Banner Saga 3 Kickstarter Launched

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/stoic/banner-saga-3

So yeah, Banner Saga 3 is announced, but it seems the issues they had with Banner Saga 2 visibility and sales have led them back to kickstarter once again. That article is worth reading because it really highlights some of the issues indie devs have with visibility on digital storefronts these days. Things have changed drastically in just a few short years. To be fair, they do acknowledge their own shortcomings on managing the franchise.

Anyway, I'm a huge fan of the series, so I backed immediately, hopefully they hit their goal.

loved the first two games, will back this.

Noticed it said 42 days left. Is a Kickstarter no longer limited to a month? Or was it never?

Some very interesting stuff in that article. I gave up on the first Banner Saga when I reached a fight that was harder than I wanted, which pretty much ruled out playing 2 unless I went back to 1. As a result, I just wrote off the second one almost immediately. It's cool to see them acknowledge difficulty as damaging to a sequel's sales.

That idea probably only applies to games that rely on their story more than gameplay. That's definitely not a problem with Souls games, for example.

Anyways, I wish them luck with the Kickstarter and the game. It's good that poor sales aren't keeping them from finishing the story, for them and their fans.

By the way, is Banner Saga good? Never thought I'd play it because it's turn based, and I thought I wouldn't like that. Recently however, I've been playing Divinity: Original Sin, which is crazy good. Is it worth it?

its a good game, with some problems, and great art and an enjoyable story

-Best written review of the year

I'm incredibly biased because I'm a fan of the series, but hell yes it's worth it. It's worth it for the art/soundtrack/story alone.

The combat will vary from person to person. I think it's fantastic, but I also played the multiplayer game a lot, and human opponents really make the game shine. Against AI, it just isn't quite as good, but it's still fun. In general, the way I'd describe the turn based combat is that it has next to no random chance or dice rolling, turns alternate between individual characters (not between teams) and in general each character has fewer abilities/options than something like Xcom or the older, even more granular turn based games. That said, those few choices can be much more meaningful than they initial appear, since spacing, positioning and turn order are far more important than something like xcom. I haven't played Divinity, so I can't comment on how your experience there might compare.

Also, I'm not sure when the kickstarter change happened with regards to the 42 days thing. I've noticed it with a number of things in the past year. I wonder if it creates a noticeable change, though. Most kickstarters are light in the middle, so moving those times apart wouldn't seem to do much.

That was the neat thing, a couple months back they actually went and updated some of the game to make it easier, so now is the time to head back. Their view of Banner Saga as a franchise rather than individual games, where each new game props up the other entries, is actually sort of unique, and that weird, out of nowhere update to a 2 year old game makes sense with that new context.

Banner Saga has some of my favourite visuals and interactive storytelling in a strategy game, but one of my least favourite combat systems. The turn order is just complete moon logic, because unlike just about every other SRPG that exists, there is really no benefit to completely killing an enemy unit. The remaining guys just pick up the slack in the turn order. If your 6 guys kill 4/6 of the enemy team and you suffer no casualties, the remaining two guys get just as many turns as your entire team, because I dunno, those 2 guys are now the fastest men to ever live after seeing their buddies all die.

Yes, it's fair in a checkers or chess sort of way, but I guess I come to SRPGs as a distillation of battle where advantage in numbers actually matters. It just feels super gamey that you're encouraged to leave most of the enemy team alive but severely debuffed, and it just feels wrong that successfully outmaneuvering somebody early and picking off a low HP guy early gives you no material advantage other than the enemy having one fewer type of unit to use.

@brackstone: How's the combat in the second? I really liked a lot of the first game but utterly despised the combat.

@picky_bugger said:

The combat in the second is the exact same system. If you hated the basic mechanics (which is perfectly fair, it's not for everyone), this probably won't do much for you.

That said, it's a big improvement in the sequel. The 2 biggest issues I had with BS1 were that the AI doesn't really make the combat system shine, and that the encounters get really repetitive. 2 solves it by having outright better, more varied encounters. Each encounter seems like it had more thought put into it, and each one feels far more unique. In general, the AI still doesn't bring out the best in the combat system, but it comes close since each encounter is a lot more puzzley than before.

This is also aided by the greater unit variety for both you and your enemies. It makes better use of the units that maybe weren't featured much as enemies in BS1, and adds a number of new enemies that freshen things up.

So again, if you hate it based on the core mechanics, this won't be better. Otherwise, it's a nice improvement.

Also, as a somewhat separate point, (and relevant to @bisonhero), the Survival mode of BS2 changed the turn order mechanic to be fully fixed. As in, if a unit dies, his spot in the turn order is forever gone, and the opposing team acts twice. Survival mode is pretty good, but it is completely devoid of story. If the turn order is the main thing that drove some folks away from the series, the survival mode is definitely enough to warrant picking it up for a sale price.

I loved the first and still feel guilty for not picking up and playing the second yet.

@brackstone: Hmm I'm not totally sure if I did hate the core mechanics as a whole but I remember not enjoying the combat. It's possible that the tweaks you mentioned would be enough for me. I may give it a go.

I'm one of the people who had to dial down the difficulty for the first Banner Saga's final boss encounter, which definitely soured me on the game a little bit. It's not like I really loved that combat to begin with, so a ridiculous boss fight exponentially more difficult than the rest of the game probably helps explain why I didn't buy the sequel despite otherwise being on board with the "Oregon Trail but more miserable" parts.

I bought the first but still haven't played it yet, wierd about it not being shown on the store front i saw and still see it all the time.