Codex Review A Long Hard Look at Mount & Blade

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Armagan; Mount & Blade; TaleWorlds

The final retail release of Mount & Blade has been out for a while now, so what better time than now to give it a long hard look:

Yes, it seems that despite all the trade caravans running about the place, you are the single driving force behind the entire economy. Of course the trade skill helps reduce purchase prices significantly but as you really need money to get the decent equipment (which unlike most games, you'll have to buy rather than find from killing stuff) you need a lotta cash. Where do you get cash from in a world that has none? How am I supposed to make that kind of money if I can't sell any of my expensive goods to anyone? More to the point, how can an item be worth 80,000 denars if no-one on the planet even has that much cash to pay for it? It's like selling a loaf of bread for a gazillion dollars. It's asinine.

[...] That leaves you pretty much making your own story up. You'll join a Faction and decide that the Rhodoks will pay for defeating Lord X in battle and so after them you go. You'll gain the support of your Khan and get elected as War Leader. You'll call the other Lords to your aide and you and groups of other War Parties will ride into enemy territory to lay waste to all before them. This is the meat of Mount & Blade and it's quite fun. However your battles will almost always result in victory and with a bit of luck, the Khan may even reward you with a Town, Village or Castle for your efforts.

... and like all rewards in Mount & Blade, they're entirely worthless too.​

Read the rest (and there's a lot of it) here...

 

[SlavemasterT]

Didn't read the some of the beginning and epilogue, but read most of it, and it pretty much captures my own experience with M&B. I got it back it was a $14 beta, and I definitely felt like I got my money out of it over the years. Shit, I hadn't really thought about it, but I guess I have played it for years now, on-and-off, which says something about it.

I share your frustration with the limitations of the game, though, especially as far as depth of kingdom management goes. A couple months ago I tried girding myself for a complete conquest of Caladria (like you seem to have achieved), but finally ran out of steam because there just wasn't any reasonable macro-management of the war effort going on, just an endless series of small or mid-sized battles that didn't really have serious consequences for the enemy. Eventually I got sick of running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to save all of the castles and townships that my allied lords seemed incapable of protecting.

Still, it is a fun game. It's kind of like Morrowind for me, in that I enjoyed it a lot and sunk a lot of time into it, but would love see a sequel that increased the depth and intelligence of the experience. Sadly, given the inordinate amount of time they spent unnecessarily sprucing up the graphics in the later stages of development, to the apparent detriment of other (more important) aspects of the game, I suspect any sequel will be on par with Morrowind's.

Oh, and I think you can scroll around the map using the awsd keys.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I only read parts but those reminded me what it's like to play M&B. It's horribly cut and dried but I enjoyed it a lot.

 

[racofer]

Holy text tsunami batman!

 

[Morkar Left]

I couldn´t read the entiry text but at least most of it. I can really understand your experience with M&B.
I wish they had implemented a storyline like storymod. With a plot the bad gamemechanics wouldn´t suck so much.
But i have to say i still really enjoy the game. I have bought it as a beta for 15 $ but even 30 $ are worth the money compared to the time i spent with the game (and i still spend).
You could have wrote more about the mods out here like Native expansion and Sword of Damocles (which both greatly improve the gameplay in the longterm) or just the graphic improvements.

 

[AlaCarcuss]

You could have wrote more about the mods out here like Native expansion and Sword of Damocles (which both greatly improve the gameplay in the longterm) or just the graphic improvements.

Yeah, isn't M&B really just an engine for modders? That's the impression I got from it anyway.

They've supplied the world, combat engine, ambience/atmosphere, stats engine, economy etc. Now it's up to the community to turn it into a game?

I don't know, I've only been following it from afar and checking the huge amount of mods already available for it to see if there's anything that interests me, because I was aware that the vanilla game was pretty shit apart from the combat.

 

[sqeecoo]

Good review, very fair. You did miss a few things though:

You can influence wars: some of the more "dishonorable" lords (the ones than can be won over to a rebel's cause through promises of riches) will occasionally say they are dissatisfied with the peace and that you should "preemptively" attack a faction. So you get a quest to start a war. And guildmasters in the towns will sometimes give you quests to end a war and stop the suffering. Both quests are fairly hard.

Also, I think trading is done quite well, I can't think of a game where it's done better. The lack of money at the vendors is a problem, but they usually have a good item you can buy, and there are usually several towns that will buy what you are selling at high prices. There is a nice guide on the taleworld forums.

About being a jack of all trades - I don't actually find that unreasonable, realistically speaking. Also, character creation is not so much a question of "what skill should I raise" as picking one of the three basic builds: the knight (high riding, powerstrike, ironskin, leadership, good athletics and auxillary skills), the horse-archer (high riding, horse archery, powerdraw and almost nothing else - fucked on foot, and much less durable than the knight), or my favorite character, the footsoldier (you need every point you can get, and all the player skill you can muster - which just makes combat more interesting - but if you are good, you can kill way faster than the former two), and doing your best to optimize it your chosen build.

I also don't think your character ever becomes a demi-god in the latest versions. Before the final release, I could solo infinite amounts of enemies. But in the latest version the AI is improved and soloing is still doable but not practically or consistently possible. The AI also does a pretty good job with formations now.

Basically, the game kind of sucks rpg-wise (but is actually an pretty good sandbox, and unprecedented, though limited, in some features like politics and conquest), and after a while you ask yourself "what's the point?". There is none (well, you do get a shitty "you won" screen if you kill all opposing factions).

But up to that moment, it's a huge, huge amount of fun. As in "I haven't had so much pure fun in a game since I can't remember when". And not just silly or blood-pumping fun, like a shooter. You do have to think, both in and outside combat. And after a while when the game is no longer stale, you can play it again, especially when you find an interesting mod.

 

[DefJam101]

One other complaint I will make about it though is that you can't scroll it. You seem forever stuck with your horse and rider in the middle and can't simply duck left or right to see what cities are out there, instead having to rotate the map up or down or zooming it in and out to try and see that way.

This is incorrect. You can scroll the map using the WASD keys.

 

[DefJam101]

I'd taken the Throwing Axe in my leg. It looked kind of funny sticking out and that one hit had sapped most of my health, but I was still alive. The horse wasn't though. Running through their lines turned out to be a bad idea. My horse had gone down and I was in bad shape. Fortunately, there was some distance between myself and the men who were now approaching me on foot.

And run he did.

Nice review, DU.

 

[Rhalle]

Nice review. I must say that I feel exactly the same way about the game that you do.

I finally started playing it about a week ago and I'm completely hooked.

It's the most fun I've had with a game in a long time.

 

[Masterr]

Nice review. I must say that I feel exactly the same way about the game that you do.

I finally started playing it about a week ago and I'm completely hooked.

It's the most fun I've had with a game in a long time.

+1
_________________
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” (c) Confucius gilf dating

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Nice review. I must say that I feel exactly the same way about the game that you do.

I finally started playing it about a week ago and I'm completely hooked.

It's the most fun I've had with a game in a long time.

+1
_________________
“Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.” (c) Confucius gilf dating

-1 spambot.

Whitest Kids U Know is such a cool show though.

 

[Saxon1974]

Mount & Blade was big fun. I think I played it for a month straight.

For all the games flaws, its still a heck of alot of fun and one of the best games I have played in a long while.

I salute the dev's for going something different.

 

[Burning Bridges]

I agree it is a lot of fun, but it could have been so much better. Best combat system on the whole damn planet, but: campaign somehow shitty executed and UI simply inappropriate for a commercial piece of software.

 

[Forest Dweller]

DU have you played any Total War games? While reading your review and I couldn't help but think of them (and how you might like them).

Yeah I know, you don't ever control anyone directly, but the games seem to have a lot of what you were looking for based on that review. Just a thought. And the battles ARE fun.

 

[Excommunicator]

It is true that it is basically a platform for modding efforts. The original game is very clearly lacking, and there are many high quality mods out there, each of which are capable of providing as much fun again as the vanilla game due to all the extra content.

Nothing particularly brilliant about the game but it has a lot of basic, very good elements that together create a very strong foundation for interesting sandbox-style playing.

Look forward to seeing what they can do with a Mount&Blade 2.

 

[GarfunkeL]

They fixed some of DU's problems with Warband, the stand-alone expansion.

BTW, you can use WASD to scroll the map independently. Or maybe it was arrow keys? Anyway, it is possible. And you make money by betting on yourself in tournaments and from ransoming lords.

 

[deuxhero]

For M&B, very much worth the 5 bucks I payed for it on Amazon. Melee combat is fun (though allowing you to hit more than one person at once would be a big improvement...). Empire creation is pretty un-involved though.

The 1866 mod is getting a new version this month. The current version was pretty fun and played a lot different from standard M&B (easily my favorite of the mods I played).

 

[Black]

Long and hard, DU? Trying to get Jaesun in here?