Gaming Mount & Blade: Warband Review

Sally forth! Man the catapult! We're laying siege to the castle in Taleworld's new expandalone to Mount & Blade, which adds great new multiplayer and singleplayer options, plus a graphical upgrade. Is Mount & Blade finally out of the dark ages? Find out within!

http://www.bit-tech.net/gaming/pc/2010/04/03/mount-blade-warband-review/1

 

I watched my brother play the first one and it just seemed very clunky and unimaginative, but i was actually unaware that it was supposed to be a sim.

 

I will more than likely be getting this. I Just have too many games atm to play! I loved the combat in the first one, clunky though it was. Once you get used to it though, the feeling of satisfaction when you land that killing blow after you'd been planning it for ages was unparalleled.

The only thing that made me stop playing the original, was the fact that I couldn't complete it. You can't kill enemy lords, you have to chase after them all over the map, then lock 'em up in one of you're dungeons. Then there was always a chance they'd escape, and you'd back to square one again. I would have preferred it if you could take over the entire map Total War style.

Still the very thought of going head to head with human players in this game is making me salivate.

 

The graphics and presentation look atrocious, which doesn't reflect well on the rest of the game. I think I'll pass.

/I'll get my coat

 

It could also do with a bit more RPG magic. A few story lines and quests that aren't so standard. Additionally, making improvements on the towns/castles you own, you should see these happen when you visit the town centre/caste courtyard.

Still, it feels like OFP for the medieval ages.

 

Please let the next Mount & Blade be on CryEngine 2...that I would buy in a second.

 

CE3 is better.

 

Like Joe says, they didn't make the first game easy to like. There really was so much to like though.

I found the large scale combat to be immensely fun once I'd figured out the timing of attacks and defending moves. It is however one of the ugliest current games you can find and there isn't really an excuse for it. Especially as they are charging full price. Might have to wait for a steam weekend deal or something on this one.

 

The big thing with Mount and Blade: Warband which cannot really be taken into account when scoring it is the mod community. The original Mount and Blade was (and Warband still is really) an indy game with a tiny development team and it was always intended that the community would take the available tools and build upon the basics of the game because the devs just plain didn't have the resources. If your experiences of Mount and Blade only included the 'Native' module then you hugely missed out.

Warband is bound to go the same way and that's why what seem like slight changes are actually very significant. For example there's now the ability to change the mod on a weapon you're using, so you can hit somebody with your throwing axe or javelin rather than throw it, and this provides a wide range of options for people making their own modules above and beyond the native one. The improved tactical interface as well is a big step up. No more watching your horse archers charge in with the knights, you can group soldiers up into separate units. This all bodes well for the new mods.

For me though the simple thing that always has me coming back to Mount and Blade (and now Warband) is the combat. It's absolutely amazing and unique in gaming. There have been massed battle games before, like Dynasty Warriors and 99 Nights, and they are feeble by comparison, absolutely feeble, there have been single character RPGs like The Witcher and Oblivion and Gothic, again, by comparison they are feeble. Only games like Rune, Sword of Darkness and maybe Jedi Knight deliver melee combat systems that are even in the same ballpark, but can they deliver it while you're commanding your hundreds of soldiers to storm the walls of a city? Can they let you fight on horseback? Can they hell.

 

^^

Just like Oblivion, missing out on the mods meant missing out on half the content. Sword of Damocles was a personal highlight. The combat is incredible and the game addictive but I really think they ask too much by charging anything over about £15 for this expandalone game.

 

I bought Mount and Blade for a song, so I didn't begrudge the price tag on this one. When it comes to value for a game I just break it down to the simple question of whether I've been entertained or not, and for how long, and on that scale it's pretty good. Both the single player and multiplayer offer something completely different and both are great in their own right.

 

Someone should make a medieval mmo without elves, with players as a part of rival Houses, like A Song of Ice and Fire.

 

I thought bit was a modding site at one time? Mount and Blade was a little rough around the edges when I first installed it, after I learned that the devs made it so tweakable I adjusted the gameplay more to my liking. Just about every complaint I had I was able to edit out of the game, I installed some hi-res packs to pretty it up to Oblivion standards too. You need to think about what your changing and how it will affect your game, you don't want to make it too easy and kill all the fun. Check their forums for mods and expansions.

 

As soon as someone mentions sim, most games are already a flop.
Look at Arma 2 for example, brilliant game but the areas it fails at are the parts are were it attempts to hard to be a sim.
Along with awful controls.

 

I've got to disagree, a bit. I thought the original Mount&Blade was VERY easy to like. As bad as I was at the combat - and I'm still terrible - it was nevertheless great fun. And this is the first game I've ever played that got horseback-riding right.

I have no interest in multiplay, and I'm disappointed that they didn't focus on building a more realistic world. I don't want a story. I want to create my OWN story through my choices in playing the game. But I was blown away by the first game, and I'll probably end up getting Warbands anyway. It's just too remarkable a game to skip even a slight improvement.

 

There's quite a bit of extra depth to the single player campaign but it's the sort of thing you'd need to have to have avidly played the first game right before playing Warband to notice. The relations between nations and individuals are more complex as are trade routes and things of that sort. I've heard they are holding off on releasing the full set of module tools though until the game is squared away properly, but when it is then the happy times will begin in earnest.

 

Module tools are out. Let the porting commence.