If all you had to do was fight, Mount & Blade might have been a winner. TaleWorlds Entertainment has come up with one of the most innovative and user-friendly re-creations of combat ever seen in a first/third-person RPG, with exciting battles on foot, mounted on horseback, and at the head of a private army. Unfortunately, this derring-do is only one part of a cheaply stitched-together, single-player-only role-playing game that replaces plot with a sandbox world that leaves you without a clue of what to do or where to go. There is something positive to be said for wide-open RPGs that leave the storytelling up to you, but this game is so incomplete that it'll feel as if you're being asked to script a heroic saga without the benefit of pen and paper.

The backdrop is always busy with various wars, villages being looted, and castles being besieged, although you feel more like a hapless spectator than a wannabe hero with anything at stake during all of this conflict. You tend to have to research your possible destinations through bland text write-ups, or to search around in the documentation in the menus to find out why the king of Swadia is attacking the khanate of Kergit. Even then, you generally don't receive a lot of solid answers.

Still, it's disappointing that your growing military might is often hidden from view. You can't really control them like an army, either. Orders on the fly are just about nonexistent, which leaves you to simply tell your troops to charge into the fray and help out by cracking a few skulls yourself. Sieges are also scrambly, Keystone Cops-like affairs with too much running around and not enough options for making your way onto castle walls (there's just one ladder, which is absolutely absurd when you've got dozens of men in your army).

Which brings us back to combat. One-on-one fighting is the one place where Mount & Blade truly shines.​