The first time I heard about Ash of Gods: Redemption was back when I used to post on CD Projekt RED’s forums; a thread about a fan-pushed unofficial The Witcher soundtrack that fell through eventually turned into series co-composer Adam Skorupa talking about how he and Krzysztof Wierzynkiewicz were reuniting to work on the music for a new game called Ash of Gods. The Banner Saga’s influence on the project was undeniable even back then, but I had hope that it’d succeed where that game failed. Of course, some people like The Banner Saga, but turn-based strategy is something I have particularly high standards for, and the first game simply didn’t meet them (and I ignored the rest of the series after that as a result). The writing was incoherent and jumped around too much to possibly allow attachments to anyone, the story didn’t resolve, and entire gameplay systems were frustratingly arbitrary or otherwise opaque. While the lack of resolution is something Ash of Gods may address, the other problems are all here. In fact, this is basically a Banner Saga fan game, so caught up in admiration for it that it fails to address any of its issues.

The music’s good, even if nothing else is

The gameplay basically boils down to this: you have a conversation where a bunch of names you have no way of being familiar with are thrown around at you, make a couple choices that may or may not be important (and even the ones with a this-is-an-important-choice indicator seem so minor that the word “important” is very possibly being stretched like Gumby on a stretching rack), then jump into combat. Just like in The Banner Saga, there are two separate pools everyone has that have to be managed and considered. Instead of armor and health, though, Ash of Gods goes with health and energy. The difference is noticeable; whereas you had to whittle down armor before you could realistically do damage in Banner Saga, you can directly damage health here. If you choose to damage energy instead, however, attacking it once depleted causes attacks to do double health damage. That’s kind of interesting, and I also appreciate health apparently not factoring into attack strength (though some attacks damage health, so there’s some balancing going on).

That’s the good news. The bad news is that characters block each other, and that’s really, really stupid. Especially since you can choose the order in which characters attack, but they can’t be used again until everyone else has also acted; you and your opponent take turns moving characters, so having lots of characters can mean leaving a couple of them stranded and defenseless because you need a bunch of turns to use everyone before they get refreshed. Having a stranded character blocking your way to an enemy often leaves characters to stand around impotently, unable to actually do anything, and it feels poorly designed to effectively give the enemy multiple turns in a row because the mechanics are clunky like this.

You’d think that the game would strive to minimize characters blocking each other to keep the gameplay from becoming a tedious slog, but it actually embraces it. The map in the encounter above is only two squares wide, with the predictable result that characters lacking ranged attacks are left with nothing to do but to move aimlessly so that used characters can regain the ability to act. The whole thing is just bad.

Familiar sins

It’s been four years since I played through The Banner Saga, and yet I instantly recognized one of the things I hated about it that was implemented here. It’s that braindead turn order thing; since you and your opponent are constantly trading off turns, whoever has the smaller group is given an instant advantage because they’re able to use their strong characters more often. You can see that in the video above, which happens when the game gets bored with one group and randomly throws you to a different place in order to bombard you with a different series of names you have no way of latching onto. Eventually you’re given control of a single character and thrown into combat against 9 enemies, and it’s barely a fight. For every weak guard who moves, your one character can attack again, and that means that he can wail on the “boss” of this fight without penalty. It’s turn-based without strategy.

[Click here to go to Ash of Gods: Redemption log #2]

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