Mount and Blade: Warband

As promised, here is a game reveiw on Mount and Blade: Warband.

Rating: T

The first Mount and Blade game stood out due to it's in-depth RPG style gameplay with RTS style battles. However, Warband has excelled above and beyond the first version. The first thing you do upon starting the game is create a character. You can choose gender, color, strengths, weaknesses, even your life (such as who your father was, what his career was). Your choices can make the game harder or easier. If you choose, say, that your father was an impoverished noble, you will start the game with a banner and more men will follow you. However, you will be attacked more often (due to the fact that you will be more likely to be ransomed). If you choose for your father to have been a thief, you will have a lot of trouble gaining a reputation, but you will also have a few skills which you did not posses as a nobleman's son (such as archery, tracking, and bandits will be less likely to attack you). Then, after picking your lineage, you choose your early life (such as, steppe child, street urchin, or paige, etc.) and then your more recent lifestyle (shopkeeper's apprentice, game poacher, or university student, etc.). These effect the game most of all, as these establish your traits. For example, choosing the game poacher option makes you an excellent archer, or university student will increase your engineering skills, which makes it easier to manage villages, castles, etc. Then, you choose the country you start out in. This does not effect the outcome of the game as much, but different factions have different advantages. Some are more powerful, but it will be harder to make a name for yourself. Then the smaller ones are harder to maintain late-game, but it is easier in early game to rise to power. Then, finally, you start your adventure. First off, you get attacked (go figure). After you easily defeat this assailant, the Merchant of whatever city you are in runs up to help (AFTER you've already defeated the bandit). He then takes you to his house, where he offers you a mission: to save his brother from the bandits. You can accept this quest or not, but accepting gives you a good tutorial of the game. After your first quest, you are pretty much free to pursue your dreams. You can build a warband by recruiting men from villages or from taverns. You can also add characters to your party to add some story to the game (and some of them are pretty good warriors, as well). Then, once you have got a good feel for the lay of the land, you can offer yourself as a mercenary to one of the factions. This will open up the rest of the game. Castles, battles, looting, diplomacy, and (*spit, spit*) romance. Sound like fun? It is.



Now, being a mercenary opens up the opportunity to become a vassal, which means you will be able to mange your own fief. Then, the king may grant to the ownership of a castle. This is really fun, but it is also a lot of responsibility. If you don't garrison, you can bet that your castle is going to be attacked and taken. Then it will be a long time before you are granted another (even if you take a bunch more. This is one of the frustrating aspects of the game. The king is a jerk. If you take a castle and lose a whole lot of men, he may still give the castle to one of his buddies and give you some minuscule sum to quote, "Pay for expenses.") But, along with good things, being a vassal also has it's downturns. Being a baron means you are much more likely to be attacked by other barons. This presents a problem, as most barons have 80-200 men in their party. This means that you'll have to use some strategy.



Strategy in Mount and Blade is one of the best aspects of the game. Of course, you can just let your men run around like idiots and get themselves killed, but if you want to save your men, you will have to use some of the battlefield commands. For example, if you want the cavalry to hold back, you have to hit 3, and F1, and select hold this area. Then, you could probably tell you archers to hold their fire until the enemy gets a little closer to get better shots and conserve arrows. But then, of course, you have to be able to fight a little bit yourself. As a matter of fact, you make up the majority of the casualties. Without you, quite frankly, your men stink. So, you have to pick your four items (for example, my character had a bow, arrows, a scimitar, and a shield) and ride out into battle (or walk. But I prefer a horse).



Also, unfortunately you can engage in courting one of the ladies of the court. After a few feeble tries (for the sake of the review. You guys owe me big.) I resolved to be a bachelor in this game. The majority of the women of the court are snobs. You have to actually PAY to learn some poetry, but there is a chance that they will not like it. They never liked any of the stuff that I bought. That is, if they even talk to you. The only way to enter a courtship is to talk to them and say, "I must admit I am your most ardent admirer." Now, they will either respond with, "I LOVE YOU TOO!!!" or "Um...ok... oh, look at the time, I gtg bye!" I have decided that it is definitely not worth the effort.



Now all your tactics (such as what towns to loot, how to take castles, how to engage in diplomacy, etc.) you have to learn through trial and error. This means that you will probably have to restart your game many times before you finally get the hang of how to play it through. But once you figure it out, this game is extremely fun to play. The lack of storyline does kind of leave you running around chasing random bandits in boredom sometimes, but when you figure out what you want to do (quests help some early game, but eventually you will be powerful enough to do whatever you want to) this game is extremely fun.

I would give this game a 4 out of 5 stars.