Tactics

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. ...

The more I play Banner of the Maid, the more I’m enjoying it. The plot is picking up, with plenty of side quests that lean more into the Visual Novel side of the game. As an example: One side quest involved raising money by going to an auction house, buying items cheap, then selling them for a huge profit. Problem with that strategy is arranging with other bidders for them to bid low or abstain entirely to get the best price. Taking what you’ve learned about the various factions in the journey so far, you have to find allies who will help you – and avoid those who see through your scheme and plan to only give you the worst deals imaginable. ...

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. ...