The Banner Saga is a Viking-themed tactical role-playing video game by Stoic, a trio of indie game developers formerly of BioWare. It was released as a single player campaign, The Banner Saga – the first game of a projected trilogy – on 14 January 2014.
Key Features
– every decision you make in travel, conversation and combat has a meaningful effect on the outcome as your story unfolds.
– embark on your epic journey with a variety of characters from 7 different classes, each with unique abilities and upgrade options to fit your play style.
– victory or defeat and even the permanent loss of a character depends on which characters you choose to take into battle and what decisions you make afterwards.
– your role in building and managing your caravan as you travel the vast frozen landscape is critical to not only your own survival but the survival of an entire civilization.
– beautifully hand drawn combat sequences and animations, accompanied by an evocative score from Grammy-nominated composer Austin Wintory, will immerse you into a fantasy realm inspired by Norse mythology.
– sharpen your combat skills in the free multiplayer game “Factions”. Compete against other players with many of the character classes you see in The Banner Saga.
The core of the game is a single-player campaign of turn-based combat engagements inspired by games such as Final Fantasy Tactics and Shining Force, with the player controlling and being able to build up a party of characters with complementing abilities.
According to the developers, their aim was to create a "mature game for adults in the vein of Game of Thrones or The Black Company". They intend to engage players emotionally by allowing them to build relationships with the game's characters and shape the outcome of the story through an array of conversation choices.[8] The game eschews certain conventions of action-oriented computer role-playing games such as the focus on a young lone hero's story, looting and buying items, or reloading a saved game state after defeat. Instead, the developers intended to tell the story of the player's caravan as a whole, and encourage players to accept and deal with the consequences of any defeats they may encounter.[9]
The first game in the Saga centers on the return of the Dredge, a warlike race that despises humans led by the Bellower, a nigh invincible Dredge who leads them on a warpath on human and Varl. As a wandering army sent to fight against the Dredge and find a weakness for the Bellower, many difficult decisions are made by the caravan that would shape the fate of both man and Varl.
| Minimum System Requirements | Recommended System Requirements | |
| CPU | Intel Pentium 4 1.8GHz / AMD Athlon XP 1700+ | Intel Celeron E1200 Dual-Core 1.6GHz / AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core 4000+ |
| VRAM | 128 MB | 256 MB |
| RAM | 512 MB | 1 GB |
| OS | Win Xp 32 | Win Xp 32 |
| Graphics Card | nVidia GeForce 210 / AMD Radeon X600 Series | nVidia GeForce 9500 GT / AMD Radeon X1900 GT |
| Direct X | DX 9 | DX 9 |
| SOUND CARD | Yes | |
| HDD Space | 2 GB | 2 GB |
| Game Analysis | What is The Banner Saga?Short answer: role-playing meets turn-based strategy, wrapped into an adventure mini-series about vikings.Travel through stunning landscapes straight out of an animated film as your party escapes what could be the end of everything. Battle painstakingly hand-animated foes in strategic, turn-based combat. Make decisions with real consequences in conversations with people you'll actually care about.The Banner Saga is a mature game aimed at gamers who appreciate art, story and strategy. Hope you'll join the caravan. | |
| High FPS | 200+ FPS ( GTX 1060 ) | |
| Optimization Score | 8 | |
| Minimum System Requirements | Recommended System Requirements | |
| CPU | Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz+ | |
| RAM | 2 GB RAM | 4 GB RAM |
| OS | MAC OSX 10.7.5 | MAC OSX 10.7.5 |
| Graphics Card | 256 MB of video memory | |
| HDD Space | 4 GB available space | 6 GB available space |
Setting, story, artwork,
gameplay repetitive by the end, not hugely challenging
Gorgeous looking game. They nailed norse fantasy setting. Great story and strong characters. The combat is fun with decent depth but not very varied so I would get bored of it on a second playthrough. I really loved making decisions for my caravan and trying to balance supplies, morale and combat, but it did feel like I was never in any danger of actually losing. That said, its an amazing story experience. Can’t wait to play the second game.