Independent game developer Stoic took the indie game world by hailstorm two years ago with the release of it’s award-winning, Kickstarter-funded tactical RPG title The Banner Saga (TBS) for Mac and PC. Now, roughly two years later, the game has marched onto the iOS platform bringing a much needed in-depth RPG title to a more Apple-oriented mobile gaming audience. While a much welcomed addition to an arguably lacking library for iOS, TBS trudges through some minor and some major flaws.
You Find an Oasis in the Tundra
Right off the bat, you’re thrown seemingly in the middle of the ever expansive lore of TBS‘s gritty narrative. The Gods have died, a race of monolithic zombie-like warriors named Dredge are sweeping their way across the world leaving death in their wake, and the Sun has literally ceased to shine. Mankind and a race of giants called Varl struggle to put aside their differences in order to defend their respective homes against the Dredge and to find some small glimmer of hope in this dark and cold world that seems all too abandoned by those they worship for creating it.
In each of the seven chapters of TBS, you view the story from the perspective of one of a few characters in the story’s respective arcs. But your point of view mainly revolves around Rook, a hunter from the northwest village of Skogr. You meet many characters and a wide variety of circumstances along your adventure and control your responses or reactions to them in drop-down menus. Many of these choices have consequences, some minute and some dire, though there’s no indication of which ones hold more impact. I constantly felt on the verge of making a huge mistake by choosing something as small as how to deal with someone stealing my supplies, for instance. For a feature that seems like an oversight on Stoic’s part, it truly pulls the player into the harsh world of the game and makes your decisions feel more real.
When not in combat or meeting new characters, you’re leading your caravan of villagers and warriors through the vast world as the days go by. Along the way, you run into encounters and dilemmas amongst your ranks. During these parts of the game you can stop to set up camp and rest, keeping your morale up and your caravan well-fed and prepared for battle, or you can train your fighters and practice combat tactics safely. Each day that passes uses up your supplies, however, and getting back on the road to the next objective is inevitable.
To say the narrative stays in line with the story’s lore is a staggering understatement. Stoic’s passion for world-building is one to be reckoned with. At almost any point in the game you can pull up a vast world map that offers enormous amounts of lore for each location. This is a passive feature, but great for anyone who wants a true feel of immersion into TBS‘s story.
TBS‘s combat mechanics are deep enough for a fan of tactical RPGs to be satisfied but not so complex as to exclude a more casual gamer. You can take up to six members of your main fighters into battle with you. Each one has a health bar that also serves to indicate how much damage they can dish out and a shield bar that indicates how much damage they can defend themselves from. When attacking an enemy, you have the option to damage their health or shield. This seems like a strange option to give the attacker, but the system does serve to put you in some very chin-scratching combat predicaments. Each character also has an active ability, such as an attack that pushes enemies back a number of spaces, and a passive ability, such as the ability to move a character through allies. It’s extremely satisfying to fling an arrow through multiple enemies or bash an enemy backward into his cronies dealing them damage as well.
All of these features wrapped in a beautiful, “Don Bluth”-esque art style and a gorgeous calming soundtrack makes TBS one of the most enjoyable epic adventures that can be found on a mobile platform. Not to mention the many different endings you might experience based on the choices you’ve made. But the game is not without it’s obstacles.
You’re Still in a Tundra
I thought at first it might have been the processing speed of the iPad Mini I played on, but the loading times are extremely long and I am not alone in this. If the loading screen featured lore, tips, or just pictures of characters or the map, the long load times would be somewhat tolerable. Sadly, the loading screen features nothing but a black screen with the word “Loading.”
TBS, for all of it’s vast environments, deep lore, and detailed narrative is a game that can be beaten in one day. Even if you’re the sort of gamer who likes to take their time exploring different features and trying out different outcomes, this game will be finished within 10-14 hours. The concept of a game this short is alien to the tactical RPG genre. This might serve for a higher rate of replayability allowing players to discover the different outcomes of the story. The long loading times, however, loom over that experience.
While the story is full of twists and turns with new characters and threats rising, many elements and characters introduce themselves with an air of intrigue and mystery only to never come up again. It’s possible exploring the different choices in the narrative will open some of these elements up more than others, but that will still lead to other doors being closed. Needless to say, this makes for a rather disorienting method of storytelling.
For gamers who hold progressive values high in their critical eye, TBS‘s narrative treats females like second-class citizens while simultaneously featuring some of the strongest female characters in gaming. Women in the lore of TBS are considered unfit for positions of power or influence over groups of people. There’s also the staggering statistic that of the 37 characters featured in the story, playable and non-playable, 5 of those characters are female. This doesn’t leave very much to say for the variety of characters or their depth.
There is something to be said, however, for the complaint that a game is too short. That complaint is never present in a review for a poor game. In spite of it’s flaws, TBS stands tall as a pinnacle of the indie game world. It provides at best a unique and epic experience for the casual gamer and at worst a satisfying testament to the tactical RPG genre that leaves the more hardcore gaming audience begging for more. Thankfully, Stoic has announced that TBS is the first in a trilogy that they hope to release after enough people have played this one. Hopefully, some loose ends will be tied up in the future releases. I, for one, will be sure to find out.