Game:

The Banner Saga 3 (2018)

Duration: 8:30

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3

I can't lie, I find this map a little disappointing. Banner Saga's map quality is uneven, but they've always turned out for final battles- the fight against Bellower, protecting the King, defeating Eyeless, these have been fun and inventive fights. This falls below that standard.

There's two gimmicks to the fight. The first is the map itself- striking an ice crystal will make it shoot ice in the opposite direction from where it was struck. This only does 1 strength damage so it's not very meaningful- it mostly serves to clog the map down and restrict mobility. Not great.

The second gimmick? In the preamble to the fight you can either allow Bolverk to monologue at you, or just run up and headbutt his stupid face. If you let him talk, this is a two wave fight and Bolverk doesn't show up until wave two. If you headbutt him this is a one-wave fight and Bolverk is right there from the start. Because of how Apostate works I feel the one-wave version of the fight is a lot more difficult; Bolverk is a threatening high-damage enemy and it will take you a few rounds to whittle him down if you're not high on Umbrage. The enemy Stonesinger is also hard to approach and can freely cast Umbrage.

So in essence...this is a fine enough fight, it's difficult in a good way, but it doesn't do anything special. Bolverk is a threat but he's just another enemy, he's not like Bellower or Eyeless or even Ruin whose abilities you have to play around. Oh and of course: you can lose this fight and still get a (good-ish) ending!

If you've stuck all the way through, thanks for watching. I did enjoy Banner Saga overall but it's an uneven series and I can see how it could disappoint people- I'm glad I got my feelings out in the descriptions and was able to record a full playthrough of Rook mode. I have another lowman video coming, and there was a request to upload the final training map from BS2 which I will get around to doing at some point- but I have exams coming up so it might be a few months wait. I'm not interested in recording survival mode so if I ever record again it'll be another game.

Final kill top 5:

5th: Canary 78 (very impressive considering she showed up so late- though her poison tip does encourage you to let her snipe kills)
4th: Rook 80
3rd: Krumr 85
2nd: Gunnulf 91 (barely participated in BS3 so this shows how remarkable his performance is in BS1)
1st: Iver 110 (finally outpaced Gunnulf)

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