When comparing The Banner Saga 2 vs Ghost of a Tale, the Slant community recommends The Banner Saga 2 for most people. In the question“What are the best indie games on Steam?” The Banner Saga 2 is ranked 38th while Ghost of a Tale is ranked 68th. 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 Exploration and tactical gameplay
Even though the game world isn't huge, the game does do a good job of keeping you busy. There's a lot of collectibles to search and find. In doing so, you'll need to pass by enemies. The game gives you the option to either knock them out, distract them & slip by, simply try to sneak by them, hoping they don't turn around and see you... or you can just run straight past them since you're faster and try to hide in a barrel or cupboard when they briefly lose sight of you. You can also make enemies follow you inside a room with a lever controlled door, run outside and close the door with the enemies trapped inside.
Pro Adorable story-based game
You play as a mouse who needs to escape jail and venture into the world to try and find your wife and son. The mouse, Tilo, is a minstrel who wears a little lute on his back and has a little hat with a bell on. You meet a lot of interesting characters along the way with their own stories. This game was made by a former Dreamworks animator and the level of detail is one of the game's biggest strengths. This translates into a well done animations, including idle, and overall high standard of graphics in the game that are spot-on in terms of creating the right atmosphere.
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 Not a lot of action
This game does not have a combat system, so you can't kill any enemies. It's about not getting caught as you try to collect things and progress to find your family (as well as the atmosphere and story). So if you really hate sneaking, running away and hiding, then it's probably not for you.