Whenever I buy a new game in Early Access, I tend to end up buying a dud. So the question is; will Banners of Ruin be added to that collection.
Banners of Ruin is developed and Published by Monte Bearo and is currently available on Steam Early Access. I want to thank Monteo Bearo for the unsolicited offer of a key. I rarely ask for a key, I am grateful, and I looked forward to trying it out live on my Twitch Channel.
So you may have seen me playing Monster Train. If you have then you might be in luck. This game is fairly similar in that you have to build a deck of cards, making decisions along the way. No… it’s very little like Monster Train other than that.
The Banners of Ruin Basics
You start the game as a pair of Blackfoot’s who have been wronged. To right the wrong, you must enter the city of Dawn’s Point. Fight and craft your way through the city of the Enders across card-based combat and making the right decisions.
There are animals everywhere. As you start to fight as a mouse and a bear, it’s like a zoo plummeting into a civil war without any keepers to control it. Actually, what am I talking about, you don’t find greatswords, hatchets and axes in a zoo….. much.
The cards themselves come in two formats; character specific and general. The cards also cost two different types of points; stamina and will. This means that you have to be careful with the small number of points that you have in your hand and choose who is going to do what.
Stamina Points recharge at the start of each round, Will Points do not.
Other than that, the cards in Banners of Ruin work as you would expect them. Most of them end up in a discard pile at the end of each round, whereas a few can only be played once per battle.
Each of 6 animal characters have their own specific abilities to add to a generic deck of cards. Leveling up your animal fighters over the rounds of the game unlocks new cards to add to your build. You also come across new weapons to destroy all humans animals, and ensure you do not get reported to the Animal Protection League.
The Banners in Ruin Map
As you fight your way through the first progression element of battles, the second progression is marked by way of three ‘lanes’ which count down to an “end boss” type of battle. Each lane has 20 cards drawn, each lane has a particular bias to it, each lead to the same over-powered end battle.
As you can see here, there are actually no combat in this particular round, but Banners of Ruin offers tasks along the way to help or hinder your progress, opportunities to modify your deck and heal your characters. Further down the line you have the chance to add members to your party, up to 6 of you can battle up to 6 of them.
The help or hinder element of the way forward is quite simple. Like many other deck-builder games you get opportunities at the end of battles, and other random times, to add cards to your deck.
As you level up your characters, you also modify your deck, gain new skills or attributes, and increase those all important stamina and will points ready for the bigger rounds of elite combat.
The Good Bits
I like the variety in the array of cards. Not just the fact that there are cards that are specific to characters that only they can use, but also the variety in the damage and shielding modifiers. It can both get you in and out of trouble, or you can play the game like a miniature chess board to set-up the perfect combo.
I have not even started to go into the detail of the cards, there are so many that you are going to want to find for yourself. I don’t want to ruin any surprises… or start any nightmares:
In fact, the graphical elements are probably one of the things that I am enjoying the most right now. The slight animations in some screens and the illusion of 3D graphics using a 2D image is something that I find really appealing. Yes, Yansworth the mouse looks around and blinks on the character screen. This is something that clearly one or two of the staff at Monte Bearo have been working on.
I also like the way that the game does not necessarily end with a death. If you take damage during a battle it stays with you until you find a card to help you heal. On the other side of the coin though, as long as one character lives you can also find more friendly Blackfoot allies along the way to join you.
The Bad Bits
There is not enough variety in the cards going through Dawn’s Point yet. Some of the options on the lanes will always present exactly the same options every time. Mix the consequences up so that if you help a local Ender out (for example) that they could help you, rather than always force you into another combat.
This means that at the moment I find the game a little bit of a grind. To unlock more cards you have to gain experience points through wins and loses. The XP earned by your animal characters does not carry over in any way, but XP gained by you as the player at the end of each battle does.
Now you might find this bad bit as being a little picky, but for a game that almost exclusively has a mouse interaction to it, there is a single screen that needs a keyboard. This is the character screen.
Notice where it says to press Q to go to the next character to the left? Or where it says to press Escape to exit out to the character screen? Well bizarrely these are the only elements on the game that I have found so far, that you can’t simply click a mouse on.
Yes you HAVE to press escape and you have to press it again if you are mid-lanes and want to get back to your lanes.
But – Banners in Ruin is Early Access
Monte Bearo have said that there will be a lot more going on at the games release. What they have right now though is engaging enough to keep me playing. I am not going to be surprised if I end up with 130 hours on the game like I have Monster Train.
It is not a perfect game. Indeed if you play Pincer without having an ally in your gang an error message pops up for example. Banners of Ruin is already massively addictive though. The thing is I am playing it during times when I do not have the motivation to stream. That has to count for something!
You can buy Banners in Ruin right now on the Steam store, follow Banners of Ruin on Twitter
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