The Banner Saga is a turn-based strategy game with a heavy focus on story telling. Your goal is to survive the travel with as many people in your caravan as possible. What is unique about this game is that every decision you make will have an impact on the plot somehow, forcing you to think twice before picking any option, as not only will you have to live with the consequences to the end, but you will have to adapt your strategies quickly in order to survive.
The combat system may seem daunting at first, but it is quite simple. After a couple of fights you will feel like an expert on it, but don't let that discourage you, there is plenty of room to explore different strategies and combinations. The mechanic boils down to two attributes: strength and armor. Strength serves as both health and damage, so as your character gets hit, he does less damage. Armor protects your strength by adding an extra layer of defense, but it can be bypassed by doing less total damage. On top of that you have character turns, movement, positioning, passive and active skills. That is where the most of the strategy will come from, when you are building your party or fighting enemies that have different compositions. For example, archers have long range, do minimal armor damage and have extra damage to enemies whose armors have been destroyed, but they lack enough strength to do damage on heavy armored characters, depending on others do bring them down first.
The other main mechanic on this game is the caravan system. As you travel on foot days goes by pretty quickly, and the more people in your caravan the more resources they will consume. Here is where most of the choices you make during your game will affect you. If you refuse to help a group of people in need, your caravan may lose morale and be less effective in combat, but that might be the difference between starving yourself or having enough food for reaching the nearest town. This is just one example, the game will have many other surprises to you that we would not like to spoil!
The two systems are wrapped by a currency called renown. This currency is acquired by killing enemies in battle and doing "good" deeds. You require renown to buy supplies for your caravan, buy items and level up your characters. That means the more people in your caravan, more supplies will be consumed per day, more renown will be spent buying supplies and less will be left to strengthen your troops. This shared currency balances the game for you. If you are doing well in battle your caravan will grown, preventing you from leveling up your characters, which will make the following combats more difficult. If you perform not as well in combat, people will die and your caravan size will decrease, leaving you more renown to spend on your warriors and, therefore, making the following combats easier.The Banner Saga is the first part of a trilogy, so the story doesn't end here, leaving a lot to be told. Despite that, the game has amazing art work, good music, a good approach to player failure (after all, you don't win every battle you fight), and a "not going back" approach that enhances the weight of every decision you make, leaving you with a unique feeling of consequence upon your choices.
Final Score: 9 out of 10.