Northern Saga is a Promising RPG

Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen is my favorite game on the SNES. I’ve loved it ever since I first played it on an emulator back in the mid 1990s. At that time, there wasn’t really another game like it.

A few years ago, Unicorn Overlord was released. It did a great job of capturing what I loved about Ogre Battle. It wasn’t perfect, but I had a lot of fun with it. I have no idea how popular it was, or if we’ll get a sequel to it.

That’s okay, though. When the larger studios move on from a genre, we get indie games. In this case, a game called Northern Saga. The game doesn’t have a demo yet, and I’m not sure where it is in development. What I can see looks pretty good.

Northern Saga looks good

The graphics in Northern Saga look pretty good. From what is shown on the Steam page and Reddit, I like what is there. It also seems like the developers are sticking close to what is in Ogre Battle.

The pixel art looks pretty good. This is being made by a small team, so I’m a little forgiving. I’m not sure what stage of development they’re in at the moment, which means it can only get better from here.

From what I can see, it doesn’t look like there are magical attacks in the game yet. There are a few monster sprites, so that is promising. The world map looks great, but the sprites don’t look as good as those in the SNES or PS1 versions of Ogre Battle.

It will be fun to watch how this game improves and what is added. I like what I see from the graphics so far. I couldn’t find a video of the gameplay, so I can’t really comment on the attack animations.

What we know about Northern Saga

There isn’t much information on Northern Saga at this time. The Steam Page makes several promises, but that is about it. The story, setting, and characters aren’t known at this time.

What we do know is that “the northern territories are on the brink of collapse.” What that means, why it is happening, and who the main characters are isn’t explained just yet. One of them is named Una, so that’s fun. The developers most likely know these things, and I can only assume they want to avoid spoilers.

This is a dark fantasy world, and your choices will matter. How this is gauged isn’t known. Ogre Battle has a reputation gauge, but I don’t see one in the screenshots. At this point, I haven’t come across the information.

There is a lot of talk about the gameplay, and it sounds like it will be similar to Ogre Battle. The way they describe it, and how it looks in the screenshots, is getting me excited. Being able to customize characters and control how they progress is cool.

Northern Saga looks close to what I want from an indie version of Ogre Battle and Unicorn Overlord. There is enough here for me to wishlist this game. I really like what they’ve done so far.

Wrap Up

I’m glad that games like this are still being made. While Ogre Battle is always going to be my favorite, having more games in this style is always a good thing. Unicorn Overlord was awesome, but it has been a while since that game was released.

With how little information is available for Northern Saga, I’ll have to update this. Right now, we don’t have a demo or even a release date. That tells me things are in the early stages of the game. Once there is a demo, I’ll definitely try it. Learning more about the game’s world and the plot will be fun.  

Stuff like this is why I like indie games more than the big budget releases. There are so many of them, and I can normally find something that is closer to what I want from a video game. They tend to have good stories, nostalgic gameplay, and graphics that tend to look better to me. It makes me feel like I’m playing something that the developers really cared about.

If you liked this post, check out my other posts about RPGs. Such as Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen or Unicorn Overlord.