The Banner Saga is a computer game from the makers of The Secret World of Loathing: Loathing to death, a browser game about browser games. This time around, they have added in the narrative elements. It’s more like an RPG (role playing game) than a browser game, in that you’ll have to interact with many characters. It’s still very much a game that just tells a visual story, though it does get quite complex.
The game starts with you watching a funeral play. You see, not long ago, a young girl named Naraine is found dead in her own bedroom. Her father, being desperate to avoid trouble, has taken to gambling. He puts all his profits together to buy an illusion Mirror that will make his fortune and gets his son Jhonara to do the rest.
You see, a mysterious and powerful being named Chronos rises from underneath the ground and takes over Naraine’s body. Chronos commands his army to attack the townspeople, killing most of them. Only a few men manage to escape. The main character, Jhonara, stumbles into the illusion mirror, and the three of them are transported to the town below. There, they find that Chronos has made many more bodies.
With no way out, they have to battle their way through the jungle-like underground tunnels, while battling a massive machine that Chronos uses to dig his way through the ground. When they finally reach the surface, they find that the townspeople have already killed themselves in their sleep. They, too, have been trapped inside the illusion, and only a handful of brave souls manage to escape the illusion before it collapses.
The Banner Saga 2 picks up immediately where the first game left off. You don’t have to worry about a long time between when the events of the first game took place and the start of the second. Everything happens almost instantaneously, including your avatar appearing onscreen. For a PC game, this can be extremely fast pace, especially if you are playing the game on a laptop. It doesn’t take much longer than a minute for the player to get through most of the content in the game, and these moments do not seem like minutes at all. The action is fluid, and you never get bored with the game, despite the fact that you are moving at a fairly fast pace.
The action is intense, and there is plenty of it. The Banner Saga feels almost like animes like Mad Men or Walking Dead, in that there is plenty of character development, excellent artwork, and well designed fighting sequences. The fighting is similar to what you would expect from an anime, but it adds a little bit of wacky comedy to the proceedings. The music fits the overall feel of the game perfectly, and even the voice acting is top notch.
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The storyline, while somewhat predictable, is still engaging. You get the same general story structure of other fantasy novels like Harry Potter, only it’s wrapped up in a more modern fashion. You also get a whole new cast of characters, and a story told in first person. The novel is written in first person and you feel as if you are the main character, going through the steps as they unfold.
The Banner Saga is not just another computer game; it is much more than that. It’s a quick read, easy to understand, and extremely entertaining. If you are looking for an intense fantasy novel that has a little bit of humor, then The Banner Saga is something you definitely want to check out.