Last updated on January 4th, 2026 at 03:54 am
Banner Saga – Strategy Game Review
Banner Saga is a Strategy/Roleplaying game from Stoic Studio, Inc., first launched in 2nd October 2014.
It’s rated 12+ and currently has 2,040+ ratings on the App Store.
What Makes Banner Saga Stand Out
Embark on your own epic journey in Banner Saga, the critically acclaimed tactical RPG where your strategic choices directly affect your personal story and the world around you.
Leave your home and strike out on a desperate journey to save your people. Lead your caravan across stunning environments and into war with enemy clans and vicious Drudge soldiers. Build relationships and make choices that will shape the future of your clan as you scramble to survive in this beautiful, bleak world.
Banner Saga Features:
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A unique fantasy realm inspired by Norse mythology – explore a grim world shaped by the legends of the Vikings. Uncover ancient lore and battle tooth and nail to carve out a new bastion in a world abandoned by the gods.
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Beautiful 2D rotoscope animation – immerse yourself in beautifully hand drawn combat sequences and animations, accompanied by an evocative score from Grammy-nominated composer Austin Wintory.
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Real choices with real consequences – every decision you make on the trail, in conversation and during combat has a meaningful effect on the outcome as your unique story unfolds.
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Over 25 playable characters with unique personalities – form relationships in and out of combat with a variety of characters from 7 different classes, each with unique abilities and upgrade options to fit your play style.
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Strategic combat with permanent repercussions – choose your warriors, form your strategy and strike. Adapt to a dynamic battlefield where your tactics determine who lives and who dies. Victory, defeat and even the permanent loss of a character depends on the choices you make.
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Winner of the Geekie Award for best Indie Video Game, 2014, Independent Games Festival Finalist for Excellence in Visual Art and Honorable mentions for Design and Audio.
Only your choices can guide your caravan through the harsh winter, past mystical enemies and brutal Viking clans. When the trail is uncertain, can you take the lead?
Download Banner Saga and begin your journey today.
NOTE: Banner Saga does NOT run on iPhone 4. iPhone 4S and more modern devices recommended.
This Strategy game offers engaging gameplay and regular updates for mobile players.
Player Feedback
As a newer release, Banner Saga is building its player community. Early feedback suggests .
Recent Updates & Development
Latest Update: 1st May 2017
Recent improvements include:
This app has been updated by Apple to display the Apple Watch app icon.
We've re-balanced the final chapter of the game. The final Bellower battle has been tuned to be more fair on Normal difficulty settings, and there are more opportunities for obtaining supplies and items in Chapter 6.
Banner Saga 1 has been updated to the latest version of the engine technology, and quite a bit of cleanup has happened under the hood. A few of the improvements seen in Banner Saga 2 have been incorporated into this build.
Added adjustable 'UI Scale' to help readability on smaller devices – go to device's Settings App and use the UI Scale slider.
Upgrade '+' sign shows up on hero icons in heroes tent when appropriate
Extended tooltips in battle
-on stat banner, buffs, and items.
-on hazards such as slag-and-burn, coals, etc…
Match Resolution:
-Consequences tab shows injured units
-Achievements tab shows new achievements
-Items tab shows newly acquired items
News Ticker on Start Screen
Injured units to not heal during travel, only when Resting in camp/village
Injured units' STR penalty now equals the number of days of injury remaining
Nid now starts at rank 2 when she joins the caravan
Increased loot drop chance for winning the second wave of a battles.
Varl that join the caravan after the Godstone in chapter 3 now have supplies.
Fix issue in Ludin/Vedrfell tutorial getting stuck if ludin has been upgraded
Fix issue preventing class achievements from unlocking
Fix typos
Fix issue causing some resume saves to get stuck when loading
Fix Backbiter Veteran enemy incorrectly using Dagr's appearance
Fix issue with Nid having a negative amount of stat points to spend
Fix Number of Varl in caravan does not increase despite varl choosing to join Iver when leaving Einartoft… now adds 23 varl to caravan
Fix Ubin's caravan does not add fighters or varl to your caravan when joining… now adds 15 fighters, 5 varl, and 40 supplies (rather than 30 supplies)
Added a slider setting for scaling the UI larger or smaller.
Disable the Quit Game button in options for the iOS builds.
Fixed an issue with the battle HUD elements so they scale up/down with other UI.
Added message for when players have iCloud disabled.
Fix for scaling of subtitles.
Update minimum iOS version to 9.0
Fix for Backbiter champion using Dagr's appearance.
Add 'Buy TBS 2' function to start page.
Changed the link for rating the app.
Fix bad quotation marks in Polish text.
Reduce max memory used by heraldry.
Set anim compression values to those used in saga 2. Should fix a bunch of memory-related crashes.
Download & Availability
Banner Saga is available through the official App Store for iOS devices.
Requirements: Requires iPhone 5s / iPad Air / iPad Air (Cellular) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina) / iPad Mini 2 (Retina, Cellular) / iPhone 6 / iPhone 6 Plus / iPad Air 2 / iPad Air 2 (Cellular) / iPad Mini 3 or later.
Compatible with iPhone and iPad devices.
Player Experience Highlights
Community Insight:
Everything about this game is incredible. If you love tactical rpgs and want to get roped into a story full of beautiful characters and plots, this is for you.
This gamejust hits all the right levels of entertaining storytelling, challenging difficulty, replay-ability, and phenomenal artwork. Well Done Banner Saga.
Played this game about 4 years ago during the pandemic. We couldnt put it down. The story telling and strategy is unmatched. We cant believe how brutal this game is but in a good way. Part of the drama is how unforgiving some of the choices you make are.
Its even better than we remember! Looking forward to part 2.
We do not normally write reviews, yet here we are. This game is absolutely brilliant for its genre. It is immersive, challenging, and worth every difficult decision you will have to make. It is very much worth your time. Be careful though, lives depend on your decisions.
This game has one of the best stories ever told to stand with your favorite band of characters its hard to explain it its just amazing Im very emotional right now.
The tactics elements are easy to learn but hard to master. There is sufficient depth there to warrant many replays of the storyline. Speaking of which wow! Very mature, thoughtfully written characters. We love the dark tone and the Nordic influences on world building. Also, the crazy deviations caused by your choices in the world only make replaying more appealing. Cant recommend this game (and series) enough. Really hope dev makes more games at some point.
A great title which follows an ever more mythic progression of viking lore. RuneQuest fans and D&D fans should not miss it.
Story was amazing, tactical fighting great. Made us realize the level of narrative possible on such a simple model because most games lack this type of depth.
Simply put the best RTS/RPG game out maybe on any platform.
Fun game but you need to finish the trilogy and give us #3 on mobile. Dont leave us hangin.
Fun game and beautiful art style.
The game exceeded all of our expectations.
Easily the most immersive mobile game Ive played. Settlement management, turn-based strategic combat, and most importantly rpg character development alongside a great story.
Please give us Banner Saga 3 on iOS.
Game has great animation and a fun (but dark) storyline. Wanted to highlight this app for being m1 Mac compatible which we highly appreciate.
TONS of hours of awesome gameplay. Best mobile game Ive ever played.
Entertaining as much as we might expect and never am until now in so far this stoic might expect. PVPs are rubbish, even more so free ones that make profits in game and utilize trashy people to inspire sales through malice driven madness. This game and the next are worth purchasing and following to build as it were a library of like compositions. Its a pity IOS and OS upgrades ruin collections of likewise admirable products. If Charles Dickens books became unreadable after two years what sort of society would exist now.
Fun Oregon trail choices with varying consequences. The combat is a bit of a challenge to learn but very fun and satisfying once you learn it. We almost go out of our way to start fights just to end them. The combat is not as unforgiving as other tactical games. Your units dont stay dead for the most part, they just sustain injuries that limit their damage output and health for a few days. The art work and music are awesome.
Probably our favourite game on iOS. On our 3rd playthrough. Just very sorry that it doesnt appear banner saga 3 will come to iOS. Tried to buy it on Steam but system so awful it wouldnt take our money and without a trace of Customer support ( and in any case far more inconvenient that a mobile device ).
An entire tier above any other game available on mobile. You know it when you play it. There will never be better. Just understand that at times it can be slow and to enjoy it you have to get into the writing and read the text. If you skip the dialogue/dont have patience, dont even try it.
Gorgeous artwork, excellent storyline, complex characters, and compelling game design are threads that weave a tapestry of profound experience. The darkness of humanity and civilization combat the better angels of our nature, usually between parties but often within individuals, including you, the player, who is forced to make difficult decisions that impact the game and your relationships within it. This combines with a unique system of resource management and combat mechanics that leave you wanting more. By the end of the game (which we played for at least 12 hours), you forget the somewhat steep price (for a mobile game) because the experience is well worth it. Stoic has gone above and beyond with this saga. We will be purchasing parts 2 (on iOS) and 3 (on PS4).
Just a beautiful game and story. Epic.
Played this on Xbox and loved the story, was super excited to have it on our phone. Worth every penny no issues with the UI at all. Awesome game.
The only way the game could be better is if it came to conclusion, but then we wouldnt have the second or third game so thats a double edge sword. Im just sad to see that Banner Saga 3 has yet to be released on the App Store. Whats the deal with that.
RPG and story and beautiful design. Cant ask for more, except for it to be longer.
We personally really liked this game alot. The main story is well thought out and very compelling we found ourselves wanting to find out more and more. The art work is beautiful and while sone what simple it really brings out the rustic feeling of the old world. Game play is intence on normal and hard, easy is a good way to learn the mechanics and rules of combat. One thing we really like was that every time we played the main story basicly stayed the same but the events on the road were always diffrent and very rewarding when you help someone and later on in game in a desprate situation that person you helped 40 days ago helps you and saves you. There are only 2 things we didnt really like but this is just our opinion. One thing was the game seemed to be over quickly but our first run took us about 10 hours. The 2nd thing was that the ending we wasnt thrilled about only because it left us wanting more n wishing we could exsplore more of the vast land before us. All in all great game good re-play value and well worth the 10$ we would highly recommend buying this game we enjoyed it alot and we hope you do too.
This game drips gorgeousness and love. It is a rare gem. Hopefully Stoic releases the entire trilogy on iOS.
For anyone who likes baldurs gate, shining force, divinity original sin or fire emblem games – this is an absolutely amazing game. Full of choices with real consequences, interesting characters, rpg elements (such as building out characters, skills and items), and fun, strategic combat. A true masterpiece. Worth every bit of a couple of Starbucks coffees ($10).
We really really liked this game. The storytelling is very tense as you go through the game deciding whats best for your people. The game keeps you guessing whether you just made the right move or not in a fantastic way. The art is beautiful and if you let yourself be immersed in the world, you will get a story unlike any other.
This game is hauntingly beautiful. Amazing. Buy it.
Just download and enjoy. The story. The fighting. The twist. The decisions. It make the game cut deep but its short enough to replay over and over. Only draw back on iOS is you have to be sure where you click. Thats it and well!!!!! Worth this game. Please please more.
Yall we cried at the end. Immersive world and narrative that made us look forward to every next fight and calculate our response to every challenge. As the DM for a D&D podcast we cant more highly recommend this game for inspiration for your D&D writing and gaming. Andrew ChasmQuest.
This game is an amazing experience.
We know, that Banner Saga releases on PC, originally, but we never have time for indie games. So, we decide to try it on mobile and it was great experience, thanks Stoic.
It is a good game, story reach, strategy part a bit shallow but good, worth trying.
This was one of the most rewarding RPG experiences we have had, ever, let alone on our iPad. The soundtrack is amazing. And the game manages to convey a deep, oppressive sense of darkness that perfectly mirrors the story the developers are telling. Ive played it through twice and loved it even more the second time. This is a must-play game.
Amazing. Beautiful art, intense, nail-biting RPG strategy and combat, and emotional, provocative story. Our only problem is that we cannot get the third installment on iOS right now and that is preventing us from continuing the story as we cannot get it on platforms that we dont have, like PlayStation, Xbox, or PC.
Just what we needed to play. Thoughtful and the strategy is engaging. What a gem.
Great characters. Great story telling. Moving. Gripping. And the combat system is strong as well.
Fun game with an even better story. However, during the battles on our iPhone XS Max the point of view will get locked into a single position after zooming in. This makes it impossible for us to complete that battle because we cant see half of our fighters / enemies. Really annoying when Im doing great and the screen gets stuck. Please fix and maybe add a feature for full screen? Will change to 5 s if glitch is corrected. UPDATE Have been playing on our iPad mini and its a much better experience. The screen doesnt get stuck in a fixed location. We were also surprised that our game continued where we left off on our iPhone.
You cant beat the story. You cant beat the graphics. You cant beat the music. All in all a great game. We have played it over 10 times. A++++.
This game has stunning artwork and a beautifully haunting soundtrack. This turn based strategy rpg has deep gameplay that cater to the players particular style. Our only lament is that it ended so soon. Perhaps it ended quickly because the game is so addicting and the story so engrossing.
Like a mix of Oregon Trail and an RPG. The story line was great, but lack of back drop info left us wondering what and where and why, but added to the mystery and made us feel more attachment to some of the characters.
Gameplay, art/design and sound are all excellent. The mythology and story behind the game is excellent as well. Im playing through for the second or third time now. Our new iPad doesnt want to play the games sound though, which is a letdown. This problem carried over to the version on our phone, so now Im resigned to playing through without music, dialogue or sound. Im looking forward to finishing 2 and 3 anyways.
This is great. Never played anything like it. Amazing art and story.
Very much worth it, great game in every aspect.
Difficult game with Perma death. Amazeballs.
The artwork is a absolutely stunning and the story is intricate and interactive. If youre a fan of any fire emblem style combat type game, banner saga puts its own unique twist to that style of gameplay. All in all we cant wait for Banner Saga 3 to come to Mobile. Hurry Please.
Cannot wait for part three to come out in the iPad.
User feedback from Apple App Store
App Details
- Version: 1.06
- Size: 1,937.20 MB
- iOS: 9.0 or later
- Languages: EN, FR, DE, PL, PT, RU, ES
- Content Advisory: Infrequent/Mild Horror/Fear Themes, Infrequent/Mild Cartoon or Fantasy Violence, Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor, Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes, Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References
- Developer: [Stoic Studio, Inc.]()
Last updated: 1st May 2017 | Genre: Strategy, Roleplaying | Developer: Stoic Studio, Inc.