Yet I learned – having coughed up $8 for a character pack – that it does this a little too well.
#The banner saga 1 choices for free#
Since there's nothing available that can't be attained for free (albeit much, much more slowly), the shop appears to avoid the pay-to-win mentality that microtransactions are frequently charged with enabling. Of course, as Stoic's accountants might argue, you could always just buy boosters, Renown itself or readily-promoted characters from the in-game store. "my store-bought crew was being pitted against vastly more experienced foes, getting thoroughly trounced each time"
#The banner saga 1 choices upgrade#
There aren't many ranks – fresh units start at zero, and can advance all the way up to a dizzying one – but even on a winning streak, it takes hours to accumulate enough Renown to upgrade a single class. Characters are promoted to more advanced classes with Renown, Factions' currency, which is earned via killing foes and post-match victory bonuses. Factions absolutely promotes wits over brute force, and there are no broken characters, overpowered abilities or particular team build or initiative strategies that dominate – but it's rarely exciting, and that spells trouble for anything that demands so much time input. At this point the pace slows, miss followed by miss, to an extent that even the hand-drawn look will struggle to hold your attention. And if you're a hardened Norseman and you have only a 50/50 chance to hit a stationary enemy standing two feet away, it might be time to hang up the Dane axe. Once everyone's been sufficiently impaled, their chances to hit drop to senselessly low percentages. The Armour/Strength system also creates a reliance on sheer luck that gets worse as matches go on. You could still try an Armour attack, which always hits, but the opportunity cost – even a small chance of much more valuable Strength damage – always feels a little too high. This is the case even when a foe's armour rating exceeds your attack's strength, which will replace a guaranteed hit with a percentage chance. Whittling down this defence is only truly necessary for the heaviest tanks, though – it's still a far more effective use of a turn to go for Strength directly, as it both hurts enemies and limits their ability to do health or armour damage back. In addition to Strength, each unit has an Armour rating – damage done amounts to your Strength minus the target's Armour.
Characters just become increasingly useless, unable to effectively retaliate once they've been hurt, making surprise comebacks and tense stalemates almost impossible. But because health and damage stats are merged under a single 'Strength' figure, so that injured units hit for less, there's little scope for drama. One of my opponents was fond of using a heavy shield-bash attack on a friendly archer, the minor damage an acceptable cost for shunting her several spaces across the board into a prime sniping position. Mechanically, it's an entirely serviceable axe-fest with enough individual classes to bounce each unit's special moves against another's in interesting ways. "Characters become increasingly useless, unable to effectively retaliate once they've been hurt"