The Banner Saga - Best Video Game of 2014

With all the larger sites picking other games as the game of the year winner a small news site called The Fresno Bee has picked The Banner Saga as Best Video Game of 2014.

In a year overrun by great role-playing games like “South Park: The Stick of Truth” and “Dragon Age Inquisition,” it’s only fitting that my favorite game of 2014 was the beautiful and striking “The Banner Saga.”

“The Banner Saga” is the first-born son of Stoic Studio, an independent game development company created by three former BioWare employees who had worked on “Star Wars: The Old Republic.”

The trio followed the increasingly common trend of abandoning steady work at a large studio to start their own company, and they raised nearly $750,000 in a crowd-funding campaign to get them on their way.

More information.

I guess if you like visual novel type games. For me the Banner Saga was a disappointment. Not because it wasn't a good game, but because it was getting a lot of 80+ ratings, and for me it just a 70-75 or so. There were so many very good RPGs this year. The Banner saga wouldn't be in my top 3.

I liked the game and I think it could be great once all 3 parts are out but I don't think it's GotY material even in "dry" year like last one.

Originally Posted by Nameless one
I liked the game and I think it could be great once all 3 parts are out but I don't think it's GotY material even in "dry" year like last one.

"dry" year? with Original Sin, Wasteland 2, dragon age, shadowrun (director cut), dead state. What more you want?

Originally Posted by Zagorin
"dry" year? with Original Sin, Wasteland 2, dragon age, shadowrun (director cut), dead state. What more you want?

This is one of the best years ever but last one wasn't.What I meant is that even if Banner came out in 2013 which wasn't nearly as good for RPGs it wouldn't be goty candidate, at least not for me.

Played it for about an hour and got bored. Probably not enough time to judge it but I wasn't having any fun and there were other games I wanted to play.

I should give it a better try sometime but with my backlog I doubt I will.

Would not be my pick (7.5/10 or so), but it´s nice to see the game being recognized nevertheless since it did bring cool music, art direction and fairly unique combat system to the table. Hopefully the sequel will introduce more combat diversity and more emphasis on C&C.

I really liked the game. Was it goty? I don't know I avoid such debates - i mean why does there have to be a goty. I definitely enjoyed it more than wasteland 2; hard to compare to D:OS because the scopes are totally different. The story telling was a *lot* better than D:OS but D:OS had really fun combat - though to be honest I thought DD had better dungeons than D:OS (i.e, I did not love D:OS maps but they weren't awful either). Hum. My favorite game of the year - hard to tell there were a lot of fun games. Wolfenstein wsan't awful either - nor was kb darkside - though nearly all of the games I played had annoying points that kept them from being perfect. I will say that banner saga had fewer annoying points (other than being incomplete). God I'm sick of reading these 3 part books where you finish one part and have to wait a freaking year to get the next book. I'm in the middle of FIVE series like this where I have to wait a full freaking year for part 2 or part 3. Well that is how i feel about banner saga (though I suspect the wait will be even longer).

Originally Posted by Nameless one
This is one of the best years ever but last one wasn't.What I meant is that even if Banner came out in 2013 which wasn't nearly as good for RPGs it wouldn't be goty candidate, at least not for me.

Oh sorry, I misunderstood you. I guess my mind is already in 2015

Was an okish game…but not really good imho and there are certainly better ones this year. Anyways, looking forward to the second game.