Mount and Blade Warband

Downloaded the demo of this expecting a Medieval 2 Total War clone, but it's not. You make your own character and pick from different choices of back story, a bit like Mass Effect. Then you are set free on an open world to build up an army. The game map seems quite active, things are happening around you and you get updates on whats happening, you can go to towns and hire troups to join you. When in a battle you take control of yourself and I think you can control your men, I've not tried controlling them yet, so no idea how deep the control is. Combat is interesting, it's a bit sticky for me at the moment but I'm sure it's something that you need to give time to develop.

Looks like a really interesting game, graphics are ok not exactly fanstastic but good enough not to be a negative. I'm going to give the demo a bit more of a play and then I may well buy the game. It's on Steam by the way, I don't know if you can get it without Steam, I haven't looked.

If you are interested the game appears to be capped at 120 fps.



Looked just now and I don't see Steam on the game cover, on Amazon.

This is a bit of a strange one, there is a new DLC out for Mount and Blade but it's not for their newest game Mount and Blade Fire and Sword, it's for Mount and Blade Warband their older but much better game. The strangest thing is that Fire and Sword is much more suited to the DLC because the DLC is about the Napoleonic times, so it's gun heavy and Fire and Sword had guns, Warband didn't.

It's nice to see that they know their newer game is pretty pants and are supporting their older game instead. The newer game was made by different people I think, I'm not going to get the DLC right away (Spent too much on Warhammer 40k this month...) I'll look at reviews first see what people think of it.

Awww... It's a mod they turned into DLC but it's online multiplayer only... Sucks.

A mod that looks pretty interesting, it's medieval Briton, with all ye'oldy names!

http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php?topic=135589.0

I like playing in the existing world of the game but I wanted a mod with improvements and came across this, I believe it's one of the better mods, from the one topic I looked in.

Ok that mod makes the game 100% more awesome, somehow they added ship battles (Though my attempt at one was a bit lame) and there's so much more detail (They added whores as well, you can use them to... entertain your troops, which is another new feature you need to keep your army entertained), this is actually more of a full expansion than a mod. I warn you though while it is super awesome it is also super hard! There are no easy pickings, you start with nothing and will find it difficult to build yourself up, you can take out a loan at the start of the game, but I'd wager it builds up and becomes very hard to repay, no idea what happens if you don't pay it back. You also can't visit the lords till you raise your Renown which makes sense really, why would a Lord have a private conversation with a commoner. You'll feel like dirt when you start, you have nothing, you can't afford anything, your actions will cause you to lose renown because you'll need to beg for money, or work in the fields for nothing bar a little food. When you reach the top though, I'd imagine it feels good, though being at the top won't be easy either, there are a lot of factions and a lot of castles, cities and towns that need to be taken and protected.

Not got beyond the tutorial yet, should I play vanilla first or jump straight in with this mod?

Btw Really glad I bought this I know it’s not going to win any prizes for graphics but it has a charm about it.

I'd stick with vanilla I can't even get started in this mod, I'm no expert of the vanilla game but I can at least advance, in this mod I basically make no money and have to keep my distance from everyone. I'd say stick with the vanilla game till you get bored of it.

What I love about this game is that you start with nothing, you are a small blip there are bigger things going on around you, wars are being fought land is being gained and lost, towns destroyed, people taken captive. At the start you have to take on small jobs and try to make a name for yourself, sure you'll build up a mighty force but one false move and your army is nothing and you've been reduced to next to nothing again. The relationships you build up in the game matter, friendships end and are tested. You have to earn the trust and friendships in the game, and have to deal with the consequences of those you cross.

There is another mod which also has quite a lot of added content, not so much though and it's not as hard.

Floris:

http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?500322-Floris-Mod-Pack&s=7f2da13c33c4cd1770a684a49c505bae

It's not as well made, it failed to load some texture's just now, I've only just installed it. It does also have boats, but they are pretty pointless in this game, the game world is mostly land... Few of the Kingdoms touch water, it's pretty much just the Nords.


Oh the harder mod has something which is pretty funny looking, you can ride donkeys into war. It amused me the way my character was bobbing up and down on the donkey with a spear in one hand and a shield in the other. Even though it is pretty bleeding hard, maybe you want to give it a try anyway, it doesn't override the basic game you just choose to either use a mod or not when the first window pops up. One of the things which makes it so damned hard is that it has stamina (Thats what she said) you run out of it pretty easy, it goes down when you move around the battle field and when the battle ends it doesn't auto fill again if you get into another battle after it will still be low. If you don't move it does slowly regenerate though, and I think raising your agility stat raises it faster.

Eeeeeee! There's going to be a Mount & Blade 2!

Awesome news, can't wait to see what changes are going to be made, hopefully it won't be anything like M&B with Fire and Sword. They handed that off to some other studio though so if it's made by the proper team it should be good. I suppose the main thing I can think of other than just a more refined game is campaign multiplayer, not just the battles.