This may feel a bit too basic at first for some players, but once the layers peel away it’s clear that there’s plenty of challenge to be found in the game’s beautiful simplicity. To be more specific, you won’t need to get caught up with managing a ton of skills, spells and statistics when it comes to your party - the battle system brings everything down to an elegant game of numbers, where four primary parameters and a handful of abilities are all you need to have a good time. In a nice twist, though, the game manages to achieve one of the toughest balances out there: its core mechanics, while simple, combine to form a deep and complex metagame. The battles will feel familiar to anyone who’s tackled previous greats in the SRPG genre, whether that’s Final Fantasy Tactics, Ogre Battle, Shining Force or even Disgaea. Of course, that area has plenty to offer as well: when it comes to the meat and potatoes of The Banner Saga ’s gameplay - tactical RPG combat - it’s clear the developers have learned from the best. When you really dig into it, you start to realize how remarkable it is that Stoic managed to inject so much strategy into the part of the game that doesn’t take place on the battlefield. Naturally, this brings a significant amount of replay value to the proceedings: when you first begin the game, it’s fun to see where your spur-of-the-moment decisions lead upon repeated playthroughs, you can be a little more selective about who you welcome into your ranks and figure out which path works best for your playstyle. That’s not just some marketing line - party members and other major characters will live or die depending on what you do, and the people you come into contact with change depending on the path you take through the game’s expansive map. Oh, and the story changes depending on the choices you make, too. That’s probably based on the strength of its bizarre personalities, who each come with the complexities of real people: flaws and all. And yeah, it’s a pretty familiar story, but Stoic hits just the right notes in making it both totally accessible and compelling enough to woo a varied audience. The premise of the story, which follows two conflicting races (humans and horned giants known as Varl) as they fend off assaults from the evil Dredge across a Viking-inspired landscape, might tempt the wearied fantasy reader - or perhaps those resistant to the charms of sword-and-sorcery epics - to roll their eyes. Stoic set out to weave an epic, character-driven narrative - the kind that has kept people glued to their televisions for Game of Thrones - and, for the most part, they’ve succeeded. I won’t go through all the usual details of our reviews by giving a plot summary here, because that would spoil a major part of what makes The Banner Saga so much fun. It may not have all the bells and whistles of the AAA strategy RPGs in the world - your Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem titles, for example - but it’s a brilliant and frequently beautiful achievement in its genre, and it works just as well on PS4 as it did on other platforms two years ago. Perish the thought: games like Stoic Studio’s The Banner Saga prove this idea to be a false one right from the moment you begin. Unfortunately, there seems to have been a misconception developed that indie games cannot achieve beauty or sophistication in spite, or even because of, their monetary limitations. There’s simply no way most small teams can achieve anything on the level of AAA heavy-hitters given their budgets - titles like Hello Games’ No Man’s Sky blow people away precisely because they’re an exception to the rule. It goes without saying that one of the major limitations for independent game developers, unless they are able to find funding from a major publisher, is the amount of money available to them.
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