The Banner Saga 2
Welcome back to The Banner Saga, where the sun never sets, the darkness is coming, and nobody knows if we'll ever get out of this alive. The Banner Saga 2 is the middle game in a planned trilogy. To put it another way, don’t even try playing this second game without completing the first. The Banner Saga, as a whole, is a singular epic, beginning to end, taking a displaced people on an apocalyptic exodus. Some games are pre-apocalypse and some are post-apocalypse. But The Banner Saga is apocalypse now. There are a lot of bad things happening at once, and the end of the world just got a whole lot closer. But read our review of the first Banner Saga if you're unfamiliar--or could use a few minutes' worth of refresher--with that world.
Scouring the Tolkien-esque map, the land tells stories of struggle. Lakes fished out and polluted, twin cities that would murder one another, woodlands whose flocks have been hunted to extinction. It’s a used-up land. So much picturesque wilderness, yet so battered and bruised at the same time.
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The Banner Saga 2’s finale needed another round of QA. In dialogue, especially. In a culminating scene, one person that cannot be seen at all is contributing to the conversation. Another dialogue tree mislabels who’s speaking exactly. In another instance, a recurring character is missing his right hand, but at some point they mirror-image the 2D illustration of him--so suddenly it’s his left hand that’s missing instead of his right. And this isn't any kind of glitch, but one character's recurring dream imagery looks hasty and cobbled together at the last minute, compared to the masterful compositions making up the rest of the game. The attention to detail started slipping near the end. Nothing catastrophic. They just needed to take a Q-Tip to clean up some of the harder-to-reach areas.
Reaching the walled city of Arberrang is the goal. But who you are when you get there is the most important part of the journey. The first Banner Saga felt momentous. The Banner Saga 2, however, feels relentless and just a little hopeless. Bring on the third act.
Score: 8/10
