense, but no. Everyone needs to have a reason to do or say things, crazy people just dont need a good reason. But they still need to have a reason, and they need to think its a good reason. You can analyse Tryggvi's dialoge and you won't find a single line that is added just purely for the sake of being wacky or "so random". Tryggvi is constantly making metaphores disguised as mad ravings. "Its hard to push a spear through a tree, its much easyer to make the tree into another spear." Is one of my favorite lines by Tryggvi, you'd think this is just him being obsessed with spears, which it probably is. But what Tryggvi is really trying to do is tell the player "Hey, its hard to have everyone as your enemies, its better to make them into your friends." This is both profound, and essential wisdom for the nature of the Banner saga. Also, in Banner Saga 1, Tryggvi tells the player that "A man will look at you through his helmet and lie to you" to which rook says "Can I trust you?" Tryggvi responds "Come on Rook, am I wearing a helmet?" This sounds completely crazy, until you realise that evey single character who is involved with betraying the player, (Onef, Ekkill, Rugga's bodygaurd Dagr) are also the only characters who wear helmets. Holy sh*t, the only conclusion we can draw from this is that Tryggvi can see the faen future, which is all you need to know.

2. Bolverk is increadibly powerful. He is also cool in general and has a unique aproch to combat, the fact that he can damage allies both limits his power and makes lore sense. In my opinion, the mark of a really good developer is when they can make story elements blend seemlessly into the gameplay. Bolverk is a great example of this, as, not many players know this, he will never strike Folka. Folka is the only exception to Bolverk's passive Frenzy, so she can be next to him and be safe. This works for their relationship in the story, and also allows Bolverk to make use of Folka's Champion ability, which when combined with Bear Rage is a very powerful combo.

3. Ekkill is deffinatly one of my favorites, his story in Banner Saga 1 was interesting, and his characterisation after that, while rare, still fit his established personality. Also, he looks pretty badass. His is very useful in combat, Guts is an insanly damaging ability. But it doesnt blend well with his passive sheild wall, so Ekkill isnt a great team player which makes him a bit less useful on harder difficulites. But, c'mon, its Ekkill. He's a twitchy madman who throws down his shield and literally jumps into combat while screaming his head off. He is living proof of every steriotype about readheads. He's great.

4. Oli. Oli is a fun character, being a magical drunken savant. Sure, the drunk savant trope isnt very original, but its still fun. Also, he has the survivability and punch of any human raider, but also has a base range attack, like Rook. Y'know, the main character of the whole saga. But thats not all, Oli isnt a main character and outclasses Rook in WIL, ARM and STR. What's balance? Never heard of it. Imagine an archer able to instantly delete any enemy based entirly on luck and totally ignores the enemy's armor and deflect chance. I dont see any problems that could arise from this, do you? Oh, and he is just as tanky at melee as any other raider? So he basicly has no weakness? Sounds good to me, whats wrong with that?

5. Prince Ludin. The Prince is also a spearman, and is about as useful in combat as Tryggvi or Bak. I'm not sure why the Prince of all humans and heir to the kingdom covering most of the faen continent chooses to use a spear, also known as the least sexy weapon possible, but whatever.
Ludin perhaps makes the largest transformation of any character in the series. He starts out as a typical spoiled prince, and is very punchable. Heck, the game even gives you multipul chances to punch him, which is awsome. But he slowly matures throughout the saga, until in BS3 where he is actually a likable guy and an idealistic indevidual. He doesnt seem so interested in being king anymore, but I think he would be a great one. And this transformation is symbolised in the form of him slowly growing a beard. Brilliant.

Honorable mentions

Iver, Iver is a super powerful and tanky varl, he has the highest stats, and is the only Warhawk who can use battering ram. But he doesnt have any unique abilites, also I dont understand the logic that Iver got stronger from losing his arm. I have never lost an arm before, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be any better at fighting after that. Just a hunch.

The Apostate. The Dredge Stonesinger is pretty cool, and has one of the two abilities that bac heal teammates. He is useful as both a suport class and isnt helpless in a fight like other menders, as his starts are pretty good and his diseased strike can do a lot of damage to a whole team with time.
But, he doesnt have his own sprite, just a reused stonesinger. The reason he is cool is because he is a stonesinger, which I just like the aestetic of and really creeped me out when they were first introduced. He doesn't really affect the story in any major way. He has no speaking lines, which granted, is because he is incapable of forming the sounds needed to speak the language of humans and varl, but there still could have been more interaction using Alfrun as a translator. They could have made some relationship form between the Apostate and the Castaway, but no. He was mainly ignored, like the other Dredge characters.

Eirik is very good, his summon bear ability is powerful, and he isnt a bad class without it. Though, Rally isnt as useful in later titles.

Petrus is also pretty good for the same reasons as Eirik. Reinforcments is useful, and Petrus can unlock both Bloody Flail and Axe Storm, which when combined with high crit chance/messenger of death let him pump out insane damage. But I am annoyed by the fact that Petrus has a big iron shield, but cant use Stone wall. Why? This inconsistency in the game's established design theory bugs me. Other than that, he's cool.

And many others, so many characters are so well written and have such thought prokoking backstories. There are a few though, like Griss or Sigbjorn, who don't, and dont really have anything going for them or have any good reason to exist.

[Cú Cuinn]

I agree with the Alfrun sentiment. She is kinda weird, the dossier says her apperence was caused by her messing around with mending, but she looks like she got warped slightly, and given that she is encounterd in the darkness, it is kinda hard not to make that connection. Hell, her passive ability lets her draw from dark energy, the only other character who can do anything like that is Juno, enough said. This doesnt effect the story at all, maybe that was originaly going to be a thing but was cut? In fact, she along with the rest of the darkness just gave me this weird "Halloweeny" vibe that dont really fit the viking aestetic. You know, like the devs were trying too hard to be creepy or spooky but not scary? That's mostly the sound design, a few songs and that sound effect that plays with Ride the Lightning. Maybe thats jsut me, but Alfrun's class is "Witch", just saying.

It is weird that her two abilites have completely diffrent effective ranges, and both are lackluster. Though, I understand why her low will power exists, she would be overpowerd if she could heal 7 STR at any range like how other menders can with armor. Because STR is both health and damage value, it is essential to the flow of combat. Boosting it any more than 3ish points without some drawback, like losing armor with Apostate's Umbrage, would be very OP.

[Cú Cuinn]

Also, Canary is totally the Banner Saga bestgirl. Rook's love interest should have been Canary, not Oddleif, fight me. /s.

[FatalFrosty]

I soooooooooo agree about Tryggvi, he's so brillantly written. The perfect example of the difference between crazies and insane. Insanes ain't aware of themselves. Crazies totally are, and so is Tryggvi, along being a poet and philosopher. The perfect match lol

Ludin's development is also indeed very clever. I think it makes sense about the spear, though. Based on how he was in the beginning, it's likely he was 'forced into being somehow trained' for combat, and with the little care he had for it he just let them decide what weapon he should use or something. Picked the spear for the extra range protection. The fact that he has Embolden also kind of suggests that there is inspirational leadership value in him right from the start, so it makes even more sense once it starts blooming as things unfold.

Alfrun's appearance being caused by the darkness is indeed a loose concept. When I first saw her, I thought she came from that bunch of crazy people in the magic woods of the 2nd game, because of her ripped flesh around the wrists, and how they seemed to consider it perfectly normal to be all bruised and bloody. I don't think they tried too hard at making her creepy. It seems more to me like she always was like this, and as she tells through her tales she mostly had to live into hiding amongst those who don't live around humans so much. The darkness and what it brings is what 'allows' her to feel more natural out there, as opposed to her being 'too spooky' to match it all.

Ride the lightning isn't lackluster that much. It seems that way because it seems useless to keep her behind and away from the front line, which is where the ability can be the most damaging. That comes from Healing being so weak it's mostly useless. Assuming she's in battle squad with both Oli, Castaway and maybe Eyvind, the healing for them could be worth considering keeping her in the back, but then it makes a party without much tanks, and that can make things brutal against the warpeds. Spiral spiral.