For months I used a screenshot from the first The Banner Saga as my desktop wallpaper, and I still sometimes write to Austin Wintory's magnificent score. But for all that fondness for its art and style, I winced a little at the thought of returning to developer Stoic's bleak, beautiful Nordic fantasy world for The Banner Saga 2. Aside from its incredible Eyvind Earle-inspired, hand-drawn aesthetic, the world itself is about as uplifting as a bankruptcy notice in a funeral home. Happily, it only took me a few moments to realize how much I would have regretted missing this strong sequel.
The Banner Saga 2 still boasts a warehouse's worth of doom 'n' gloom amid its many turn-based tactical battles and apocalyptic themes, but its characters and settings imbue it with a liveliness the original never really had. The stakes are higher now, yet there's also a greater sense of what's being lost as the world breaks and the sun squats motionless above.Out of the gate, a handy option to import Steam save files ensures your choices from the previous game won't be among the casualties. Those choices are important, as they decide whether you start the game as Rook or his daughter Alette; if those names mean nothing to you, I suggest you play the first excellent game before jumping in here and relying on the recap cutscene in the main menu – it’s a good refresher, but hardly a substitute. (If you're like present company and you just hate the choices you've made, there's also a convenient option to play as either Rook or Alette with preset world states.)Mountains No More
He is, in a sense, the right kind of man for this unforgiving world. It's partly because of him that the surrounding tragedies don't feel quite so stifling as before, as his gruffer outlook keeps the melancholy at bay and allows some of remaining wonders of dying world to shine through. In contrast to the 2014 original’s reliance on gray mountains and dark conifers, The Banner Saga 2 takes us into places like russet deciduous forests where creepy villagers skulk beneath the canopy, into caverns where Lovecraftian horrors lurk, across swamps with self-resurrecting bears, and over sprawling plains where centaurs hunt with spears and flails. Sometimes it even gets downright trippy, and the world breaks in ways I never would have imagined two years ago.The Banner Saga 2 ends with big events regardless of whose eyes you're seeing the world through. At the same time, I couldn't ever escape the impression that it's a Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers of sorts, in that the pieces are obviously being set in place for the planned third entry and aren’t capitalized on yet. The original game left some questions unanswered, but it felt more like a self-contained narrative than what we get here.Battlefield Barriers
Their associated tactics find their stride on the new combat maps, which break up tidy strategies by altering victory conditions or forcing you to plan combat around obstacles both indestructible and destructible. Sometimes a harrowing battle can end with the death of an enemy leader; at other times I found myself struggling to clear away snow while Dredge beat on me.As for the obstacles, they're only occasionally used to good effect. My favorite maps were the ones where I found myself having to work around crevasses cutting through the grid, while others involved little more than barrels strewn across the map, seemingly randomly. One of the weakest consisted of a besieged greathall with a room-long firepit, where I outwitted the AI by staying put and watching as they idiotically ran through the flames. I get the impression it wasn't even properly implemented, as the NPCs lining the hall looked more like they were partying than enduring an attack outside on two fronts.It's a small sin, ultimately. The Banner Saga 2 exceeds its predecessor in almost every way, and Stoic appears to feel more comfortable with the world it has created. I found that to be true even for Wintory's soundtrack, which now seems better woven into the plot than before. It's true the story ends up seeming like it's on a precipice overlooking something greater, but that's not such a bad thing. As the inhabitants of this world know, it's always good to have something to look forward to.