Mount & Blade

Man this game is so packed full of stuff to do in a living breathing world, there's no real story other than what unfolds as you play and as you go through the game it changes, you start on your own and over time you can build up an army, then later you can choose to join with one of the existing kingdoms or create your own. If you are finding it hard to survive as your own nation you can become a vassal which enfolds your land into the kingdom that you are the vassal of and you serve that king, you still rule your lands but not as much as before and if you take new land it isn't yours, you can ask for it but the king decides you gets it.

That is a really simplistic description of the game, it would just take too long to describe everything. It is quite a hard game you will likely find yourself being reduced to what you started with quite often if you aren't careful and god help you if you attack everyone you see. I challenged a lord to a duel for the hand of a lady and now I'm in a loveless marriage. You can own land in the cities but I've not been able to try that as I pissed the king off a bit by attacking a kingdom he was at peace with while I had sworn myself to him for 30 days or so. People in the city don't want to risk giving me land.

This game takes a lot of time to do anything so don't expect to complete it quickly and it's quite hard, the combat is realistic and stiff it can be frustrating but it's also rewarding and fun. This game makes you feel like a knight in the middle ages and you can do whatever you like (You can't kill lords or kings just take them captive).

Oh and everything is in flux so you can take a quest from a lord and then he moves to another castle or to fight somewhere and you have to track him down (Talking to other lords of the same kingdom will help you find them, but sometimes they don't know), he could even get taken prisoner and then you have to go and break him out, there are a few different ways to do that, sneak in and break him out, use the villages around the city or castle to create a distraction that is if the villagers like you or just besiege the city/castle and take the whole place, that way you will mostlikely get a prisoner of your own as well.

There's even an online mode, but I think that might be just battles not a co-op campaign.

The Fire and Sword expansion has very bad voice acting at the start, but thats only for the tutorial thankfully that stops with the tutorial, I wasn't listening too carefully but it sounded american and the game is seet in 17th century europe.

I'm about to piss off a Polish guy, he asked me to collect a 5000 (I'm just going to say gold as I can't remember what the currency is) gold, but I need the cash so I'm just going to keep the money. I'll make it up to him later (With my SWORD!) with flowers. I'll be able to buy land in a city and that will give me a weekly income which will help with the rest of the game, that is if you can do that in this version, I would think you can. I think he's only a minor lord so he shouldn't cause me too much trouble, need to make a note of his name though, I won't remember it and if I meet him of the field it could be bad for me.

Hmm not sure what I think about Fire and Sword, it's different from the other games and I'm not sure I like all on the changes. There are guns in this but they are basically useless, it takes about 30 seconds or more per shot because of reload time and they have really bad accuracy, of course they do massive damage. I usually only get one shot off at effective range before the combat turns to melee.

The towns are bigger but I just feel lost in them and I have to walk around on foot so getting anywhere in the town takes ages, don't let that put you off though if you press tab you can access everything that you can do in town so it's not like you are forced to walk around, I just like to sometimes for immersion. There are also invisible walls in towns now, before they were blocked off with carts etc.

Graphically the game is a bit better and there are some good changes, I think though there are as many negitives to this expansion as there are positives. I think I'll be playing Mount and Blade Warband more than I'll be playing Mount and Blade Fire and Sword.

Just get Oblivion and mod the hell out of it

Darkstone wrote:Just get Oblivion and mod the hell out of it

It's like Oblivion and the Total War games had a baby.

Gone back to Warband and very much enjoying it, there are a few bugs for example I did the requirements for a quest but it wouldn't let me had it in. But there are actually very few bugs at least compaired to Fire and Sword. In Fire and Sword NPC's kept thinking I had used the option to leave men behind to slow the enemy down so I can run away, but I had never used that option, I did use cheats though so it's possible the cheats I used messed that up. I'm playing 100% without cheats at the moment and I'm playing as a trader, there aren't exactly classes in the game but you do have back story options which give you different starting stats, after that you build yourself as you like. I'm rubbish in combat and just have to ride around taking pot shots with my crappy crossbow hoping that I hit something (Very rare that I do) will my men do all the work. I'm keeping myself looking like a merchant, I'm not going to outfit myself with heavy armour etc. I've bought enough property in cities that I can make myself a massive army if I liked and it would be paided for every week without me doing anything other than buying food for it. I've done enough trading and I'm not going to try and make myself into a Lord and hopefully get myself some land. I'm not going to be able to raise a big enough army to take a city on my own because I don't have enough leadership yet, so I'm going to have to serve a king and hope that he gives me a castle, I doubt I'll get a city he'll either give that to one of his good friends or himself, I could work on becoming friends with on though.

This game is all about freedom and options. I might play as an utter savage next time, I'm sure my butt will be kicked all over the place but it'll be interesting. Just all out offence, I'll have few numbers but hopefully I'll be a better fighter for it.