Bannerman

Beautiful graphics and charming atmosphere and animation.. the game is chalk full of atmosphere. The soundtrack is also great!
Unfortunately, the combat is rough.. it doesn't feel very consistent. You'll basically never know where an enemy's attack animation is going to land (the game has directional blocking) until it's already hit you, so you just have to memorize each and every attack rather than identify the direction like you would in a real sword fight, but I got over that and *was* enjoying the combat until..
I fought the 2nd boss. To keep things spoiler-free (even though it's shown in the store screenshots), it fires projectiles at you while a bunch of minions constantly spawn and spam swing at you, constantly pushing you away from the boss itself. It's just too B.S. and frustrating, I basically gave up instantly, knowing I would't be able to stomach it. Maybe you can, but I just can't recommend this game as it might take you 2 hours just to get to that boss and you'd end up disappointed and unable to refund.
I'm looking forward to the developer's next game. If it's like this but more polished, it'll definitely be worth the buy.

This is a positive review with an Asterix: Bannerman is a interesting game “for what it is”.

What it is, is a pixel-side scroller with an interesting and at times frustrating fight-system. It takes a while to get into but then its something different. I found myself annoyed sometimes because I was under the impression that I know how to combat an enemy but it did simply not work because at that specific attempted I missed the entry or a beat an then it went downhill fast.

Otherwise, the atmosphere is great, I was impressed how they managed to convey emotions of dread, guilt and trauma with so little graphics and text. The story itself is, okay – interesting but not mind blowing. If you play it to the end, invest the time to get both endings: Its not much time and it’s a nice take.

All in all: It is a special kind of game. Definitely not for everyone – but well worth a try if you are open to the experience.

This game was a lot of fun. I thought the second to last real-life level was really hard--but besides that I had a lot fun and even that wasn't too bad. Easily my least favorite character is the big Roman Guard guy. Every other character was good or great. The music was also fantastic--In fact I've been listening to that sound track for like 5 years now even before I played the game(after I watched the also awesome devlog). And while the music is great, I thought the music actually did not often fit the setting--for example relaxing happy music while killing a boss. Still though, not a huge deal. All in all fun game and overall great atmosphere--I think my favorite level in terms of atmosphere was the bridge level, and the first village level. I wish we had more levels in natural settings.

The Gauntlet mode is also a lot of fun--no idea how someone got 3:48. I think I can get 4:30 max

Thanks for the game--excited for your next.

Oh, and if only there was a multiplayer. I would love to duel someone to test my skill

El juego está bueno, los thumbs down son de gente que no aprendió a jugar, y no entendió que el jueguito no es un mindless hack 'n slash.

El estilo de arte está muy agradable, full pixelart todo, a veces no tan pixel perfect pero eso le da otro toque que no suelo ver en los pixel art de siempre.

Las animaciones son muy realistas y precisas, se nota que los devs saben de HEMA o swordfighting histórico, y eso me gustó un montón, muy lindo detalle que fue lo principal que me hizo conseguir este juego.

La historia está okay, se entiende lo suficientemente aunque creí que iba a abarcar un poco más acerca de la psicología del personaje. Da pantallazos de lo que sucede, pero no hay un desenlace que se sienta como que todo el indicio de la caida en la locura tuviera sentido.
El hidden achievement me gustaría que el juego haya sido más claro al principio de que esa opción existía.

Dicho esto, terminé el juego, hunteé los achievements, probé el Gauntlet y no me llamó la atención ni tiene logros relacionados, pero aun asi digo que el juego no vale 2 runs, con una run es suficiente.

I did not at all find the imprecise "skill-based combat" engaging. Clearly a story is meant to be told in this, and I feel it certainly would interest a certain sort of player, but by the time I was half-way through with the game I was tired of it, and the end boss did not compel me to continue dealing with it, especially when compared to other fights of the game. I did beat the game, I don't feel the "challenge" of this game to be a rewarding enough one though what with the slow, sluggishness of *every* action to choose the combat ending of the game. Bannerman did however give me a sense of what to avoid in games similar going forward for myself, but I would not call that a reason to recommend it.
For the sort inclined to watch games played, I think this would probably be a better game to watch than to play...I think, and *if* you inclined to purchase: always on sale or free.

There it´s a lot to like about this game. "Soul like combat" (as much as a 2d scroller allows), good graphics (except for the portraits that are awful) and a very atmospheric feel that pull you in to a very grim, hopeless world. It´s really worth it.

This game really threw me for a loop with the story, good stuff. Game mechanics feel great once you get the hang of it, although I would recommend a controller. All the opponents are difficult but every battle feels rewarding, and ultimately if you play your cards right you can beat them.

Challenging at the start, satisfying once you learn your enemies, timing, and placement. Not recommended for people who lack patience and preserverance.

The concept, the setting, the art and the music are truly great. The developer must be hugely talented and genuinely fond of his game.

The swordfight is exciting and challenging but feels clunky at times if a keyboard is being used. Much to my disappointment, Bannerman seems to have been aimed largely at gamepad devotees.

What made me give this game the thumbs down is a complete absence of a save/load option and those annoying level restarts. Are you serious? You need to exit the game and go about your chores or you lose a fight, and when you launch the game again and press continue, you have to start afresh and get through the whole level again. If you haven't got a job, have got plenty of free time and don't find it dull to play the same level several times in a row, Bannerman might be a good choice for you. However, I consider the absence of save/load, which was done on purpose, unacceptable.

Still, it's a unique game, and it's very rare to come across such a game nowadays.

very challenging medieval swordfightery game

really great pixel art with an MS-DOS vibe

story and atmosphere are dark and grim

the soundtrack has that classic medieval tavern music feeling

overall, really enjoyed it and glad that I finally beat it. the final boss was rather tricky.

Bannerman is a pretty dark, 2D side-scrolling, souls-lite styled game, set in a medieval world. You play as a Bannerman (shock), AKA a Standard-bearer, venturing through the harsh, bleak world to reclaim the banner you lost in battle. That’s for the main game, anyway. There’s also a “Gauntlet” mode, which is more like an arena battle, facing you against multiple different enemies, one after the other. There’s a Steam leaderboard accompanying this mode to see who can clear the Gauntlet in the fastest time (I’m waaaay down near bottom of the board).

One of the main things that attracted me to Bannerman to begin with was the graphical style. Fortunately, I wasn’t disappointed when it came to playing. The graphics were well suited to creating the dark, depressing settings that persisted throughout the game. The music, created with various folk instruments, was also well suited in portraying the gloomy atmosphere as you progress on your quest.

The Bannerman story was pretty simple, but at the same time, it didn’t need to be anything complex for this kind or length of game. It’s broken down into days, which you can think of as levels or chapters. You get the chance to speak to a few different characters throughout the game, several of which are optional interactions, but I would recommend talking to them. It’s worth it for the few seconds of reading it takes. There is a small amount of exploration involved, along with very basic puzzles (generally involving levers), but it’s nothing to get too excited about if that’s what you’re looking for in a game. You can also find new perks on your adventures, each time being given an option between two improvements, such as extra arrows for the bow or better durability on the shield. Again, nothing to get too excited about.

Bannerman is a pretty slow-paced and somewhat difficult game, relying on well-timed attacks, blocks, and dodges to defeat your enemies. Different enemies will require different tactics to defeat, be it rushing them, changing stances, drawing back a little, etc. While the majority of battles are essentially duels, there are a few that pitch you against a couple of enemies at the same time (generally melee and ranged), creating a greater challenge. At the end of some of the levels you’ll encounter bosses for even more of a challenge. You’ll occasionally find temporary equipment in the form of armour, bow and arrows, and a shield, to assist you in upcoming battles too. Armour is always useful, at least if you’re a bad as I am, but the usefulness of the bow and shield depends highly on the enemies you’re against, and how well you decide your weapons.

I’m not a big fan of Souls-like/lite games, mainly because I don’t enjoy doing the same thing over and over again. I’m a terrible gamer though, which makes this inevitable. Fortunately, Bannerman has a form of checkpoint system, despite it being an incredibly annoying one. I understand they’re trying to make the game seem more difficult, but if you die against the boss at the end of the level, you start the entire level again. There is a checkpoint system if you unlock it prior to the boss, but it’s a simple shortcut from the beginning of the level to the end and really serves little purpose other than to have you spend more time in the game for no apparent reason, and when the movements are so slow (particularly going through doorways) it starts to detract from the rest of the game. It goes from challenging to boring.

I enjoyed Bannerman for the most part, and the battles, while somewhat challenging, were pretty fun to overcome. The story, graphics, and music all complemented one another really well, and the dark, miserable setting was great (miserable is always great!). There are some big annoyances with slow actions and poorly placed checkpoints, but I still enjoyed playing it!

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Another World + Dark Souls = This Game

Bannerman is a fantastic quick experience for every fan of Souls-like games. The Combat system make it easy to understand, perfect to control and very dificult to master; It a really good Challenge.

The Story its pretty cool, showing in a subtle, and sometimes vague way , the struggles and questioning of war. I specially like the way they involved the nigthmares of the Main character in the gameplay; again, in a vague way, but i think it shows in a truthfull way how some dreams dont have a point or logic; whereever the important of them are the mood they show to the player.

I really like the visual sof this game; i think they did a wonderfull job making very cinematic and apreaciatives scenes in the game; what goes very well with the slow passing experience, which give you a opportunity to stop and enjoy what is in your screen. (The Start sequense of the game and the credits are very good examples)

2 bad point i have for this game:
-i think the little puzzles that appear in some levels are kind of easy, and not vey entertaining.
-i think they dont use enough their OST (a lot of full silence areas). i think this one is awesome and i will love to hear it more through the levels

Dispite this, a Great Game. (:

Bannerman is a bizarre little game that ultimately annoyed me.

I'm going to address the elephant in the room first. Bannerman is a game about "skill-based combat inspired by historical swordsmanship" with very little actual swordsmanship in it. There is a lot of walking to the right; even more back-tracking to find switches, some re-walking to the right after death and a hell of a lot of getting shot by archers. Relatively there's not a lot of sword fighting.

Let's break the above down a bit; I'll get to the archers later. Bannerman is a game about flipping switches until the correct sequence is found to open a gate; allowing the titular bannerman to proceed (to the right). It's not always clear what a switch does so there is quite a lot of running around trying to work out what changed after a switch is pulled.

The bannerman runs slowly; and keys don't register as pressed after events. This makes running around a lot more tedious than it should be. The bannerman also turns slowly and can only enter doors when facing to the right. He is - quite litterally - not an ambi-turner and will swing through a full 270 degrees to enter a door when facing left.

Couple slow door-enter animations with similar corridors and tunnels and then couple all of that with with back-tracking and re-doing stages and Bannerman becomes quite tedious. Watch the gameplay video though, notice it doesn't show any of the jarring animations or tedium. I was promised swordfighting! Where is the swordfighting?

The combat, again the gameplay video doesn't honestly portray the combat. It's mostly blocking and walking backwards until you're only facing off against a single enemy; then attacking. There is high stance, low stance, heavy attack and light attack. I only used heavy attack on the easy early enemies because later on it will leave you open to getting stabbed.

Match your stance to the enemies when blocking and do the opposite when attacking. After everything that's been said: well, it's just not particularly challenging. It's not Fighting Warrior 1985 levels of bad but 30-something years later I expected more.

The story and setting, supposedly Bannerman's other selling points are... well....the story is bad. It reads like it's been written by someone with no background in medieval history whatsoever. The bannerman, a standard bearer in reallity, loses his banner to his shame and the game is his epic quest to find it again. Now, a bannerman is a vasal, it's not someone who holds a banner so already the title of the game is incorrect.

Secondly the standard bearer - who should have been protected by the rest of the squad - engages in single combat with an armoured knight and is beaten. Hardly surprising. However his defeat brings him great shame and his Lord tells him he is useless. And thus begins the Bannerman's epic quest to retieve his Lord's lost standard.

Seriously, who wrote this?

And that's before we start looking at the game's medieval setting. The Greek statues, the Easter Island heads the 1800s architecture. The endless tunnels with levers. It all just somehow fails to give an authentic feel to things. I'm almost tempted to say this is an asset flip. It feels like it but I don't think it is. The art style is consitent but the setting is why I called the game bizzare, it really is a strange mismatch of eras.

Back to the swordfighting, the core mechanic. You'll fight badies with polearms; they don't appear to recoil when blocked and can attack again immiediately. You'll fight archers who'll release arrows that can only be dodged with the run button. Archer's who fire arrows that travel to their target instantaneously. And don't try and factor travel time into dodging arrows; just pretend everything is fire point blank.

Archers who seem to have a slight variance in their draw times making dodging as much fun as playing Russian roulette. And you'll be figting archers whilst facing off against other enemies. There's nothing like trying to synchronise and dodge two different and separate sources of damage at the same time. It would be unfairly difficult... if it wasn't easy to just back out of the archers range and then kill the melee fighter.

And then take a few arrows to the facing the archer alone anyway.

Did I mention the first boss is an archer who can teleport? It's that authentic medieval setting again. Straight to the back of the head.

Don't buy Bannerman. It's a confused mess of a game.

Were the game $5 I'd be more forgiving.

The backgrounds repeat often; the exact same flip a switch then run back to surface race right go down flip 2nd switch.
Now you can go back where you started.
He can only go up or downstairs in one direction so you have to maneuver side to side to get him to go anywhere.

The swordplay is okay.
Archers are way OP.
You can only crouch and it only works for a fraction of a time, a second or two before Bannerman just stands up and gets shot.

So far a huge meh.

This is actually two games packaged in one.

The first is Bannerman: Sword and Steel edition, where you duel various enemies throughout the land on your quest as the Bannerman. This is actually pretty fun, the combat is clever in a simple way. It's not perfect, some of the timing feels a bit weird to pick up so there's a bit more muscle memorization than I'd like, but I definitely recommend it if you liked Nidhogg and don't mind a slower pace.

The second is Bannerman: Knight's Errand edition, where you walk throughout the land on your quest as the Bannerman. At times, this feels like a glorified walking simulator, and even though the developer added some skipping mechanisms, you'll still find yourself walking, walking, and walking. I don't recommend this game, it's a bit unpolished with things like all the game actions (entering doors, grabbing items) forcing you to turn right before they start (it's only a few extra frames, but when you're doing things for the 99th time, it adds to the frustration). Some of the levels DO show promise, it has a good atmosphere, it's just cut short by its own repetition.

Since you get both games with this bundle, I do recommend it, but as a meta criticism of the bundle as a whole, you're expected to play both games included, so you do feel the flaws of the second game when trying to enjoy the first.

Great and challenging game. I loved the combat and the music is fantastic. I found out about this game through the creators youtube videos of the process that went into making the game.


Pros
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-Combat

-The combat was difficult but very rewarding when you start to take out enemies with out taking damage and dodging arrows perfectly. One thing I love about the combat is that it can be very punishing if you try to rush through it or are frustrated from a couple deaths. If you take a breath and relax and focus on what you are doing then some fights become much easier. There are some a few upgrades you can find as you play and you have 2 options when you find them and you can only choose one which lets you sort of create your play style.

-Music

-The music is very imersive and really sets the mood. I have actually got the version of the game that comes with the soundtrack and love it.

-Art/Animation

-The pixel art and rotoscope animation were great. I really liked the look and feel the rotoscope animations gave the game(He has a tutorial on how he does his rotoscope animations if you are interested).

-Story

-Some may feel the story itself is not that exciting but the way the story is presented and how the game transitions at certain points was really great.

Con
--------

My only con would be the checkpoint/shortcut loactions. There is only 1 per level and that is at the end of the level before the boss. You have to open a gate that once opened stays open even if you die. You then can go through the gate at the start of the level and skip straight to the end. I wish there would have been atleast one more mid way though the level at least for some of the longer levels.

A game that satisfies 2D combat styles that I've looked for, for a long time.

Many 2D games have a combat style that is simply just button mashing. Though sometimes this game can drive you to a button mashing madness which only leads you to a swift end. You must employ calculated strings of attacks and blocks, and dodges and retreats. Admittedly, it's not perfect, as there are patterns that the AI follows that you can take advantage of. But overall, I found the game pretty challenging, and I beat several levels with my heart pounding with only a shred of life left. The work and thought I had to put into beating the opponents made for very satisfying victories.

The art style for characters is very reminiscent of older classic games (Prince of Persia, Flashback) which I absolutely loved. The backgrounds were generally good, and I felt like the level designs were pretty good too.

Not a huge fan of the gore and strange darkness of it, but I suppose you could argue that it wasn't any prettier for kingdoms back in that time. The story was engaging enough to keep me going. I liked the perspective that it placed you in and the questions of who and what you were really fighting for.

I really appreciated the fairly linear nature of the game. I have several games that I have started but then abandoned because I'm just overwhelmed by all the little sidequests and adventures and I am left with no desire to do any of them.
Encountered a couple of bugs where I rarely my blocking wasn't working, but I only recall that happening twice through gameplay.

Well done for the combat system, nice story, and good amount of gameplay. Good job overall.

I liked the game at first, I thought it would be like a 2D Chivalry. It would have been awesome if there was some sort of arena, challenge, survival mode if all you wanna do is get good at the combat. The game gets boring really fast, at first I endured it thinking it was gonna get better. The story isn't captivating, its decent but not interesting. I feel likethey were trying too hard to be in-depth especially with that painfully long 5 minute "nightmare" level. Skills and technique upgrades are scattered throughout the map of that level, and because the game being hardcore linear you WILL find them. No quests, no side quest, no alternate mode, no multiplayer, no challenges only main story singleplayer. You will play this only once and that is it. Had potential but not anymore

A smart sword combat side scroller, made by someone who knows their stuff. This is not a mindless hack and slash adventure, but one which requires pateince to learn the mechanics based on historical techniques. They dudes who developed this really did their research and it shows. It has a cool retro art style and is a joy to play. Well done Armitage Games!

Awesome side scrolling combat adventure game.
Music really pulls you into the mood of the game.
Difficulty scale is reasonable and mistakes punished so you learn.

Overall good game!