By pairing the resource management and RPG advancement mechanics with story decisions and powerful vignettes, I found myself rapidly absorbed into the unfolding drama, battles, and character progression. The Banner Saga’s most enjoyable feature is its story, and the tale told in this finale is a tremendous achievement. The battle before that ending is beautiful and powerful, however.
A fighter knows that any gut punch, no matter how devastating, is rendered more palatable by the final bell. Still, seeing the end credits play so quickly after I’d made some devastating choices with real consequences couldn’t help but numb the pain of those results for me. There are enough points of divergence in this trilogy that make a second or even a third playthrough worthwhile, just to see everything that might happen. This brevity aids in replayability, certainly, and The Banner Saga and The Banner Saga 2 are of similar length. The ending was put before me before I’d had an opportunity to sit with what I was experiencing and digest it.
I spent eight or so hours on it, start to finish, including several reloads and experiments I undertook to test the potential twists and eddies of the story. Events, tragedies, and battles keep coming, with no more than a minute or two between them, and it is this brisk pace that exposes how disappointingly short the Banner Saga 3 is. Days are passing in the Saga’s world, but it never feels so. Events, tragedies, and battles keep coming.It is this tension that horsewhips the story and keeps it pressing forward at breakneck pace. As the tension mounted and the pace of the story accelerated, I found myself realizing that I had developed a profound empathy for the decision-makers in this tale: The burden of leadership, of carrying on in the face of mistakes or pyrrhic victories, sat as heavily on my shoulders as it did in theirs. The absolutely shabby, frayed state of Arberrang and its citizens, told both in vignettes as Rook’s (or Alette’s, depending on who survived in your game) caravan passed through drove home that this was a city about to break under the weight of the end of the world, and that if I couldn’t hold it together and preserve it somehow there wouldn’t be a world left to save. The fates of my allies, both in The Banner Saga 3 and those who perished in the two previous installments, served as an apt metaphor of a world on the brink, and I felt the urgency behind the band’s push forward into oblivion. Whether they were a result of ignoring the advice of a seasoned companion or just misreading a situation, in hindsight it was clear that the failures I suffered were mine alone. I chose poorly more than once, but each time I did so it felt fair. The fates of his band of Ravens felt as immediate as the grander mission, with simple tactical decisions as we plodded along carrying immediate life-or-death outcomes.
The devastation beyond the darkness as Iver’s band travels further into the belly of the proverbial beast is unnerving, almost haunting. It is the little details that lend weight to the stakes facing this beautiful, hand-drawn world. Still, it spins a good yarn and delivers immediate consequences to your decisions in such a way that I was left wanting more.
At the same time, it also fails to address the series’ few weaknesses: Rote combat, an avalanche of side characters with little importance to the plot, and a short adventure. The Banner Saga 3 offers a bloody and satisfying conclusion to the trilogy with plenty of tough choices, challenging encounters, and vivid characters. Stoic Games’ denouement to their beautifully animated, Viking-inspired epic contains, in heaping doses, more of everything that made the first two turn-based tactics games so strong.