Bannermen (PC) Review

Bannermen is rough around the edges, and that is being generous. It's not unclear what the developer was going for, as this game clearly set out to be a clone of the early '00s Warcraft III; a title that was a huge success, with different races, heroes, and an expansive "user map settings" (which consequently spawned DOTA); a title that set a very high bar for games. Bannermen, by contrast, feels like a prequel of sorts.

There is only one race in the whole game, and only three heroes to pick from. There are around 10 total units in the entire game, and every player only has these. The units are in a typical tier system, and as a result there is little strategy or customization. Spending time with both the campaign and multiplayer both had their problems. The campaign starts out with a tournament that the difficulty really is a sight to be seen. The amount of micro, cheap tactics, and outright luck that is needed to win the first campaign mission was a very, very bad decision to try to welcome new players.

After spending at least two hours replaying one luck-based level, and eventually making it somehow to the final section of the level, it crashed. There were a slew of bugs encountered as well. The two most obvious were trying to mouse/map scroll and when going downwards the camera would convulse up and down for a few seconds before eventually moving downwards.

The other notable issue is a very buggy AI where units will randomly stand around and get attacked without moving or responding. Playing a few multiplayer matches might have been interesting, but each time a game was started, the program would kick you out. Even when a match would not immediately crash, lag and it always eventually crashed which ruined this part of the game as well.

Bannermen tries to differentiate itself by the use of "environmental magic;" a type of King-of-the-Hill aspect on the map, that by controlling the area gives a powerful spell. This can be things like a lightning storm, snow, fire and so on. The idea is pretty cool. Unfortunately, this is about the only novel thing in here.

Spending several hours with the game became more frustrating as time went on. The camera glitch was ever present, clear balance issues with units, and just frequent crashes made the whole experience one that made it worse the longer the game was played. Other aspects like the graphics simply not being good, the game play highly simplistic, and just simply little depth made it hard to want to continue any further.