Quick Look: The Banner Saga: Factions

I tried this out this evening, it's really quite superb. Looks fantastic and the depth of tactics you can go into is far greater than shown in this quick look. In fact I'd say this quick look pretty much ignores all of the tactics available in the game as the tutorial was clearly either ignored or skipped before they played it and made it look like it's simply a game of dice rolls when it's nothing close to that...

Seriously recommend playing more than five minutes of games before quicklooking them in future, just looking back on all of the information given throughout the video that was completely disproved within my first two or three matches, or before that even during the forced tutorial, is quite depressing. The game is seriously misrepresented by this video.

I fucking love how this game looks so hard. Reminds me of classic Prince Valiant cartoons before i had to go to CCD kid.

I like the environment art style, but the character art looks really cheap. Like a mid 2000's flash game.

Also games built almost entirely on % chance really bug me. I think back to the time I lost 30+ units in Risk to bad rolls against 3 units. What does strategy matter if I lose to cruel dice. I might as well zerge and wait to win/lose.

This was fucking painful to watch.

O my god I know what the art style is. It's Heavy Metal its the same art style and animation style.

I hadn't realized it but this game is totally Might and Magic but vikings but also more accessible maybe. I'm totally on board but like Patrick I would rather play something like this single-player.

It's as if they've deluded themselves into believing that they have an entire job playing video games. What a bunch of characters, these guys.

Patrick....

@m2cks: If you'd actually played the tutorial of the game you'd realize how very much of a disservice they did to this game by showing it so atrociously. Their job is to give their readers a good idea of these games and in that they failed spectacularly today. They didn't even understand the VERY BASICS of the game which the forced tutorial explains plainly. They sat down and wasted half an hour of everyone's time talking out their asses about a game they did not understand in the least. There is no crit chance in this game, there is no facing in this game, your health and strength are one and the same, every unit has armor, not just shieldbeaters, and most eggregiously miss chance is largely avoidable while he spent the entire game making idiotic 50% misses. He made a deeply tactical game about positioning and unit choice look like a series of coinflips.

LOVE that art style. Very clean. Very crisp. Tasty. Slightly sweet finish. With a hint of papaya. Light and summery. Pairs well with seafood. And chicken.

settle down

breathe

we'll make it through this together

so if vinny made all the same supposed mistakes you'd still laugh and cheer him along, eh?

"Yeah. Mmm hmm. Okay. Alright. Okay. Yep. Hmm. Alright. Right. Mmm hmm. Okay."

Was Patrick pitching this game to a receptive but skeptical Jeff? :P

Sorry, if it don't have pixels and 8-bit music then its just bourgeois racketeering.

this game is the dopeness

I don't know if they've ever redone a quicklook but they misrepresented this game so badly they should. This is like quicklooking chess and not knowing how the pieces move. At least understand the core mechanics of the game before showing it off.

Another one of those Quick Looks where it would have paid so much to have a little bit more knowledge before heading in.

I don't want serious Quick Looks, I love the quick and loose style of them. but if most of the video is spent learning how to play the game that you're suppose to be giving first impressions of then it doesn't come across as fun, or informative It becomes a mundane waiting game for either something to happen, or for them to figure out how to make something happen.

Looks very nice! Glad you showed it off.

Though, I actually find myself somewhat agreeing with a few of the real criticisms of this Quick Look. I don't know about a "redo" of a Quick Look, but it seems like they could perhaps know more about the basics of the game if they ever look at the single player version of the game when it comes out. I can understand an informative Quick Look being a bit dry versus funnier Quick Looks, but this seems to have not even been that informative. Can't say I've really been disappointed by a Quick Look in a long time, but this sure comes close.

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Exactly why i hate these games and will not play them

A shame to see the game a bit misrepresented. It's a pretty neat game and the dice rolls are their way of telling you not to attack their health/strength. It's supposed to be about skill not random chance rolls.

At least Patrick figured out what he was doing wrong by the end of the match.

I'm done watching Patrick quick looks he talks too much and doesn't play the game. Jeff is even like "dude end your turn your leaving this guy hanging and I feel bad."

This looks pretty neat. Not interested in the multiplayer at all, but I'm excited to see how the single player turns out.

I very much like the art direction but i don't really like the character design.

And i'm not hating on Patrick or anything and i haven't played THIS particular turn based strategy game but i get the feeling from watching this that he might not be great at these types of games.

And this reminds me of all kinds of might & magic instead of xcom/others.

I can't wait to see what these guys make after this game, i love the style and the multiplayer looks well implemented, i just need something more active.

Looks cool, but I really don't want a free-to-play multiplayer game. When does the single-player game come out?

I'm not entirely sure what's up with this game, but the video makes it seem like all the dice rolls are off. A game like Fire Emblem, though, I think I've only had a character miss twice.

Seems pretty slow. Looks beautiful but I'm not interested in playing this kind of game against people.

@romination: @defade: Which is why this quick look is terrible, because it isn't that AT ALL. Miss chance only happens when enemy armor is significantly higher than your strength. You don't attack against high miss chance, you go after their armor. It's part of the strategy to avoid miss chance as much as you can, and if you are playing well you'll rarely take any shots lower than an 80% when absolutely necessary.

Looks kind of cool, a-downloading.

I feel exactly the same way, however it appears that with the class building, character hiring, etc... that it may become incredibly deep and complex at some point but at the same time it takes forever to build renown to purchase these things, making the free to play model not all that free to play unless you like your strategy games light on the strategy.

This reminds me of Heroes of Might and Magic, but much worse.

@squirrelwizard:This game has a tutorial that you HAVE to play. Patrick clearly played it and payed it absolutely no attention whatsoever. He did a terrible job in this quicklook.

It's pretty lame they didn't understand the core mechanic of the game. It's not like it's buried. He saw 2 options for attack every time he clicked on a guy, attack health and attack armor. He never tried attacking armor once! For a quick look, you should at least demonstrate each option at least once, right? Also, if he should've tried to understand what the armor stat was - it directly impacts your chance to hit. BTW, everything I learned about this game I learned in 10 minutes of playing.

Looks alright, I want to play the singleplayer version tho.

One of the slowest, quietest, lifeless battle systems I've ever seen.

What possible enemy could he face that's more appropriate for breaking armor than a burly shieldbearer? I haven't even played or seen the game before and that's obvious.

@slinkdickens: Yeah, after watching this I gave it a go. I was lucky though, I mentioned it was my first match to the guy I was fighting and he gave me some great advice. After losing to him I kick ass on four out of the five next matches (the fifth was a win, but I had like two health left on my last archer at the end).

I wish people who could handle a bit of variance did QLs of games with dice rolls. No, you weren't "running bad" in this.

HOORAY FOR 2D ANIMATION!!

Oh my God. As someone who has played a fair amount of Banner Saga, this QL is an absurd travesty. Patrick did not even understand the core mechanic of this game, and clearly paid no attention whatsoever to the tutorial. And then he spent the entire time misrepresenting the nature of this game. This is an embarrassment.

@conciliator said:

That's the sound of Jeff internally facepalming at how much Patrick doesn't understand the game, but professionalism dictates that Jeff can't tell Patrick too much how to run his own Quick Look (and also Jeff has spent almost zero time with the game, but he can at least sense how very bad/clueless Patrick is).