The Banner Saga Review

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.

Shadow of Mordor Review

Shadow of Mordor is a third person action RPG game, in which your goal is to revenge your slaughtered family. With a very polished and fluid combat system you will spend most of your time cutting through an endless horde of orcs. But what makes this game unique is the Nemesis System which sure will make you feel like those orcs developed some brains!

The Nemesis System keeps track of your actions toward each named enemy and among themselves, so any orc worth enough to receive a name will have a personality and memory of your actions, as well as the desire to ascend the "orc social ladder". Any time you cross such enemy they will have a different line depending on your previous actions, their personality and their rank in the orc army. Sparing an orc life, threatening him before combat, running away or even if you happened to die by their hands, they sure will make you remember that.

In game mechanics it means that every orc will have a rank in Sauron's Army, a preferred combat method, Strengths and Weaknesses that you can explore. They will also fight against each other to increase in power. Any orc that killed you will have a "Revenge" tag and will award you a minor bonus when killed. There is also a very interesting feature where you will be able to kill whichever enemy killed your friends that also play the game. Despite the minimal rewards, the feeling of revenging your fallen friend does make you feel good. This Nemesis System is so ingrained in the game that as soon as you start playing you will understand how everything spins around this mechanic.

Now, into the action itself! The game has three different combat "styles" characterized by three different weapons: Sword (normal standing combat), Bow (ranged combat) and Dagger (stealth combat). Each of these styles can be further personalized and mixed with runes acquired by killing chieftains and warchiefs.

By completing missions you will be awarded Power Points, that will unlock increased tiers of powers that can be purchased with Ability Points and will make you more dangerous than ever! Ability Points are awarded by earning experience, every orc slain will give you a small amount, but once your body pile starts to stack, you will be getting them in no time at all! You also have six attributes that can be increased by completing missions and optional objectives: health, arrows, focus (how long you can slow time with a drawn arrow), and additional runes for your three weapons. 

A final mechanic that plays a big part in this game is the branding system. With your wrath powers you will be able to turn orcs to your cause, while not giving you direct control over them, they will follow and fight with you until they are dead or dismissed. That also means that if you brand any named orc you will be able to send them to kill other orcs or even turn on previous allied orcs.

The game has a very short tutorial that may overwhelm you with many different commands at once, but throughout play you will come across them again in a more friendly fashion. With great cinematographic combat, responsive commands, and wrath powers, this game will sure make you feel like a epic warrior fighting the army of Sauron. The game also approach player failure in a consistent manner that does not break immersion. Unfortunately the DLC's do not add much content and neither increase upon the story mode, being stand alone versions of the game itself with minor tweaks. Despite that, we highly recommend this game to any action and/or Tolkien fan!

Final Score: 10 out of 10.

Clicker Heroes Review

Clicker Heroes is a "Clicker" game in which your goal is to achieve the last room of the "dungeon" (or beat your highest room ever) by killing creatures. Despite being a very simple game, it does require active play to an extent, but the most part of it will be the game open in the background waiting for enough gold to accumulate before you can move on to the next stage, we will explain that soon.

The game loop consists of killing creatures by either clicking on them or waiting for your heroes to do it for you, for which you will be awarded gold, which then will be used to level up your heroes and cause more damage. Once you have enough damage you will be able to kill bosses for Hero Souls(HS), that can be claimed once you reset your progress by Ascending. Each HS improves your damage by 10% or can be used as currency to buy Ancients, statues of great power that will improve your performance by increasing damage, gold dropped, skill cooldown, skill duration and other chances in the game. Every Ancient has their own level that can be permanently increased for more powerful bonuses, some of them have no limit for how much bonus they will provide. You also can equip Relics, artifacts that have been infused with ancient power, so you can boost even further your bonuses.

Every 10 levels that you beat for the first time will give you a special boost called Hero Gild, and this boost can be moved between your different heroes to provide the best damage possible. Unfortunately each boss is roughly two times more difficult than the last one, which means that sooner or later you will achieve a point in the game where you will be forced to either ascend, going back to room level 1, or wait for increasingly long hours until you can level up your heroes enough to kill the boss. It does take much less time to go through the levels again, as you will be much more powerful with the HS you just got, than it would take farming gold on a fixed level to defeat the next boss. This is where the "waiting in the background" comes from, as the more quickly you want to move on, the more constantly you will have to ascend and level up your heroes so you can move on to the next level before being able to push your limit again.

Despite feeling that the ascending mechanic needs improvement compared to idle gold farming, overall the game presents a very singular experience that can be taken as light or as hard as you want. You can click and reset often for a fast paced game or you can just chill and wait until your heroes do the work for you, resetting your progress whenever feels convenient or when you have time to click some more. The game is also free to play, so you can check this emerging "clicking" kind of game with no strings attached.

Final Score: 7 out of 10.

AdVenture Capitalist! Review

AdVenture Capitalist! is, for the lack of a better description, a very simple "Clicker" game in which your goal is to figure out which business of your portfolio will give you the best return over each dollar you invest. The more money you make, the more you can grow your businesses so you can make more money, and then... you get it. Made first for mobile, this is a casual game but due to a "reset" mechanic it can be played quite "actively".

The game has two main mechanics, you must click on the business you want to run and you must manage your profits in order to increase your business. Clicking on a business icon will start a timer before giving you the corresponding profits, while investing your money in the business will make it more profitable by either increasing your profit per iteration or reducing the timer in which your profits will be given. Either way, you are increasing your profit by investing in the business. Every time you reach a milestone you get a nice extra bonus!

Lets be honest though, would you like to spend hours just clicking on the screen? Probably not, and we wouldn't either! That is why this game gives you a very nice and valuable feature in which you can hire a manager to click for you! So instead of having the game open with a macro for clicking on your screen, you can just pay a "digital someone" to do that for you. Not only that, but once you hire a manager he will keep running your businesses even when you are offline! This way you can spend your time making real important decisions, like where to invest your profits! =)

To close the game loop we have a second currency called "Angel Investors." The more money you make the more angel investors you will get and the more angel investors you have the more money you will make. But in order to claim these wonderful angels you will have to start from the beginning. You will loose all your money and current business level, going all back to only 1 lemon stand. Do not worry, because this process is healthy and will make you go much, much further!

Despite it's simplicity and few mechanics, the game has nice art, a clear design and if you are the kind of person that enjoys figuring out optimal play, you will have hours of entertainment. Best of all, it is a free-to-play game, so you should try it, no strings attached! Who knows, maybe you can even get to found a space expedition and take your entrepreneurship to other rocks of the galaxy.

Final Score: 8 out of 10.

Transistor Review

Transistor is an isometric action RPG in which your goal is to revenge your friend's death by deleting The Camerata, a group of four people that cares about nothing but their own agenda. This game has a unique combat system that is guaranteed to keep you hooked with the many possibilities it presents.

The combat mechanic is essentially very simple, each enemy has their unique pattern and you have to bring their health down before they do the same with yours. What this game excels at is how you do this. You have four active skills at any given time, but you will have sixteen different functions (abilities) to choose from. On top of that, each active skill can have up to two upgrade slots, which means you can use two other functions to enhance the skill power and functionality. Some basic math will show you that each active skill has up to 240 combinations!! Don't worry, the numbers seem daunting, but in reality the system is very easy to understand once you start playing with it. You won't be able to use all that power and versatility until later in the game when you will already have a good understanding and practice experience with the system.

You also have four other passive slots, in which you can use your functions to give passive bonuses to your character. These bonuses might come very handy depending on your build or even your play-style.

Speaking of play-style, you have two major ways of fighting The Process (your enemies). You can either stop time and plan a limited amount of actions with the Turn() mechanic, which will make your active skills locked for a couple seconds but allows you to perform a set amount of pre-planned actions in hyper-speed, or you can specialize in real-time combat and use everything you have got at will. Still regarding play-style, there are some special "equipment" called Limiters. Once equipped they will provide you experience with boosts by giving your game a disadvantage. It could be something as simple as The Process doing double damage, or something very troublesome as reducing the memory you have available to install functions. The worse the disadvantage is, the more experience you will be given. One tip tough, you can replay the game as many times as you want and keep your progress through game plays. We do not recommend using all limiters in your first time around as this will make combat quite a challenge!

One last thing we would like to mention regarding the game mechanics is how it deals with failure. Once your character has it's life points depleted you will loose one of your installed functions by Overloading. Which means you will lose the access to that skill until you reach the next save point. If you have four functions installed you can "die" four times. Once you run out of functions you will have to load the last game saved.

Although the combat system is the most relevant mechanic in the game, there are many other little things that just add to the overall experience. On top of it all, Transistor has stunning art work and an outstanding soundtrack, as well designed as their mechanics, we highly recommend this title!

Final Score: 10 out of 10.