Preview Mount & Blade Preview at Game Banshee

[El Dee]

Tags: Mount & Blade

<a href="http://www.gamebanshee.com/previews/mountblade1.php">There's a Mount & Blade preview</a> up at GameBanshee written by none other than Brother None of NMA and RPGCodex fame.
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<blockquote>I've seen many attempts to quickly describe Mount & Blade. It has been said that the game looks like an interpretation of Dungeons & Dragons from someone who never played D&D, it has been called Pirates! in a medieval setting, and, most aptly, a mix of Pirates!/Elite with role-playing mechanics.
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In other words, it's a very unique independent game, having started out as an experiment to bring an oft-ignored mounted combat component into the realm of gaming, and ending up as a massive freelancer game with RPG elements and plenty of things to do.</blockquote>
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It has been a couple of years since I played this. I may have to fire it up again.
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Check Mount & Blade out for yourself, <a href="http://www.taleworlds.com/"> here.</a>

 

[dagorkan]

This article is an OK overview but doesn't really say anything new.

Also it misses out on two important things, it doesn't mention anything about in-battle tactics, which was a huge change introduced a few versions ago and has been continually improved. I get the impression BN hasn't discovered this feature and just solo's everything or just has his men follow him around until he's knocked unconscious and then auto-resolves the following battles, obviously he'd miss out on a lot.

The second thing is that he says the mods "promise improvements/new content", yes OK he doesn't like mentioning mods but this is completely misleading. There are already Total Conversions and mods that turn M&B into a completely different game, there have been a large number of huge and polished mods in fact for over a year. If you buy M&B and then download ASLOW, or the StoryMod, M3, Extended Gameplay or dozens of other, you'll probably never go back to 'Native' at all. People who don't know M&B and just read the review are being mislead, in reality nobody plays the default M&B, except when a new version comes out and the mods are being updated.

 

[Al3xand3r]

Actually, I play the native and ejoy it a lot, it has become a very fleshed out game in the last few versions. I would say the people who don't play it anymore are the ones who have exhausted all it has to offer over the years. I think I'm a long way from that still.

The game has a lot more depth than that badly written preview implies. Sure most of it comes down to eventual battles but that's no bad thing considering the great combat system implemented (he doesn't do a good job of describing it either).

I love the campaigns to restore the supposed rightful kings against the usurpers.

Starting "solo" by doing the tournmanets and raising an army to hunt bandits with and advance your character and companions is great enough, but then the game opens up whole new layers of depth once you attempt to do one of the usurper campaigns. Getting fiefs, convincing other lords to join your cause (and they can tell if you're just saying what you think they want to hear!), sieging (ok that's glitchy but when it works it's AWESOME, despite the respawns mentioned), figuring out the nuances of raising a proper army rather than a random band of manhunters, seeing old enemies remember you, it's all just lovely.

For me, most of the mods I see just seem to at best add a new map with the basic same gameplay, except with often new (and not always good) styles for example the roman era stuff. I'll only try those when I get really bored of native which won't be any time soon.

The mods I like seeing are things like the Peasants mod which do change the gameplay completely. It makes it something akin to a turn based heroes of might and magic with real time combat. Or something. I can't describe, just go to its thread here:
http://mbx.streetofeyes.com/index.php/t ... 0/all.html

That's what more mods should do, attempt to change the way you play the game rather than enhance the native's properties in order to make it "better" which is all very subjective (like the realistic combat enhancement stuff) anyway. Sure a different map and more heroes and such mods are nice but they're hardly total conversions. Peasants is as close to that as I've seen really. More please. And more native versions please!

 

[MisterStone]

Re: Mount & Blade Preview at Game Banshee

It has been a couple of years since I played this. I may have to fire it up again.

Bro, you really gots to play this again.

The combat is more or less the same but more balanced (in the last version, they made spears and other polearms stop sucking- you can whack people with the shaft of the spear for instance, and pikes etc do more damage- which is a huge bonus as well) and the mechanics involving quests, factions, party interactions even NPC interactions is super cool now. Castle sieges are better than the last several versions (still seem a little glitchy, but still fun), you can actually find creative and interesting quests by walking around town or in villages, you can loot villages, steal cattle, etc. etc.

When you get sick of that small-time stuff, you can join a faction on the warpath, command multiple armies, mount insurrections, even try to go it alone as a robber baron type (I think- I haven't had a chance to play it much lately). In short, its a lot more worthwhile now. They even have a retire option like in Pirates!

A year or so ago I was thinking that M&B was pretty much going to suck in the final version (or at least not live up to potential), but it definitely lives up to the hype of being the Pirates! of the current generation of games. If anything, it is even more fun than pirates in a lot of ways, due to the fun combat and character development.

 

[flabbyjack]

The gameplay of M&B is definitely far in excess of any A-list title recently released, action FPS or otherwise. The recently added features(incorporated in part from third party content providers/modders) add a lot to the game.

It's really quite unlike any other game out there, but it's said Darkfall Online has combatt that is 90% similar to M&B.

 

[MetalCraze]

so in short what's new the recent version of M&B has to offer compared to 0.893?

 

[Al3xand3r]

Re: Mount & Blade Preview at Game Banshee

iit definitely lives up to the hype of being the Pirates! of the current generation of games.

Wee, that's what I call the game when I try to describe it to people who have never heard of it! Medieval Pirates! with actual gameplay depth!

I hope they flesh out the retire options in the full version. For example they could offer a few different "goals" when you start a new game (restore a rightful king to power! - eliminate a nation from the map! - discover the sea raiders lair and put them all to rest! - other cheesy things like this!) , have the "age" slider move forward on its own as the game progresses, and finally force you to retire when you're way too old to continue. Then rating would actually matter while players who prefer having a specific goal instead of just going sandbox would find their thing.

Of course, they should always keep the sandbox mode that is the current game, without age limits and forced retirements (but also without meaningful score since you can retire after 5 days or 5 years which would obviously give hugely varying scores). I wouldn't have it any other way!

As for that online game, wouldn't it be far more popular if the combat was like M&B? I don't see anybody talking about it much lately... Perhaps the system just doesn't work in massively online combat I suppose, it might get laggy...

 

[El Dee]

Re: Mount & Blade Preview at Game Banshee

Bro, you really gots to play this again.

I definitely plan on it.

 

[Oarfish]

so in short what's new the recent version of M&B has to offer compared to 0.893?

• No more Zendar / River pirates
• Battle planning interface
• Additional skills: looting, persuasion
• Much better variety of quests
• Improved animations
• More NPC's with actual diaogs, bickering in the party etc
• LOD alllows for much bigger battles

In short, well worth a try. The latest version is starting to feel finished.

 

[Brother None]

This article is an OK overview but doesn't really say anything new.

Aye. Wasn't intended to.

Also it misses out on two important things, it doesn't mention anything about in-battle tactics, which was a huge change introduced a few versions ago and has been continually improved.

I used it, but playing at normal difficulty (which I usually keep at for preview/review since it reflects user expectancies), I simply didn't need them that much. I used them a bit earlier on, and used them a lot for sieges, but for open battles with my heavy cavalry against their infantry? Didn't need it.

The second thing is that he says the mods "promise improvements/new content", yes OK he doesn't like mentioning mods but this is completely misleading.

Is it? There is no finished game yet, so there are no mods for a finished game yet either. I know, semantics, but that makes it "not misleading".

And I was very clear how I feel about mentioning mods in (p)reviews, of any game. Fine, Mount & Blade is a superior experience with mods. As a game reviewer, I don't care, because nobody pays for mods. Period.

(and honestly, I had at least 40 hours of fun playing Native, that's probably more than I get from most AAA RPG releases these days)

 

[Starwars]

Hm, I might be the only person in the universe that still hasn't tried this out. Maybe I will.

 

[Brother None]

Re: Mount & Blade Preview at Game Banshee

written by none other than Brother None of NMA and RPGCodex fame.

Hey wait what? I object, I hate this place.

 

[MetalCraze]

so in short what's new the recent version of M&B has to offer compared to 0.893?

• No more Zendar / River pirates
• Battle planning interface
• Additional skills: looting, persuasion
• Much better variety of quests
• Improved animations
• More NPC's with actual diaogs, bickering in the party etc
• LOD alllows for much bigger battles

In short, well worth a try. The latest version is starting to feel finished.

that's good, but I would wished for them to make sieges look like sieges. with trebuchets, catapults, buying and managing them, ruining walls. better economic management of castle, fixing it after sieges, auto-training troops with time (because training every unit yourself gets boring very quickly) to defend the castle. shit... if M&B devs actually will be able to do that it probably would be the best medieval sandbox action game EVAR.

 

[Fez]

Re: Mount & Blade Preview at Game Banshee

written by none other than Brother None of NMA and RPGCodex fame.

Hey wait what? I object, I hate this place.

Too late. You must suffer the price of fame like others have done before you.

 

[Dementia Praecox]

Haha, that's easily your best newspost to date, ElDee. Sould've made it infamy for added win.

 

[The_Pope]

And I was very clear how I feel about mentioning mods in (p)reviews, of any game. Fine, Mount & Blade is a superior experience with mods. As a game reviewer, I don't care, because nobody pays for mods. Period.

(and honestly, I had at least 40 hours of fun playing Native, that's probably more than I get from most AAA RPG releases these days)

Loads of people bought Half Life to get Counterstrike.

 

[Shannow]

And I was very clear how I feel about mentioning mods in (p)reviews, of any game. Fine, Mount & Blade is a superior experience with mods. As a game reviewer, I don't care, because nobody pays for mods. Period.

(and honestly, I had at least 40 hours of fun playing Native, that's probably more than I get from most AAA RPG releases these days)

Loads of people bought Half Life to get Counterstrike.

So? What is your argument?

 

[The_Pope]

And I was very clear how I feel about mentioning mods in (p)reviews, of any game. Fine, Mount & Blade is a superior experience with mods. As a game reviewer, I don't care, because nobody pays for mods. Period.

(and honestly, I had at least 40 hours of fun playing Native, that's probably more than I get from most AAA RPG releases these days)

Loads of people bought Half Life to get Counterstrike.

So? What is your argument?

People pay for mods.

 

[Brother None]

Loads of people bought Half Life to get Counterstrike.

And lots of people jump of bridges.

I'm hardly getting paid to subscribe to irrational behaviour.

 

[Krancor]

Loads of people bought Half Life to get Counterstrike.

And lots of people jump of bridges.

I'm hardly getting paid to subscribe to irrational behaviour.

Do you have brain damage, or something?

I really don't get your issue.

First off, a niggle but "very unique"?

What exactly gives you the right to decide what's a valid reason to buy a game? How about music? Am I allowed to buy a game because it has good music? I doubt many people buy games because of that but if the music were particularly good or bad I'd expect any decent reviewer to mention this.

You mention trivial and idiotic details completely irrelevant to whether people would want to buy the game like "the left mouse button attacks" but you can't mention that there are game mods? No one buys a game because the left mouse button attacks or it uses WASD for movement.

Even worse, you make it sound like the shield blocks all attacks without having to activate it, which is untrue and sounds really stupid. You also completely fail to mention that the game has an overhead map portion to it for some odd reason.

Not to mention that empty isn't the same as openended. You'd have to be a crackhead to think that this game is empty. I just played for the first time last night and there's tons of stuff to do and there's seldom any boring moments. It's not an RPG, and even if it were just because it does not hold your hand from step to step doesn't make it 'empty'.

It's also NOT THE FINAL VERSION, yet you treat it as if there will be no further improvements and make big assumptions on its content without adding in any sort of qualifiers to this effect. To my understanding until the last few versions they didn't even really have content...you know, how almost every game ever made was done?

Then at the end you talk about realtime combat being better because it gets the combat over quicker, when this is a game pretty much based on combat, and is absolutely nothing like the games that you mention.

Then to top it off you spew out this ignorant shit about people not buying games for mods, when many people in the M&B forums have bought it for exactly that reason. Does everyone or even most people? No. Most people don't buy a fucking game for the music either. Should it not be mentioned? Everyone buys games for different reasons, and to completely ignore a good feature to a game is idiotic. If the dev chooses to ignore modmakers that is one thing, but for a game reviewer to ignore a major feature of a game that has had a signifigant percentage of the production efforts is ridiculous.

The short version: you're an idiot. I started off wondering at your stupid attitude, but I realized after a minute reading that your whole review is stupid. And so are you.

 

[Brother None]

You mention trivial and idiotic details completely irrelevant to whether people would want to buy the game like "the left mouse button attacks"

Describing how the game actually plays is pretty standard format, considering it's fairly important to the game.

but you can't mention that there are game mods?

That's odd, I thought I did.

You also make it sound like the shield blocks all attacks without having to activate it, which is untrue and sounds really stupid.

(...) while the right button blocks. When holding a shield it will block in all directions automatically, but without a shield you will have to time your block so that you're defending in the direction the attack is coming from

I'm sorry I do not write taking the mentally handicapped into account, but "while...when" is conditional.

You also completely fail to mention that the game has an overhead map portion to it for some odd reason.

True, that's an ommission. There's a screenshot, though.

Empty also isn't the same as openended.

I said this...

...where?

You'd have to be a crackhead to think that the game is empty.

The game has a high repetition factor of a low number of variables set over a wide area. That makes it empty.

It's also NOT THE FINAL VERSION, yet you treat it as if there will be no further improvements and make big assumptions on its content without adding in any sort of qualifiers to this effect.

Heh.

Here
This is not the final version yet, but we have put in most of the features we are planning to, and after this, our job will mostly be polishing rough corners and fixing bugs and problems. To this end, I hope that you will help us, as you always do, by providing feedback, comments and bug reports. We have the basics here, but there is still a lot to do, especially in terms of long term game balance, but I am sure, together, we'll create a stable and very fun game by the time we have the final release.

I assume nothing they have not said themselves. Content-wise, this game is mostly finished, hence I judged the content as mostly finished. I encounter numerous game-stopping and quest-breaking bugs, yet I did not mention a single one of them because I was playing version .950. This is mentioned explicitly in the preview.

Then at the end you talk about realtime combat being better because it gets the combat over quicker.

Uh-huh, I do so when talking about the relative merits of combat in RPGs so far, excluding Mount & Blade.

Then to top it off you spew out this ignorant shit about people not buying games for mods.

Actually, that's not what I said.

Here's what I said:
I think it's nonsense to defend a game based on its mods - you're paying for the game and not for its fan-made mods, after all (...)

It's not my business why people buy games. They could be buying it out of charity for all I care. But as a professional, it is my job to judge professional products as they are when sold (patches nonwithstanding), not what they are like once improved. Because I'm judging a product that's being sold, not a fixer-upper.

The funny thing is, I bet the outcry would be a lot less significant if I point out this principle is exactly what journalists forgot when judging Oblivion. My refusing to let my judgement of the product be influenced by mods is the opposite of that site that awarded, in one year, both Oblivion as best RPG and Obscuro's overhaul as best mod. It's funny how this attitude, that would be applauded here when talking about Oblivion, is met with frowns when talking about M&B. Ah, you guys...

Everyone buys games for different reasons, and to completely ignore a good feature to a game is idiotic

Ah, now I completely ignored it? Did I? No I didn't. The last preview of this game I saw was GameSpy. It's funny how nobody complained they didn't mention mods, because they didn't, at all. I explicitly make it a point to mention but not discuss mods because it falls outside of my professional scope, yet I'm the bad guy.

Makes sense?

The short version: you're an idiot.

Actually, so far, all your comments have been points where you carelessly read, ignored statements from the devs themselves or attributed points to me I did not make.

But it's not that hard to determine who is the idiot, that's true enough.

 

[dagorkan]

I agree with what Krancor said, without the more extreme insults

Missing out on discussing the mods when you're reviewing a game like this is just being deliberately perverse. And in fact Krancor is right that people buy the game to play mods, if you looked at the forums you'd know that. First of all there's a mod created by the Chinese community, which changes the language and symbols but also changes the setting, and the devs have made an official agreement with them to cooperate on selling the game - a lot of them had pirated it because Chinese can't afford games like this and I think don't have access to paypal, so basically they're now getting it at a reduced price in exchange for the Chinese fans promoting the mod. Second, there was an official mod called 1066, again the devs basically allowing the amateur mod makers to charge a small amount for additional Anglo-saxon themed content that they created - not sure how successful that was but the fact is that the mods are part of the overall Taleworlds strategy and that people have decided to buy the game because of fan-made content based off the basic M&B engine.

Then there's The Last Days, a hugely popular mod (50,000+ downloads?) which gets talked about in Total War and Lord of the Rings fan sites all the time (I've seen it recently, even though the mod is now about five versions out-of-date) though the Native game itself is barely mentioned, there are no doubt thousands of people who've downloaded the demo at least if not bought it because of hype on other forums about mods like TLD. If you look at Youtube and search M&B you'll find hundreds of videos of mods, I've put a couple up myself and received comments by people who'd never heard of M&B before interested because of the setting/gameplay of my modded game.

Without the mods (if Armagan hadn't spent an entire version development period rewriting his code to be moddable, and put effort in to make the modding system more user-friendly every upgrade since) ) I doubt M&B would be half as popular or well known than it is, and it probably would have sold significantly less.

So either you are truly obsessed about your self-imposed rule of never mentioning mods or you're plain ignorant and should have educated yourself before writing this review.

 

[Brother None]

Missing out on discussing the mods when you're reviewing a game like this is just being deliberately perverse.

1. GameSpy missed out on it. I actually mentioned it. GS got no crap for not mentioning it at all, I get crap for saying it's promising but I'm not about to discuss it? How does that make sense?
2. Again, one of the biggest bones of contention about Oblivion here or otherwhere is that while it has a lot of good mods fixing up the game the game itself isn't that good. If I say "so reviewers should judge it bare-bones" about Oblivion, people holler and cheer, but if I say it about M&B, people whine. That's nothing short of hypocrisy.

And in fact Krancor is right that people buy the game to play mods

I'm not going to repeat myself ad infinitum. I review a professional product, that means I review what people pay for - NOT their motives to buy. That is - by definition - the game and any service provided by the company (patches), "what you pay for" does not include mods.

This is a very steady, honest and good principle that I apply to everything, not just M&B. M&B is the big exception in that I even mentioned mods.

if you looked at the forums you'd know that

I did, I do and I was and am impressed by the community, as I explicitly mentioned.

Second, there was an official mod called 1066, again the devs basically allowing the amateur mod makers to charge a small amount for additional Anglo-saxon themed content that they created - not sure how successful that was but.

That I missed. But if I judge M&B because of that, I'd be doing the same as judging NWN 2 by MotB. Stupid. They're separate products.

The fact is that the mods are part of the overall Taleworlds strategy and that people have decided to buy the game because of fan-made content based off the basic M&B engine.

The fact is that the mods are part of the overall Bethesda strategy and that people have decided to buy the game because of fan-made content based off the basic Oblivion engine.

The same will apply to Fallout 3. I'm not going to judge any of these games by their mods, not matter the company policy.

So either you are truly obsessed about your self-imposed rule.

I don't know how to put it more clearly. Are you honestly saying you don't understand why - as a professional reviewer - it is not my job to include user-generated content in any consideration of how good the product you're paying for is?

I'm not sure how you could possibly not get that, honestly.

 

[dagorkan]

Missing out on discussing the mods when you're reviewing a game like this is just being deliberately perverse.

1. GameSpy missed out on it. I actually mentioned it. GS got no crap for not mentioning it at all, I get crap for saying it's promising but I'm not about to discuss it? How does that make sense?

It makes sense because I never read GameSpy and I don't care what GameSpy does or doesn't do.

2. Again, one of the biggest bones of contention about Oblivion here or otherwhere is that while it has a lot of good mods fixing up the game the game itself isn't that good. If I say "so reviewers should judge it bare-bones" about Oblivion, people holler and cheer, but if I say it about M&B, people whine. That's nothing short of hypocrisy.

1/10. Oblivion doesn't have good mods. Oblivion with mods still isn't worth buying, M&B with mods is a superb game everyone should buy.

You = Gamespy, M&B = Oblivion... I think you need to relearn how to do analogies.

And in fact Krancor is right that people buy the game to play mods

I'm not going to repeat myself ad infinitum. I review a professional product, that means I review what people pay for. That is - by definition - the game and any service provided by the company (patches), it does not include mods.

What Krancor, me and several others have been trying to explain to you is that the mods are part of what many people pay for when they buy M&B. I don't care about your definitions or your principles, your definition is useless because your assumption is false. Now you can either keep repeating yourself ("ad infinitum") or you can take your argument back to the drawing board. (TIP: the second option would be smarter)

if you looked at the forums you'd know that

I did, I do and I was and am impressed by the community, as I explicitly mentioned.

Obviously you didn't, so you're lying or your reading comprehension needs some work, because you didn't think to mention TLD and the Chinese mod and all the other great total conversions that are so much a part of that M&B community.

Second, there was an official mod called 1066, again the devs basically allowing the amateur mod makers to charge a small amount for additional Anglo-saxon themed content that they created - not sure how successful that was but the fact is that the mods are part of the overall Taleworlds strategy and that people have decided to buy the game because of fan-made content based off the basic M&B engine.

That I missed. But if I judge M&B because of that, I'd be doing the same as judging NWN 2 by MotB. Stupid. They're separate products.

Bad example, MotB was sold separately from NWN2, they're separate commercial products with different entries in gamerankings.com and in top-10 lists. If someone bought the new NWN2otB box set yes that would make sense and people buy NWN2 to play MotB. But anyway I disagree with you, I bought both NWN2 and NWN1 and have never played either OC for more than a couple of hours but have spent hundreds of hours on user made mods. I bought both games with the intention to only play mods.

So either you are truly obsessed about your self-imposed rule.

I don't know how to put it more clearly. Are you honestly saying you don't understand why - as a professional reviewer - it is not my job to include user-generated content in any consideration of how good the product you're paying for is?

I'm not sure how you could possibly not get that, honestly.

I am saying you can judge games however you want but that your arguments to try to justify yourself and claim that your standards are universal are stupid.

 

[Brother None]

FAIL. Oblivion doesn't have good mods. Oblivion with mods still isn't worth buying, M&B with mods is a superb game everyone should buy.

Uh-huh.

Is that the best you can come up with?

Oblivion is improved by mods. So is M&B. It is irrelevant that you, personally, consider the mods to be good enough to make either game worth buying. What is relevant is whether I should consider this improvement in any judgement I make on the game.

What Krancor, me and several others have been trying to explain to you is that the mods are part of what many people pay for when they buy M&B.

No they're not. They're not produced by the developer, they're not published by the publisher. People buy the game because of mods, fine, but people don't pay for mods.

Do you even vaguely understand the difference between user-generated content or professionally generated content, and the way they relate to professional (p)reviews? Do you understand that even in the independent sphere, people are still making a purchase, they're buying a product.

Say I buy ice cream. I take it home, put on some chocolat chippings and cocoa chipping, and hey preste it tastes a lot better. Does that mean the ice cream itself is better? 'fraid not.

Also, "several others"? I just see The_Pope. I'm not seeing a mass of people agreeing with you, sorry.

Obviously you didn't, or you're lying or your reading comprehension needs some work, because you didn't think to mention TLD and the Chinese mod and the other great total conversions that are so much a part of that M&B community.

Uh-huh. It's odd. You seemed to understand why I didn't mention them in your first reply in this thread, because I obviously purposefully refused to either play with or mention any modifications of the game. Now you've forgot? How...uh...convenient.

Bad example, MotB was sold separately from NWN2, they're separate commercial products with different entries in gamerankings.com and in top-10 lists.

If you sell a modification of M&B it's also a separate commercial product. You honestly think "they have different entries on gamerankings.com" is an argument?

You're reaching, there.

I bought both games with the intention to only play mods.

And that's fine.

Now imagine I'm a reviewer, I'm judging NWN 2. I give it a 10/10, then go on to completely burn the game's content, until at the end I say "but that doesn't matter, I played it all with mods and the mods have 10/10 content".

That would make sense...how?

I am saying you can judge games however you want but that your arguments to try to justify yourself and pretend that your standards as universal are stupid.

Actually, the problem is that my standard isn't universal. Nor have I claimed it is. Why do you think I actually explained why I won't discuss mods in the preview itself? To point out to people they're there, but I won't discuss them. People can then check out this fan-generated content for themselves, no problem. But I'm not being disingenuous, I'm not assuming people will understand I won't mention them by default, I'm not ignoring them wholesale.

In fact, I stated my viewpoint clearly, in a way no one could be confused about and thus being as honest and informative as I should, as a previewer. Your problem appears to be that by doing so I'm selling short the huge mod effort. But it's not my job as a pro to shore up the mod effort, it's my job to consider professional products. You may be incapable of grasping the difference between the two, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

Also, I'm not justifying anything. Why would I need to justify myself? To whom? I hope you're not honestly thinking any of your arguments are making me rethink my stance.