Off the Shelf Media

The Mount and Blade franchise is one of the most unique in gaming. There are four titles in the series with the first building off of the same game engine, which is why Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is named as the second in the series even though it is the fourth iteration. It might seem confusing, but if you take a look at the first three in the series, the resemblance is hard to miss. Those looking to play the older titles, I would recommend starting directly with Mount & Blade Warband and working your way through. Warband is largely the same as the first game, but with many improvements made that do not detract from the experience of the first, and the gameplay is much smoother. The series is a labor of love, starting all the way back in 2008 when Mount & Blade first launched. It came from the indie developer TaleWorlds Entertainment, which started off with only two developers and has since grown to a team of over 90 people. 

The unique hallmark of the style comes from the in-house game engine used to make each game. It is more common nowadays for developers to use premade engines such as Unity and Unreal, which are two of the most common. The TaleWorlds engine is designed for large-scale combat physics and AI, while also allowing ease of use for modding. 

Gameplay: 2

This design comes in handy rather quickly. Players will find themselves engaged in large-scale conflicts for the majority of the time they play. Large scale is the only way to put it. While the early gameplay will likely have smaller conflicts, battles can be fought between armies in the tens of thousands, with each general/lord able to amass groups of around 400 units. 

While the game is available on consoles, my experience comes from the PC version, and it makes a massive difference. The controls are inherently designed for mouse and keyboard, as one will need to be able to maneuver not only their own character in combat, but also assign unit formations and attack orders for their troops. It also allows higher-end machines to take advantage of even larger battles without removing quality or diminishing framerate. It should also be noted that without mods, the max on-screen unit deployment is set at 1000 units. This means that if two opposing armies have more than 500 units each, some will be off-screen until enough soldiers fall and ‘reinforcements’ enter the fighting stage. The unit deployment features attempt to maintain the same ratio of soldiers for conflicts, but knowing this is important to how players might decide which unit types to use and where to order them in the party tab. 

Your party can be comprised of any type of unit you would expect to find on a medieval battlefield, such as pikemen, knights, cavalry archers, crossbowmen, bandits, and peasants, just as a few examples. 

You can also find special companion characters scattered across the map in town and taverns. Each with their own backstory, skills, and interests. These special units become incredibly useful when governing castles, leading formations, trade caravans, or simply using their skill tree within your own army so that players can focus their skills elsewhere. This is to say nothing of the reputation received from player actions when dealing with quests for other lords or how they are treated before and after battle. There are also distinguished figures in each town with their own reputation scales, and that of the loyalty of towns and settlements at large. A mix of familiar mechanics from the older titles, as well as welcomed additions that add to the dynamic change of allegiance as one plays. 

That is a basic rundown for most playthroughs, but the defining characteristic of Bannerlord is that you have free rein to play however you like, in the truest sense of an RPG. Players can choose to ignore large-scale combat and only operate caravans or workshops, and make enough coin to purchase their empire. Even go further and spend their time exclusively fighting tournaments or blacksmithing for money and reputation. TaleWorlds has also added more stealth-inclined elements of gameplay when sneaking into enemy-occupied cities since the game launched, as well as seafaring and combat with the new War Sails DLC.

This just includes the single-player portion of the game. Bannerlords also includes a combat-heavy multiplayer with several different game modes, taking command of small squads or large-scale PvP matches. Unfortunately, at the moment, the game does not offer the highly beloved captain co-op mode that was featured in Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword, which can still be played to this day, albeit with some elbow grease. This mode allowed friendly players to command small squads in waves of enemy AI troops. While it might be a possibility later down the line, do not expect to find co-op campaigns. Something fans of the series have asked for, but the technical requirements to change the game for it to function seem like too severe an undertaking for the studio without an obvious payout. 

Story: 2

The Story of Bannerlord is not too in-depth. It starts with players setting out to avenge and find their family after a bandit attack. These few missions lead players to finding the dragon banner. The banner can be used to unite the kingdom under the old world envisioned by the empire or seek to destroy the lasting remnants. Essentially, you are given enough to learn the basic mechanics of the game and then set forth with deciding how you wish to conquer the world.

It lacks handholding but offers enough for new players to understand the basics. It feels as if there is some expectation for players to have been with the franchise before. The game offers tutorial windows along the way, but experience is the best remedy here. That might seem frustrating for new players, but an in-depth tutorial would probably clock around 30 hours. 

After all the time I have spent playing, I only recently started blacksmithing simply because there is so much to do in the game. While the story may serve mostly as a tutorial, it does the job perfectly by getting the player out in the open. You can decide to entirely ignore it as well if you are more familiar with the game, cementing the play-as-you-wish style the game offers. 

Atmosphere: 2

The eight major factions in Bannerlord are all representative of cultures around the same time period of 1200. While it does not include every culture on the globe, these factions each have a different geography, unit selection, weapons, apparel, and architecture. These many differences make the combat dynamic, as generals will replenish troops often in the areas they invade. This makes their forces have a composition of local troops and reinforcements as they made their treks after battles between the player and one another. 

The battlefields also change depending on the location they take place in on the overland map. While exploring cities, villages, bandit hideouts, and battlefield the field of view is locked behind either first or third person view. When traveling between these points of interest, however, players use a map of the continent to lead their player model from point to point. This offers a strategic and tactical approach for battles by being able to observe troops movemnets nearby and reports of global campaigns in real time. You might be set to siege an enemy fortress only to learn your very own settlement is being raided. This blending of gameplay and design offers a fully fledged atmosphere that is unmatched in the genre. Whatever a player might intend to do, the unpredictable nature of the game’s AI is guaranteed to force them into difficult decisions. 

The atmosphere for Bannerlord is the perfect example of blending the game mechanics and design in equal measure. It is nothing short of masterclass execution, for good measure. Each game in the series offered some form of refinement, bringing it closer to perfection. 

Value: 2

One of the only modern games worth the new and ‘improved’ price tag of $70. The best part is that you can buy it normally for $49.99 with sales on Steam dropping the price by 40-50% off. Completely worth it, and while the reviews for the recent War Sails DLC have not been good, this game remains a project fueled by dedication from its team.

Going into this review, I had planned more negative comments based on the last time I played around with various bugs and glitches. These were mainly centered around the trade routes and issues I experienced with dialogue. Trying the merchant playthrough seemed to consistently fail as profits would drop with a direct cause, no matter what I did to ensure raw resources or stability in the region. Since then, however, all of these gameplay issues seem to have been resolved. As much as I try ot not leave you readers hanging onto a limb of hope, I would expect the team at TaleWorlds to correct the balancing and gameplay issue later down the line, but for now, I cannot give my full endorsement for the DLC. I will probably purchase it on sale, even if the reviews remain similar as of now. 

Duration: 2

You can retire and end the game the second you leave the tutorial or at any moment. Taking over the world is a tall order and, as such, takes an incredibly long amount of time. That being said, the dynamic shift in aggression from other countries will change how you play almost every time moving forward in your conquest. A non-aggressive country could declare war simply from your rapid growth in power, which might weaken your strategic capabilites having to fight wars on multiple fronts after a successful campaign. It is easy to say the game is as long as you want it to be and is the type of game you play for a few hours, and suddenly it’s 1 am. 

Total Score: 10/10 

If I were asked a year ago to review this game, the score would have been lower, maybe around eight. The dedication to patching not just bugs but also balancing issues has resulted in a finely tuned strategy game. The RPG elements were already enough to make it incredible, but the detail in logistics required for the game to be playable hurts my head trying to think about how much goes on in the background. The furthering of the stealth elements was something I never anticipated and is not necessary with how much the game already had going for it, but it serves as an example of how the team at TaleWorlds takes pride in what they have made to make it even more well-rounded. 

I can only conclude by saying this game is worth every penny, and you won’t find another game like it, though some may try. Here’s to the future content they create that I never would have guessed to include.