The Banner Saga 2 Review
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The writing for the campaign is excellent. You might actually find yourself caring what happens to a few of the characters, and being intrigued by some of the choices you have to make. Unfortunately, because there are just so many characters -- which is good for battles but bad for storytelling -- more than a few of them fade into the background and don't have much of an impact on the game. This is especially true for the varl, who for some reason get short-shrifted. I'd say that the game would be better off with fewer characters, but Stoic Studio has sort of boxed themselves into a corner. They can't just drop characters who players have spent time and renown upgrading. That would just tick everybody off.
The writing comes into play as you travel around and events pop up. Sometimes these events are just simple conversations between your characters that don't really change anything, but other times they can earn you (or cost you) morale, earn you (or cost you) supplies, give you some renown, or start up a battle. As an example, during each chapter you pass by a godstone, which is essentially a really sophisticated altar for a god. So you might stop and acknowledge the god, which might cause something to good or bad to happen, or you might just walk on by, which might cause your clan to lose morale. There are a lot of mights in that previous sentence, but that's the sort of uncertainty you face when leading your clan.
As was the case in The Banner Saga, your decisions in The Banner Saga 2 give fairly arbitrary results, which one might argue makes them a good representation of real life. But sadly the results are fixed, so once you've played the game a couple of times and learned the "right" answers, you can guarantee good results for your clan. I think the game would be better if there was some randomness involved, which would make the events different each time, and the game more difficult to predict.
Finally, while the writing is excellent, not much actually happens during the campaign. A couple of secrets are exposed, and it becomes obvious that the dredge are fleeing from something just as much as you're fleeing from the dredge, but otherwise The Banner Saga 2 is just a travelogue. Heck, there are barely even any deaths, which littered the first game. I think Stoic could have done a little more to make The Banner Saga 2 stand up on its own, rather than leaving it as a simple bridge between the first game and the finale.
Survival Mode
Along with the campaign, The Banner Saga 2 also includes Survival Mode, which gives you a way to fight 40 consecutive battles without having to worry about dialogue, the plot, or supplies. That is, it's the mode for people who just like combat.
When you start Survival Mode, you pick out any six characters from the game to form your party. Then after each fight, you receive renown and an item, which allows you to do some upgrading. Any character who loses all of his strength in a battle is killed and lost for the rest of the mode, but other characters can be recruited for a minimal cost. If a battle goes really badly for you, then you're allowed a limited number of saves to try again, but once those saves are gone, you're stuck with whatever happens, which means there's no guarantee that you'll make it all the way to the end.
I'm the sort of player who's on the opposite side of Survival Mode. I like the combat fine, but without the story and character interaction, it's sort of boring for me. Plus, Stoic Studio changed some of the combat rules for Survival Mode, and I didn't understand why. For example, while the mode is still turn-based, the turns are timed, which seems like the opposite of what people buying s turn-based game would want. And instead of alternating turns, all characters get one turn per round, which takes away from the uniqueness of the combat engine. Why do things like that? I have no idea, and perhaps for that reason Survival Mode never really piqued my interest.
Conclusion
Overall, The Banner Saga 2 is a fine game. The combat is fun and interesting, the characters and situations are well written, and the game's cartoon style gives it a unique look. But story-wise almost nothing happens, and since stories are one of the main reasons I play games (and RPGs in particular), I was a little disappointed with the experience. Still, it's tough to rate the middle part of a trilogy before playing the finale, and maybe the minimal events in this game will pay off in a big way when the trilogy concludes in The Banner Saga 3.
