Banner of the Maid

Banner of the Maid is an excellent strategy RPG that is hindered slightly by its sexualization of women.

What’s interesting about Banner of the Maid is that it’s nothing you would expect at first. It is a game with cute anime-style characters, voiced in Chinese, subtitled in English, and based on the historical events that took place around the French Revolution in the late 18th to early 19th century. While it feels like none of these traits have anything in common with one another, it actually works well once you get past the initial surprise. It is a story about what could have happened instead, and presents an alternate timeline to a fascinating time. Understandably not everyone may be familia...

Fans of tactics games like Final Fantasy Tactics, the Fire Emblem series and the recent Langrisser remakes on the Switch should be pretty familiar with what to expect from a game like this one. For the unintiated, Banner of the Maid is a turn-based tactics game that heavily borrows gameplay elements from these aforementioned titles, and puts them in an interesting time era.

It's clear that the developers of Banner of the Maid have a lot of love for the historical French period they've adapted in this game. Unfortunately, the gorgeous character art and intricate story is hampered by a rough localization and awkward gameplay systems. The intriguing characters are hard to follow thanks to awkwardly translated dialogue, while the upgrade and faction mechanics of the game only serve to bloat the experience. Banner of the Maid has plenty of solid ideas, but only a few of them truly shine through.