Ash of Gods: The Way Review (PC)

I admit, I’m a big fan of the Banner Saga series and I’m sad that it ended after three games. After learning that AurumDust plans to release another Ash of Gods game, a turn-based strategy series that has a lot in common with The Banner Saga, I was anxious to see where they’re going with their franchise.

After playing through Ash of Gods: The Way once, I’m left with mixed feelings. Ash of Gods: The Way is more of a Slay the Spire meets The Banner Sage rather than just a twin of the latter. The deckbuilding mechanics replaces the resource management system from the first game, so you’ll just have to worry about how to get money and ability points to upgrade your decks.

The deckbuilding mechanics sit at the core of the game’s combat. Although battles are still fought on grid maps in turn-based mode, you now have clear objectives and the units you’ll use are just simple cards with no true value outside fights. There are no story characters fighting in the arenas this time around, so it’s impossible to get attached to anything other than those you meet in between fights.

In Ash of Gods: The Way, you play as Finn, the young ward of the Chief of Intelligence. You are tasked with an important mission that involves infiltrating the neighboring country who threatens to attack. “The Way” is by disguising himself as a Frisian aristocrat and fight in their bloody tournaments.

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Accompanied by other characters important to the story, Finn must first prove to the king of his country that he’s worthy to embark on such a dangerous journey. This takes the form of a staged tournament where Finn will face various challenges, just like he would in a Frisian tournament. The first area of the game is also where you’ll learn all the deckbuilding mechanics, the progression system and how to upgrade your cards and items.

In between story bits, you’ll fight more than a dozen scenarios, each with their own win conditions. You start with just one type of deck, which must contain 10 cards and 10 items. Typically, you can deploy one new unit on the battlefield and use one item each turn. However, there are many scenarios where you can deploy more than one unit per turn.

After beating every enemy hero in the first tournament, you can either challenge the champion or finish all the previous scenarios on a higher difficulty level to get even more rewards that will allow you to upgrade many of the cards in your deck. The progression system for the units in your deck is pretty simple. You win ability points after each fight, which can be used to upgrade your cards.

Units have two paths at their disposal, so it’s up to you to choose which one to take. It adds another layer of complexity to the combat, especially when you take into consideration the synergies between units, as well as units and items.

But it goes even deeper than this, as many times the battlefield is populated with various types of obstacles. Unlike typical turn-based strategy games, you can’t move your units on the battlefield in Ash of Gods: The Way. However, you can change lanes before the units move if you want to attack a certain unit or defend against one. I found (the hard way) that changing lanes at the right time or preventing one of my units from moving by putting it on the same path with an obstacle is key to success in this game.

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When you’re not fighting powerful enemies or obstacles, you fight … time. Many scenarios require you to finish the fight in a certain number of turns. On the bright side, you can always restart the scenario anytime during the fight. The problem is that the game registers each restart as a failure. I think this is somewhat brutal considering that you can only fail a scenario a certain number of times.

It’s one of the ways that the game lets you know that every fight is for real, and that each failure might have negative consequences in the future. After beating many of the scenarios on higher difficulty, it feels like these have been designed like puzzles that the player must solve. I don’t remember being able to brute force my way to victory in any of the more difficult battles, so it took me a few tries to figure out what deck is more suitable for the fight, as well as which units and items to use.

Even though you’ll spend most of the time fighting on a grid map, Ash of Gods: The Way benefits from a strong narrative. The characters you meet along the way have well-shaped personalities and the voice-acting is stellar. In between battles, Finn must make decisions that will lead to different outcomes later in the story.

It’s during these moments that the game brings up the charm that made The Banner Saga so loved by fans of the genre. It’s also what I liked most about Ash of Gods: The Way. Obviously, I can’t skip one of the strongest points of the game, the visuals.

Ash of Gods: The Way looks absolutely gorgeous. The art style, animations, and presentation are outstanding. Same goes for the soundtrack, which is subtle or very sharp when it needs to be. All these things work very well together to provide an incredible sensorial experience during battles.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion