The Banner Saga 3

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Summary

Banner Saga 3 is the final dramatic chapter in the mature, story-driven Viking RPG series which has won over 20 awards and has been nominated for 4 BAFTA awards. As the world continues to crumble around you, who can you trust, how will you protect your allies and what choices will you make as the Darkness draws near?

Storyline

Witness the Banner Saga as you’ve never seen it before as a dark force takes over and effects everything you’ve come to know in the beautifully hand-painted finale of the trilogy.
Choose new playable characters to join your party, including dredge heroes! Take advantage of new upgrade options as they progress in battle.
Deeper strategic combat with the new battle waves system against a myriad of new enemies.The valka spear and heroic titles let players customize their playstyle even further.
Drive your own narrative as you carry over your choices from both Banner Sagas 1 & 2, leading to different climatic endings in this final chapter. No hero is safe.


The Banner Saga 3 Activation Instructions

The Banner Saga 3 Reviews & Ratings

20
Review by Shumkinvrode [user]
December 30, 2021

I have no complaints in the visual part, only a claim to the level of the developers' approach, why should I pay for the same thing that I metI have no complaints in the visual part, only a claim to the level of the developers' approach, why should I pay for the same thing that I met in the first part with the same money, very minimal innovations, the scale is not felt.

70
Review by Kai82 [user]
October 31, 2021

A satisfying conclusion to the saga but some bugs, cuts in gameplay and a bit of technical issues prevent a higher rating for me. Details seeA satisfying conclusion to the saga but some bugs, cuts in gameplay and a bit of technical issues prevent a higher rating for me. Details see below. In short I am satisfied and a bit disappointed at the same time. This is the final game in the trilogy and as fan of both prequels. I was hyped for the conclusion. The story is starting shortly after the conclusion of the sequel. The survivors are currently in Aberrang the capital, residence of the king and mages. Internal struggles and conflicts had lead to a standoff between different groups while the land is slowly but surly overflow by a dome of darkness that transforms all lifeforms inside into strange beings that attack others. The Dredge have meanwhile reached the outsides of the city too and starting attacks. A separated smaller group of heroes tries to undo the darkness by going to the place were all has begun. A strong set up. Sadly here came my first disappointment and an immense one. I could not fully import my save file from Banner Saga 2 which was also created by importing from Banner Saga 1. I had done such a good playthrough with much resources, artifacts, many survivors and not many hero causalities. My save-file lead instead to a strange case. I had a full rooster in one part and barley enough characters to succeed in the other part. This includes a character being present in both groups far away from each other. In hindsight I should have started a new playthrough without importing. The story itself is great. There are hard decisions, intense moments and decisions from the past can haunt you. Depending on your decisions and progress you will get multiple endings. Gameplay: It is a mixture of a strategic RPG and survival management. The mixture of this made a challenging gameplay with lot of hard decision. Also the art style, soundtrack and graphics are unique and enhance the immersion. Firstly the strategic RPG parts. It is turn based but not with a speed attribute. You are in control of up to 6 characters per battle. Each side has alternating turns no mater the numbers except one is down to the last man standing. Example you have 6 characters so after 12 turns it is your same characters turn again. When the enemy has 8 it will be 16 before the same characters turn. Be careful! This is dangerous when you have spared the most powerful enemies until the end. You have an armor and health rating. Health is also attack power and this is an interesting concept. Lets say attack power 9 against armor 7 with 10 health. This is 9-7 = 2 damage and with this health is 10-2= 8. The possible damage output is lowered from 10 to 8 for the damaged character. It gives depth and some tactical options. There is more to it with abilities, items, obstacles etc. The survival / travel elements are tuned down. You are barley traveling compared to both prequels. There are random and scripted events where you have to made decisions. Your decisions mostly have consequences and you can gain or lose heroes, food, moral and people too. It is a cruel situation and as leader you have to make harsh decisions or let others pay the price. You are the leader of the Clan of survivors and must care for them. In the prequel you had to value buying food versus promoting units as both cost the same resources called “Renown”. You get this for defeating enemies and certain decisions. Here there is no need to make decisions. Also no training battles that improved the sequel. This weakens the experience a bit. There are some new additions with titles that give additional benefits, new classes and items etc. It is a good game but weaker than both prequels for me. Then there are some technical problems. I cant remember complaining about loading times in a game review especially on PS4. Here the loading times are long enough that I could not ignore it. Often I thought the game crashed because it took so long. Also but this can be because of the save file characters were present in events while they were not in my party. Like in the prequel the graphics look even better than before. It looks hand drawn and the world is beautiful. I truly like the art work for the characters, cities and items. The soundtrack is also weaker than both prequels but still good. Overall this hits more than it misses. A good conclusion but also weaker in some regards. I give a 7/10 here and still defend this game against harsher criticism as it is still good.

40
Review by Jajooka [user]
December 1, 2020

Price:First and foremost the 3 banner saga is but one game with around 20 hour playtime each, and with one story. Selling them separately isPrice:First and foremost the 3 banner saga is but one game with around 20 hour playtime each, and with one story. Selling them separately is just money-grabbing consider the price of the 3 when you make your decision.Battles (Turn-based strategy):It has one interesting aspect: the strength is both your health and your damage stat so the current health of a character is equal to the damage it deals with an attack (against health). You also have armor, and the damage one character takes is lowered by the flat amount of armor it has. Means you always have to decide either to go for breaking armor (in order to be able to deal higher damages for health later) or try to damage their health while they have higher armor in order to lower their damage output sooner. Otherwise every character has only 1 ability at the first game and 2 from the second which is a bit underwhelming, and there is also very very (very) low variety in enemy and terrain-types. The difficulty level isn’t dull, but isn’t too challenging either (in the first game the first fight when I had to rethink one or two times was the last boss). All in all the Battles are fine and aren’t the weak part of the game.Decision-making:- It is real bad. Most of the time there isn’t any choice option that is close to what would you do in that situation. The decision-points feel far-fetched too often, the consequences are thoughtless and / or random, and worst of all: sometimes provably doesn’t matter. (when you have 6 choice in a dialogue, and eventually all get you the same results). In this regard nothing works like it should have. Eg. there are several decision points when you can recruit / allow people to join your caravan. If you do something unpopular or you run out of food then people start leaving. So the game expects you to feel like it somewhat good or ‘right’ to have a bigger caravan, but it gives you no actual benefits, on the contrary: you have to feed more people which isn’t easy. So the whole logic collapse. The game punishes you by taking away people from your caravan that has no benefits but eat a lot. (after 2 games they seem to have realised it too because at the third game these man are at least able to forage for food).*** spoiler ***Another taste of Banners Saga’s logic: There is a point where one of your man stabs you in the back and leave (with several of your soldiers) after a conversation. I reloaded several times to choose other dialog options but the results were the same. Then I looked thoroughly in the events leading to this (by replaying), and found nothing special really: He helped me against a guy that seemed crazy then join me. Some times before that there was some dialog when someone – out of the blue – said not to trust masked mans. Maybe that was the point when I should have been “””smart””” because the guy wears a common foot solder helmet that covers one third of his face? Or maybe the fact that his ability called “backstabbing”? The whole thing felt cheap, and I felt the same on several other occasions.************Story:The main plot builds up some exciting threads, and made me curious but in the end left me disappointed. All in all the story is mediocre in my opinion.Atmosphere:At this point I feel particularly misled, because watching the intro of the game, it had a really cool atmosphere with several drawed-cartoonish cutscenes, and vivid music that I liked. But in reality, those are the only cutscenes in the game, and there aren’t even background music at most part, just the mind blowing, while your caravan traveling from A to B. No voice-acting either.

100
Review by Dancemonkey [user]
August 29, 2020

I loved everything of this game. Beautiful characters, hard decisions with hard consequences, well balanced turn based battles. In my opinionI loved everything of this game. Beautiful characters, hard decisions with hard consequences, well balanced turn based battles. In my opinion this trilogy is a piece of art.

70
Review by FNintendo
November 8, 2019

The way the game is presented, it's mostly an experience recommended for those already familiar with the saga, as the game's different outcomes, simple combats and relative lack of new elements compared to the previous chapters make this more difficult to get into for newcomers.

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Game Information
Release Date July 26, 2018
Publisher Stoic, Versus Evil
Total Rating 88%
Content Rated T (Teen)
Game Modes Single player
Player Perspectives Bird view / Isometric
Genres Role-playing (RPG), Simulator, Strategy, Turn-based strategy (TBS), Tactical, Indie
Themes Fantasy, Historical
Platforms PC (Microsoft Windows), Mac, Android, iOS, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch