Game:

The Banner Saga 3 (2018)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 17:07

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2

Chapter 21 of Banner Saga operates on its own time limit. Your choices across the series and the strength of Rook's caravan increase that timer. As the Darkness caravan moves forward in c21, the timer counts down. If it reaches 0, you get a 'return to Arberrang'- a single map that shows how the progressing Darkness has affected Arberrang. Each return gives a small boost to the timer and so allows the Darkness caravan to push forward more. You can do this up to five times and get new maps in Arberrang. If the timer hits 0 again after this, Arberrang is completely destroyed and Rook's caravan are killed- you can still keep going with the Darkness caravan and reach an ending, but there's nothing left for them to return to afterwards.

It's a cool system and a thematic system, but it has a problem- these returns to Arberrang contain some of the most exciting and intense maps and story sections, but if your caravan is strong enough to get a long timer, the Darkness caravan can complete the whole game without ever needing a return to buff up the timer. Every single Return to Arberrang is optional content! It's possible that that last map against Ruin was the last time we'd ever see Rook's caravan. From a completionist pov, it's also reasonably hard to orchestrate a playthrough where you see all five Returns but don't have Arberrang destroyed by running out the timer. I will readily admit that I just fiddled with the timer here so I saw all the returns- by default I wouldn't have seen any of them.

This map is cool! It's a wave fight on a very cramped narrow corridor. It ends up pretty messy- there's not much room to move around all the willpower-sapping explosion residue. You recruit two units here, but I don't intend to deploy either of them:

Zefr finally returns after leaving the Ravens at the end of BS2. I was surprised I didn't find her very useful- there's few situations where Breeze is relevant and Mend feels quite piddly given how much stat inflation there's been since BS2. I never intentionally deploy her.

Bastion is unique- a playable dredge stoneguard with really high stats- but he plays similar to the varl that I've already had lots of time to invest in. His specials aren't as useful as Tempest. I think if he joined earlier he'd be a lot more appealing but this is too late to invest in someone new.

Note that these characters only appear in the return to Arberrang! If you miss out on the returns then you never see Zefr again after BS2 and you never even meet Bastion.

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