Switch

Banner of the Maid has been my constant gaming companion over the past several weeks. In short, Banner of the Maid takes place in an alternate fantasy version of the French Revolution. Napoleon has fended off a British incursion and is now in Italy fighting against an Austrian invasion. Almost all the important NPCs existed in our reality, but in the game reality, there are the Maids – heroes imbued with divine powers whose powers arise when France needs them. The first, most famous Maid was Jean D’Arc. With France consumed by revolution, new maids have arisen. ...

Queen Antoinette, one of the famed Maids of France, was no longer able to hold back the tides of populism in Revolutionary France. While Pauline Bonaparte, with the help of her brother Napoleon, struggled to free Italy from the horrors of an Austrian invasion, things were falling apart back home. Welcome to the post-Revolutionary world. The Monarchist faction, led by the remaining nobles in exile and General Rose, have taken to the hills and have formed an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” relationship with the Austrian invaders. Pauline’s war has expanded now to two fronts. ...

My opinion of this French Revolution-themed visual novel/tactical strategy game keeps rising as I work my way through the campaign. Once you get past the fact that the main army commanders are all teenage girls, there’s a decent story there, and the battles are just over the top. The current campaign has us coming to the rescue of one of our artillery generals who found herself surrounded behind enemy lines. The smart thing to do would have been to withdraw and cut our losses; instead, our protagonist, headstrong Pauline Bonaparte, chose to perform a daring rescue. ...

I was a little frustrated the last time I played Banner of the Maid, the tactical RPG for the Switch (et al) about a fantasy retelling of the French Revolution. I hadn’t leveled my characters evenly and it became clear I was never going to be able to beat a certain fight as I had no opportunities to grind my poor performers to higher levels. The other issue that really killed my interest in the game was not being able to take screen shots. Not in the prologue, not in the cut scenes, not ever. The capture button, when pressed, displayed a little box on the screen saying that screen captures were disabled. ...

I was initially a little unsure about playing Banner of the Maid. It has a lot of things in it that I like – deeply tactical gameplay a la Final Fantasy Tactics and Fire Emblem Houses. It’s set in a sort of alternate French Revolution era which isn’t all that familiar to me, though I’m pretty sure Napoleon didn’t have a little sister as one of his generals. But why wouldn’t he? She is, after all, a Maid, a hero that, like* *Jeanne d’Arc, the Maid of Orléans, would rise to save France from her martial ambitions. She and her fellow Maids will command the revolutionary forces throughout their European conquest. ...

I’m always looking for a good F2P game to play for awhile. I never stay with them for long. They tend to follow a similar pattern of providing a lot of enjoyable, entirely free game before essentially locking you out of playing the game as much as you’d like unless you start paying money. That’s usually when I uninstall. Some F2P games, like Final Fantasy Brave Exvius and Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms were enough fun that I spent some money on them (in the case of FFBE, a lot of money over the couple years I played). I don’t mind supporting F2P games I enjoy – their developers need money, too. I just mind when the cash grab becomes a real blocker to play. ...

I apologize for the brief news on Crowfall. I’d meant to get deeper into the PvE, but while I was building up my kingdom in the creative mode, the test server came down and I moved on to other things. It’s been years since Chinese publishers ChangYou took over the Shadowbane IP, and eight or so since they released plans to relaunch it. Now, here in 2020, it looks like they are finally really relaunching the famed empire building, PvP MMO. Shadowbane was notable for the huge number of beast races available for play, as well as the EVE-like way armies could gather to siege or defend player-created cities. ...

The 3D printed characters should look a lot like this. Hero Forge sent today the receipt for yesterday’s order for the printed Octopath Traveler minatures. The lighting is a lot flatter than it is in the modeler, and I expect this will look more like the printed result than the modeler. Kind of that grainy feel I’ve seen in sintered pieces I’ve ordered from Shapeways before. They’ll be done in June sometime…