Did you watch game play footage of battles? You'll be spending more time in battle than in the visual novel like conversations. Its a game for those who enjoy tactical battles and out of battle role play choices. The game relies a lot on hand drawn characters and backgrounds for the overall visuals, so graphics are not really that relevant. I think what your put off by is the limited amount animation in the conversations, but that is just a guess.

The graphics and the story are the big selling point of this game. If you are just looking for some tactical combat game, look somewhere else.

No, unfortunately.

I'll echo the consensus opinion: Banner Saga is a trilogy of excellent VNs that are bolted onto a basically terrible and tedious tactical combat layer that you will end up wishing you could just skip, no matter how much you love tactical combat.

It really should have just been a VN. But a VN wouldn't have brought in the Kickstarter dollars, probably.

The problems with the tactical layer are both fundamental (the action economy structure causes the dominant strategy in the game to be what players call 'maiming', where you leave enemies alive at a sliver of Strength and then kill them all in one turn, which is incredibly boring and unsatisfying and invalidates a number of other game mechanics... but the game insists you play it in this tedious way) and not-fundamental (there just isn't enough unit or ability or terrain variety, which means you spend the game going through the same actions over and over again).

It is a genuinely great story, one of the best I have experienced in gaming... but you don't get to fully enjoy it because the garbage tactical combat keeps happening, and this problem only gets worse with the sequels which feel rushed-out and padded with EVEN MORE terrible garbage tactical combat, which for some reason goes completely unimproved.

The whole thing feels extremely untested and... not exactly low-effort, because care and love clearly went into the presentation, but just like nobody cared about gameplay or whether the game would be fun to play.

It's an older game, so graphics are not up to 2024 standards, it's also not a AAA game, its an indy project and a well done one at that.

Originally posted by President Jyrgunkarrd:

No, unfortunately.

I'll echo the consensus opinion: Banner Saga is a trilogy of excellent VNs that are bolted onto a basically terrible and tedious tactical combat layer that you will end up wishing you could just skip, no matter how much you love tactical combat.

Or you could just understand the combat works differently than the tired old strategy of ganking characters one by one as fast as you can to swing the battle in your favor and then play clean up for the rest of the mission like every other turn-based game. That's what this game does differently, you need to engage lots of characters as you would real war. Not mow down people one by one like most other tactical games till you get to sweep time.

The armor/health system is also unique compared to lots of other games by weaking and then to the point of unable to damage. Then add in the wound wound system and the survival aspect you have what turns into a very unique game in this genera. It's what makes this game fun and challenging especially on higher difficulties. There is also next to no RNG, so you have to mitigate how things work as you are basically never missing.

Its a game of Attrition, Not a game of taking down a Boss or leut then playing clean up. It's what makes this game fantastic and not another clone.