I definitely find this more enjoyable than Blackguards. Sure that game's strength was its variety in the combat maps but it was a "soulless" "gamey" little game that kept falling in my esteem the more I played. It really overstayed its welcome towards the end.
No story to speak of, paper thin characters, no atmosphere and its funny you criticize the writing in the Banner Saga because it was barely serviceable in Blackguards
Yes it true that the Banner Saga is in the end an intriguing collection of mechanics that don't exactly pan out to a great game (I still find it entertaining and the main appeal does not come from the gameplay as I was saying) but on the other hand Blackguards is a monolithic approach to going from a single map to the next that becomes quite stale when some repetition of ideas and enemies is starting to settle in. Thankfully the game can be sampled in bite sized chunks due to its nature (a couple of maps per session) and that is the only way I could get it to the end (due to my schedule and travel it was all I could play). But man was it tedious towards the end (also infinite Morfu respawn FTW
).
The game also was very easy on normal. And that made the strategy you have to use almost dead obvious for most maps (maybe hit try again once for the difficulty spikes?) couple that with the small subset of TDE it actually implemented and that made for unspectacular but fun gameplay. A good sidegame until something better comes along.(SRPGs are not really my main fare though so not exactly a connoisseur after all. Maybe they are all that simple). I am sure that it would have been more demanding on hard but the game just did not appeal enough to devote more time to it at that point. (due to a lack of appeal in all other departments. May still try it in the future on hard but if it is simply a DMG/HP slider I imagine it will just become tedious, especially towards the end)
I would give Banner Saga an 8/10 (probably a bit generous) at this point (have not finished) and Blackguards a very lenient 7/10. Can't comment on SRR yet. I have to drum up the enthusiasm to play it first after the big turn off that was DMS…
The Lone Wolf books quip was a tongue in cheek reference to a favorite past-time of my youth and poking fun at the game's linear choose your own path approach you know…
Not drawing actual gameplay parallels…