Banner of the Maid doesn’t want me to sleep.

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’ll give them that. It’s the premise.

I’m more reluctant to give them the Maid’s uniforms, which tend to be poorly fitted and very revealing. But that’s okay, I guess. It’s a Chinese game, after all.

That’s something that wouldn’t ordinarily bother me, because a game is a game, no matter where it’s from. It’s that all the characters speak Mandarin. (I assume, I can’t actually tell the difference between Mandarin and Cantonese, but I can tell you it is not French, Japanese, German or English…)

Two more things. The first is kind of trivial, but, on the Nintendo Switch version at least, you cannot take screenshots. I have to actually take pictures of the screen with my phone.

If I’d known that I couldn’t take screen shots to begin with, I’d have bought the Steam version. I just kinda want to play games on the Switch when I can. It’s not a deal breaker.

The thing that really bugs me is that, so far at least, there’s been no way to grind out missions. My strategy in most other tactical games is to just lean deep into the grind to make sure I am well-prepared for all challenges. Due to a loading tip that I took too literally — focus on the protagonist’s experience — most of my other units are underleveled for the challenges.

I’ll probably have to restart.

Anyway. The game is split into two main activities. In the first, you circulate among the movers and shakers of Revolutionary Paris, building reputation with the various factions so that you can obtain help from them, or perhaps buy upgraded equipment. I chose to focus on helping the revolutionary Jacobins, but it might have been a better plan to spread my diplomatic efforts more evenly. The Royals might be down, but they are far from out.

You will make allies in this phase that can open up new missions and new factions to woo.

The plot of the game continues from the Parisian drawing room to the European battlefields, starting by fending off a British incursion and then moving through Austria and Italy to eventually meet up with Napoleon’s armies. (Still working on Italy, so not sure where the plot goes from there).

Your units, as you acquire them through the plot, include light and heavy infantry, light and heavy cavalry, artillery and military bands, the healers. Each battlefield comes with a certain number of win conditions, which typically entail wiping out the enemies while keeping key units alive, within a certain amount of turns. Scripted weather events can damped ammunition and make the ground muddy. Grass can slow movement. Reinforcements can pop up at random times.

After the first few battles, I’ve never been able to beat a map first time in “Officer” mode, which is the normal difficulty. (There’s also an easier “Story” mode and a harder mode to complete the set). Usually, success in the battlefield requires being prepared for the unexpected. The battles are puzzles, in a way — easy if you know the trick. One required using a certain special move with a certain unit at a certain time (they did give a hint at the start). Impossible without it. Easy with it.

That’s how every battle is. If you know the trick, and keep in mind all the special moves and “maid” powers and the standard rock-paper-scissors advantage/disadvantage wheel, then you will succeed. Maybe.

I’m stuck at a battle now where the enemy units are between levels five and seven. I have two level six units, and some are as low as level two. Since losing a battle means game over, there’s no slowly leveling units by working through a battle until success. And, there’s no going back to previous battles to grind. At this point, my only option is to restart.

This is my biggest problem with the game. It is possible to make the game unplayable past a certain point if you didn’t level your characters correctly, and you can’t increase your unit strength to a point where it’s easier to handle the entirely expected unexpected events.

Maybe it’s realistic to have everything be on the line for every battle?

At this point, I restart, quit, or make the irreversible decision to drop down to “Story” mode and just fast forward through the rest of the game.

I haven’t decided which I’ll do.