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2 months ago
Feature: Updated with the best of 2020
Looking back at it now, 2020 doesn't feel like a banner year for strategy games, but that doesn't mean there haven't been a few gems. The list below - gathered by a panel of experts and regularly updated - contains games from as recently as 12 months ago alongside classics from as far back as 28 years ago. They're all games we think you could…
9 months ago
Feature: Pining for the fjords
The 8 best Viking games to play before Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
After watching the trailer a bajillion more times, I am extremely excited for Assassin's Creed Valhalla. It's been around 48 hours since the announcement and I cannot possibly retain this state for much longer. By the time the Christmas-ish release date rolls around I will either have exploded like a poor little meat balloon, or gone full circle and lapsed into a coma. Like the…
2 years ago
Feature: Gonna take my norse to the old town road
An idea I’m happy to see the back of, is the notion that “graphics” is a one-way sliding scale towards photorealistic perfection. While I’m certainly fond of games that exhibit hyperbudget beauty along the lines of Metro: Exodus or Shadow of the Tomb Raider, I’m equally - probably more - excited by those who eschew realism in order to utterly master a particular aesthetic. Often,…
Feature: The silent cartographers
We don’t expect much of a typical video game map. As long as it guides us to our destination (and perhaps looks pretty while doing so) most of us won’t waste a second thought on it. And yet, maps can be much more than tools that make our way from A to B a little more convenient. Some games reject the notion of maps as…
Feature: Make flags, not war
Overthinking Games: The Banner Saga’s banner represents unity rather than division
Banners, then and now, are often a curious amalgamation of plain communication and naked aggression. They’re well-known as heraldic devices, displaying a coat of arms to identify one side to the other on the battlefield, usually just before they were about to attack each other. However, they’re also just a means of communicating who or what a place or thing belongs to. If you’re shipwrecked,…
Feature: Death becomes us
From the outset, everything in The Banner Saga seems designed to encourage you to be careful. As you lead your caravan towards safety, you try to keep people alive by rationing food, managing the number of your followers and weighing the dangers of the unknown. Anyone who has ever given a soldier in XCOM a custom name knows that it takes very little to get…
Feature: Norse of a different colour
The allure of Viking fantasies, and the games that cherry-pick them
The Vikings have long ago invaded the coasts of pop culture on their dragon-headed longships and carved out their own Danelaw in the realm of video games. In recent years, they’ve grown even bolder, taking over most genres from RTS to RPG, classic point and click adventure to action, with an utter disregard towards distinctions between AAA and indie. They’ve settled in Hellblade and Frostrune,…
Feature: I'm going to need a Saga holiday after this
After waiting two long years for the final instalment of Stoic's fantastical strategy trilogy, The Banner Saga 3 begins in the best possible way. It picks up where the second The Banner Saga 2 left off, and one of the first things you get to do is punch your scheming arch nemesis - who probably made your last moments of that second game a right…
3 years ago
It's nearly time to sharpen your axe and wade once more into the beautifully illustrated frostbitten apocalypse that is The Banner Saga. Stoic's strategy-RPG series was always planned as a trilogy, and the third and final chapter is excitingly close, now due out on July 26th, two days later than first expected. Within, a new trailer that could be considered spoiler-laden for those who haven't played…
Feature: The end of the trilogy
The bearded warrior looks exhausted. Part of a band of mercenaries, he blinks slowly at us. Even while the player chooses their next words, the crease-eyed humans and horned Varls of The Banner Saga 3 stand there, blinking slowly. Their hair fluttering, eyes searching you for intent. These are quiet moments of incidental detail. Twitching moustaches, billowing capes, tensing fists. They are looping animations, designed…
4 years ago
The tale of the little flag that could will continue in The Banner Saga 3 [official site], if a Kickstarter goes well. Yup, developers Stoic have turned back to crowdfunding to conclude their strategy RPG series. We waved the safety flag for the first Banner Saga, digging its look and style but not so much the combat, then waved the chequered flag for its follow-up,…
5 years ago
Feature: A strong second act
Despite its flaws, The Banner Saga [official site] is one of the most memorable indie releases of 2014, and now the second act is here to push the story to even more desperate frontiers. But does The Banner Saga 2 improve upon its predecessor's lackluster strategy combat while still expanding on its promising story? Here's wot I think. (Note: there are spoilers for the first…
I've spent so long frolicking in the intangible tangerine skies of VR-land lately that it's genuinely bewildering to look at a traditional game again. It's so... flat. So... image-y. And also so sharp and fluid and won't make my eyeballs pulsate and flail as if dancing helplessly to some unseen disco beat from hell. Confusing matters worse is that gorgeous strategy/roleplaying/survival opus The Banner Saga…
The Banner Saga [official site], which we once described as "the sort of game that is so thick with lore and small touches that a chap can spend fifteen hours with it and forget entire swathes," suggesting this long preamble may in fact be necessary for your ancient brain of limited memory capacity, is getting a board game spin-off.
6 years ago
Feature: We gather here at the death of deals
What are the best Steam Summer Sale deals? Each day for the duration of the sale, we'll be offering our picks - based on price, what we like, and what we think more people should play. Read on for the five best deals from day 10 of the sale.
Feature: Between The Game Of Life
It's a pleasant fantasy to think that holidays mean long weeks of playing games, but in reality there's trains and planes to be boarded, family to be visited, lives to be unavoidably lived. Gaming during holidays is therefore similar to gaming at any other time, about stealing moments to sneak away to a quiet corner and catch up on backlogs or curl up with comforts.…
The Banner Saga arrived at the great RPS mead hall to a somewhat mixed reception. We appreciated the manner in which the beleaguered band of luminaries presented themselves but couldn't help but yawn long before they'd finished telling us of the events that had brought them to our table. Whatever its flaws may be, The Banner Saga told an unusually bleak and believable tale of…
7 years ago
A side benefit to videogame bundles: they offer the opportunity to write about games that would otherwise go unmentioned on a PC-only site. Take Game Music Bundle 7, for example. For $1, it gives you the soundtracks to The Banner Saga, Broken Age, Luftrausers, The Floor Is Jelly and Device 6. Which is four PC games and therefore ample excuse to mention that the mobile-only…
Well, this is a start, I suppose. A slow, lurching start akin to that of a belligerent old truck running on stagnant fuel and wildly outdated business practices, but it's still something. The long and short of it? Notorious Banner Saga pursuer King doesn't want to own the word "candy" anymore. In the US. In EU territories? Well, that's a different story. And it hasn't announced…
Feature: Stoic In The Face Of A Crushing
This afternoon King - owners of Candy Crush Saga and an ever-increasing percentage of the dictionary - issued a statement defending their actions regarding the news that they had filed an opposition to Stoic's attempts to trademark "The Banner Saga". A defence that seems odd in the face of what's actually happening. Especially as they're arguably attempting to assert a trademark they don't actually have.…
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