When comparing The Banner Saga 2 vs Xenonauts, the Slant community recommends The Banner Saga 2 for most people. In the question“What are the best Turn-Based Tactics games on Steam?” The Banner Saga 2 is ranked 14th while Xenonauts is ranked 17th. The most important reason people chose The Banner Saga 2 is:
Tactical RPGs can be really intimidating, especially if you're just starting out. The tutorials often blaze forward, causing you to miss important mechanics. Luckily, Banner Saga 2 tries to alleviate this by adding a trainer NPC who will give you challenges. These involve performing various combat exercises, helping you to solidify your understanding of the game and even learn something new.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Helps you to learn the gameplay thoroughly
Tactical RPGs can be really intimidating, especially if you're just starting out. The tutorials often blaze forward, causing you to miss important mechanics. Luckily, Banner Saga 2 tries to alleviate this by adding a trainer NPC who will give you challenges. These involve performing various combat exercises, helping you to solidify your understanding of the game and even learn something new.
Pro Solid tactical combat
Even though Banner Saga 2’s turn-based combat system is fairly straightforward. You and your opponent take turns in moving and attacking with units on a tactical grid. Each unit has its strengths, weaknesses, and set of unique abilities that you need to consider.
For example, archers can attack from far away but they have low armor, so you can’t leave them out in the open. Another example are the Varl, very durable and strong melee units that occupy 4 tiles as opposed to 1. This makes it trickier to position them since more enemies can stand next to them and attack them.
This creates combat that is not too simple but still has enough variety and strategy involved to feel rewarding.
Pro Great hand drawn graphics
Banner Saga 2 environments, characters, and animations are all hand-drawn. This includes your caravan as it marches over a snowy hill, passing trees and houses in the distance. The various viking-esque soldiers, centaurs and other mythological creatures, swinging axes and thrusting spears on a worn out bridge. Even the very detailed character sprites as they discuss matters with extremely serious expressions. Everything just feels like you’re watching an animated movie, which is something almost never encountered in a game.
Pro Back to the roots: The original UFO: Enemy Unknown
This game goes back to the original roots the UFO: Enemy Unknown, as the whole X-com franchise should, and raised it to another level.
Without a doubt this is the best "X-com" type of game.
Pro Spiritual successor to original X-Com franchise
Xenonauts took its inspiration from the original X-Com game, giving fans a new game in similar style but expanded on the finer details of the game to give an even more deep experience. This should appeal to those familiar with X-Com as well as those looking for a fun yet deep strategy game.
Cons
Con HP damage based attacks cause one-dimensional tactics
A unit's current number of hit points equals the damage it will deal to an enemy. Because of this, the best strategy is always to hit all enemy units in a sequence, so they inflict as little damage as possible. Any other strategy is too risky and can backfire way too easily, limiting your creativity.
Con Incomplete story
To get a full and satisfying story, you’ll have to play the entire Banner Saga trilogy. Banner Saga 2 on its own feels like you’ve suddenly started reading a book from the middle. There are a lot of characters you know very little about, making it hard to understand their motivations. The on-going events are not explained fully. Even the ending is not a satisfying conclusion but just a setup for the next arc.
Con Can be difficult for newcomers of the genre
There is no in-game tutorial and there is only an online manual for the game, which means users who are not familiar with this game type and what is expected in play may have a difficult time learning all of the ins and outs. Online video tutorials may help as well, but of course this is all time spent not playing the game n order to learn its mechanics, which some people may not enjoy or have the time for.
Con Lack of additional animation and more original ideas
Seems like they copied all the mainstream ideas from original UFO: Enemy Unknown, and added up some of their own which do not reflect well, like mechanized enemy units, instead of implementing original Snakeman and Muton species.
Game also lack a possibility of taking back fallen continents with some kind of anti-infiltrator missions.