5 A must play
Mount & Blade is an open-ended first-or-third person role-playing game or “a medieval sim” as the developers, TaleWorlds (a Turkish husband-and-wife team) put it.
It’s been being developed for years, and still is in it’s beta stage and I’ve seen this game change so much during the years I’ve been playing it. It’s combat was ground-breaking for the year it came out, and they built and built on it to make it more and more awesome by every single update.
First of all, game has no fantasy in it. No potions to magically heal you, no wizards, no spells. The game puts you in a big wartorn land, Calradia, where there are 4 countries; Nords, Khergits, Swadians and Vaegirs. The player has the choice to join any of these factions or not. The land is filled with from castles to small villages to explore.
What makes Mount & Blade so special is it’s unique battles. You see dynamic battles, ranging from a small group of bandits on an open plane to armies of hundreds of soldiers sieging castles. Battles rely heavily on mounted combat, horses on which you can charge others to run them over, swing your blade and even use a bow and arrows.
There are many things you can do in Mount&Blade, and I can’t write all of them here. And just reading about it doesn’t do this game justice. It’s a must play for any role-play, wargame fan, or just any indie-game player for that matter.
Oh, just play it goddammit!
4 Unfinished
The premise of MnB is Elite in a non-fantasy medieval world and some more. It’s a sandbox game.
Describing further what MnB is and what it isn’t, depends heavily on if you judge “what it currently actually is” or if you judge “what it is trying to be”. Why is that? Well, because 1.0 got released before all the game elements were completed.
I’ll start with its premise – what it is trying to be. It is supposed to be a great dynamic freeform multi-genre game in a medieval setting. You create a character including various attributes and skills, RPG-style. Then you get dropped into the world and are free to do whatever you like.
You will first see your party (you start out with a few recruits at your side) on the world map. On it, you can freely move around. If you enter a location (i.e. cities) or an event is triggered (i.e. battle) the action “zooms in” and you control yourself from first person perspective. In the case of battles, you can also give simple orders to your other party-members.
Dialogue and decisions are handled via multiple-choice menus, adventure style.
As for opportunities, there are supposed to be many: you can trade, be a bounty-hunter, do random quests, make a career among one of the kingdoms, be a pirate – you know those mechanics by now.
Different to other such freelancer game, the game is trying to stay “personal” and keep up the storytelling aspect of roleplaying. Various units are supposed to not just be “things” but beings with a personality, intentions and relations.
Regarding battles, even though they are played in realtime FPS style, the game mechanics manage to keep in the tactical and RPG aspects. So, winning battles is not just a matter of fast reflexes. Your equipment-style and that of your troops matters, the environment matters, your skills matter, your orders matter, etc, etc. Actually, running frontally into a battle as if playing a shooter is a safe way to lose fast.
Up to this point, it seems that the game is giving you everything a freelancer could ever dream of, right? So where’s the catch?
The catch is that the game was released before all the above stuff was fully implemented. For starters, there were a lot of placeholders for RP-aspects in the betas, but most (though, not all) got dropped with the release. There is no satisfying story-structure in the game which ties the various events together. It is as if you play a game which was supposed to get various content added later during development, but then got released without this happening. Ironically, near the 1.0 release, some content which previously was there actually got removed. For example, in earlier versions, the player would start near a neutral town called zender. The inhabitants there would introduce the player to the game, offer various tutorials, a beginner quest, etc, etc. The entire town got axed before release and the player now simply gets dropped into the middle of the world without any initial guidance.
Similarily, regarding opportunities, the game is strongly geared for being a “vassal” – that is, acting in the service of a kingdom. If you do not follow that route, then you will quickly notice that there aren’t many opportunities for you. The only thing left then is trading and fighting bandit-parties.
The same is the case for the quests. Outside of the vassal-route, there aren’t many random quests and events. And they aren’t even randomised much, meaning that they each of them doesn’t vary much. What’s more, half of the quests are highly annoying. Did i mention already that they dont even pay off well?
So, with all those things missing, what is this game? It is a great medieval battle simulator with currently the best horseback combat available. If you play a lord of a kingdom, it is also a satisfying lightweight RPG. It also aesthetically is a piece of art. If you are satisfied with that, you will love MnB. If you desire more, you will be disappointed how much this game could be, yet isn’t.
Mountain Blade?
