Pros and Cons - The Banner Saga (The Banner Saga)

Pros:
- The developers at Stoic Studio did a great job. The first thing that catches your eye is the bright, colorful animation and detailed rendering of both the characters and the surrounding landscape.
- The authors were not too lazy to add a separate musical accompaniment to each situation, which adds credibility to the game, like the classic Scandinavian sagas.
- The style of animation itself dates back to the 1970s and is known to the general public for such creations as: "The Lord of the Rings" (1978) and especially "Fire and Ice", which have become the standard of the fantasy genre. Due to the economic crisis of the late 70s, this style did not receive material support and began to fade. Now, thanks to Stoic Studio, it is being reborn.
- The game is a classic turn-based strategy, closer in principle to a chess game than even such games as: Heroes of Might and Magic or King's Bounty.

Disadvantages:
- The developers were too lazy to voice and animate the dialogues between the characters, instead of them - static pictures.
- Despite the fact that the game consists mainly of "cardboard" and gif-files, this case loads extremely slowly, even on modern PCs. This indicates the use of outdated technologies in the production.
- There is a frankly bad and clearly unfinished save system. The save points are scattered at a decent distance from each other.
- The main disadvantage of the game is the illogicality of many moments of the storyline. From the very first chapters, the saga recommends the player to do things solely based on the principles of "pure logic" and rationalism. However, by doing so, we end up with negative results. This is especially absurd towards the end of the game, when you have accumulated a significant supply of provisions; attracted many warriors and giants into their ranks; got the artifacts... and here you are, in order to feel the "tragedy" of the storyline, the developers cut off your provisions, kill packs of warriors and peasants, give tasks leading to 0% results. Who needs such fatalism, it is not clear.

Bottom line: The Banner Saga is a colorful, intriguing and unusual game that will definitely appeal to fans of Norse mythology and the fantasy genre. Unfortunately, it is “raw” in some places, but we will hope that in the next part the developers will eliminate their shortcomings.