Review Mount & Blade sucks

[JarlFrank]

PS: I always, and I mean always, regret posting on the Codex. I read the codex forums every single day, and have for years on end, but every time I post I regret it... which isn't meant as an insult but just as an observation.

Don't fight it. You have to embrace it. You can already feel the grip of the dark side. Don't resist.

 

[Severian Silk]

I was impressed with the game around v0.50 or so, but then very little happened in development.

 

[Amon Gesoto]

If they had put a little more depth into something other than combat, say city building/managing or quests, I think it would have panned out better, but as it is the only fun thing about the game is the combat. But because there's nothing to enhance the combat, IE story or quests, it becomes boring fast and there's nothing to off-set the combat, such as running a city.

 

[Dire Roach]

Mods will fix it, wait for the expansions/Enhanced Edition, etc., etc.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

If they had put a little more depth into something other than combat, say city building/managing or quests, I think it would have panned out better, but as it is the only fun thing about the game is the combat. But because there's nothing to enhance the combat, IE story or quests, it becomes boring fast and there's nothing to off-set the combat, such as running a city.

The main issue is there's no purpose. I mean, I'm running around killing Swadians because...? Sure, a bit of death and mayhem is fun but without any point... what IS the point other than to fulfil some kind of sadistic tendency? Okay, so I've taken over their castle. That's great. What was the point of that again though? Oh, combat is fun. Sure, the combat is fun but there doesn't seem to be any "winning". You never win the war (unless they did something about that in 1.0), just the endless battles.

It's like being faced with an infinite number of chess games. There's no end in sight. You just play for the sake of playing. After a while, there's nothing to sustain you. Even if you lose, all you do is play another game of chess (after being knocked "unconscious" and dragged around a bit).

PS: I always, and I mean always, regret posting on the Codex. I read the codex forums every single day, and have for years on end, but every time I post I regret it... which isn't meant as an insult but just as an observation.

Non, je ne regrette rien.

 

[mondblut]

The main issue is there's no purpose. I mean, I'm running around killing Swadians because...? Sure, a bit of death and mayhem is fun but without any point... what IS the point other than to fulfil some kind of sadistic tendency? Okay, so I've taken over their castle. That's great. What was the point of that again though?

And what was the point in Elite? You fly around from planet to planet, buying and selling stuff, shooting down pirates, in order to upgrade your cargo bay and weapons, so you could buy and sell more stuff and shoot down bigger pirates, in order to... what?

What is the point in Unreal World? You kill things so you could cook and eat them and survive to see the next week and kill more things so you could... so?

Funny thing is, most of you would agree that the best games are those which are played for the sole purpose of enjoying the process, not for the purpose of watching an ending sequence.

And while typical literary tools such as plot development, culmination and ending are common in videogames (and many kinds of games are unimaginable without those, maybe because their gameplay alone is a fucking joke, and nobody would touch them were they not a mere vehicle to tell a story), they are NOT necessary for every game in existence. A plenty of games, even whole genres of games, either don't set an ending to reach at all, or let the player set such a goal arbitrarily.

You should all realize M&B is NOT an RPG. It's a strategy/sim game with RPG-like character development and action combat. But just like many better strategy and simulation games, it doesn't demand of you to take over the world to the last hamlet promising to show an epic movie afterwards, but instead allows you to set your own goals and just enjoy the process as long as you want.

But funniest thing of all - for people who enjoy gaming such games tend to have much longer HDD life than any plot-driven ones.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Funny thing is, most of you would agree that the best games are those which are played for the sole purpose of enjoying the process, not for the purpose of watching an ending sequence.

Mount & Blade is missing simple mechanisms which would make it a lot more fun than the eventual tiring process of combat it becomes and the "looking for decent mods" it turns into.

Take the sieges for example. You get them only when you choose a side. But choose which side and why? And then you fight with the Swadians to take on the Khergit and when the Khergit are down to one town, you swap sides and do it again until they randomly declare peace with each other for no obvious reason. Or you take them over completely and... Nothing happens. Everyone still treats you like some insignificant bitch. As dagorkan said, do the quests and all you net yourself is a completely worthless reputation for a village that you'd have been better off sacking.

Even the trading system could be a whole lot better. There's no "asteroid mining" equivalent, you just run back and forth between the same towns until it bores you.

What is the point in Unreal World? You kill things so you could cook and eat them and survive to see the next week and kill more things so you could... so?

Survival is the point. The how you survive is the game aspect. UrW gives you a bunch of stuff you can try your hand at. M&B isn't about survival, it's about combat. It's got only one thing it does and that's combat. What's the point of the combat though? If I wanted to survive, I could just run away from all the war parties. As it is, the game leaves it open who you choose to fight. Pick on pirates, bandits or the war parties? Well, why should I choose to fight anyone? What's my motivation here? The kingdom is at war with... randomly chosen enemies depending on the time of day who may or may not be enemies for a long or short period of time.

A plenty of games, even whole genres of games, either don't set an ending to reach at all, or let the player set such a goal arbitrarily.

Sandboxes are good but there's really gotta be more than just the sandbox. Having a single-player story through it like GTA:SA would be a simple start. M&B on the other hand has factions and yet there's no point to them. Why not just have "everyone else vs you"? There's no difficult faction to get into which nets you some sweet bonuses, there's no choice available, just different names.

I think the problem is that M&B really only has the combat mechanic. Trading is passable but nothing really more than half-hearted. At least a sandbox like GTA:SA has various races, chases getting away from the cops and combat. M&B just has the combat which does get pretty boring eventually.

You play for as long as it takes you to realise there's no plot and until you eventually get sick of the combat and piss-poor AI of both your own group and the enemies. You laugh at sieges because of their lameness (everybody run up the ladder, single file!) and get sick of tired of having to kill everyone yourself. Even with high tactics, send your army in (IE: avoid combat altogether - which is an interesting option to have available in a combat only game) and lose 90% of your army when if you'd gone in with them, they'd mostly still be alive.

But funniest thing of all - for people who enjoy gaming such games tend to have much longer HDD life than any plot-driven ones.

I think the problem is I expected more for a game I bought... 3 years ago. That's plenty of time to get bored of the combat and move on for me. I was hoping the final release would have something worthwhile that would make up for the wait. As it is, I'm glad I bought it for $12 when I did because M&B simply isn't worth the $40 they're asking for it right now.

The fact that it tries to be more than a combat game is ultimately it's downfall. Why even bother having all those skills as if there's some kind of real choice available? At least an in-game purpose to the combat would make it interesting.

 

[HardCode]

The main issue is there's no purpose. I mean, I'm running around killing Swadians because...? Sure, a bit of death and mayhem is fun but without any point... what IS the point other than to fulfil some kind of sadistic tendency?

Erm .... eh ... isn't that the point of all action games. M&B is not an RPG. It's an action game with a sprinkling of other genres thrown into the mix. A little 1st/3rd Person Sworder, a bunch of sandbox, a smattering of RPG, a hint of RTS. But it's an action game. And I love it for what it is. Personally, the Codex News shouldn't cover it any more than they shouldn't cover Age of Empires or Counter-Strike.

You never win the war (unless they did something about that in 1.0), just the endless battles.

*SIGH* Just like all "good game journalists", people write about the game without actually playing it. Ever since 0.903, you could defeat a faction completely. Since 0.903 or 0.960, when you did so, the Lords of the other factions would go join other factions (like it or not). The faction you beat ceased to exist.

Why not just have "everyone else vs you"?

You could do that to yourself, if you'd choose. Just attack all caravans. They are all against you.

... and until you eventually get sick of the combat and piss-poor AI of both your own group and the enemies.

Again, "good game journalists" should actually play the games they write about. Please, qualify "piss poor AI for us all. Name on computer program, let alone game, that pits 100 up to potentially 1000 individual combat entities on-screen at one time, and handles combat enough to see that each entity is in fact individual and not just on AI script controlling a block of 100 men like in the Total War games. No other game exists that I've seen that does what M&B does in combat AI, for 100's of individual combat entities simultaneously in real-time. Just what is your point of reference for "piss poor"? If your own troops are acting "piss poor", learn the commands to lead them. They exist. Look at the Options --> Controls screen. Is the AI perfect? No. The day anyone programs perfect combat AI is the day the Nobel Prize gets delivered at their door, and military entities bid for their services.

 

[Fez]

Winning against a kingdom is anticlimactic and piss-poor. Even if you practically destroyed the nation on your own everyone still thinks of you as little more than a butler to fetch and carry. After a long wait you get a little floating text message in the corner (as you would for a damage report) saying that the kingdom is gone now. How dull. It is all done in a half-assed way (as is much in this game) that doesn't make it have any meaning or impact. The old kingdom's lords are shuffled and handed out like cards to the kingdoms left and you and the kingdom carry on as if nothing happened. Meh.

No story, no meaning or impact.

 

[mondblut]

Mount & Blade is missing simple mechanisms which would make it a lot more fun than the eventual tiring process of combat it becomes and the "looking for decent mods" it turns into.

Well, every game could be better than it is.

Take the sieges for example. You get them only when you choose a side.

Not any longer. In .960 you can attack any castle and town at will, sided or not. If you capture it, it turns into "rebel faction" of a race it belonged to, if you were unsided. You can technically usurp the whole world for yourself, though nobody would crown you as a rightful emperor, but the game warns about that early.

Or you take them over completely and... Nothing happens. Everyone still treats you like some insignificant bitch.

While I never had patience to wipe out an entire faction off the map, they used to treat me with awe long before that. After I took a couple of castles and a town from sandniggers and beaten each of their lords at least twice, they started talking to me with a lot of fear in their dialogues

As dagorkan said, do the quests and all you net yourself is a completely worthless reputation for a village that you'd have been better off sacking.

The quests are for the meek. They are mostly there to help one start and get some living while he rides a mule with a couple of peasants in his row. A lord with a domain and a host of 50 retainers wouldn't bother escorting cattle, when there are war parties to slaughter and castles to capture.

Even the trading system could be a whole lot better. There's no "asteroid mining" equivalent, you just run back and forth between the same towns until it bores you.

Well, so do most of privateer-type games. Buy expensive, sell cheap. Yes, it does bore you at some point of course. Any game does. But I find it appealing that a game allows to painlessly quit it whenever you feel you are no longer having fun, instead of taunting with "I got to know how it all ends" and "I must finish it and put a mental checkbox next to its title" feelings.

Most games with a plot are like boring movies. Long before the middle gameplay bores you to tears, yet you tread on, because you feel like you have to endure till the end. And M&B is like good porn. You start it whenever you feel like jerking off, and after you got your pleasure out of it, you quit without a second thought.

Survival is the point. The how you survive is the game aspect. UrW gives you a bunch of stuff you can try your hand at. M&B isn't about survival, it's about combat. It's got only one thing it does and that's combat. What's the point of the combat though? If I wanted to survive, I could just run away from all the war parties. As it is, the game leaves it open who you choose to fight. Pick on pirates, bandits or the war parties? Well, why should I choose to fight anyone? What's my motivation here?

And in URW, why do I choose to survive? What's my motivation not to curdle into a tight little ball and die? M&B is a game about medieval combat just like URW is a game about survival. If medieval combat does not interest you, why, just don't play it

M&B on the other hand has factions and yet there's no point to them.

What's a point of having different factions in most 4x strategies (except those few where sides are actually highly different)? Well, because it's fun, even if mechanically they are mostly same.

M&B just has the combat which does get pretty boring eventually.

Of course it does. However, by the time it gets boring, you already had many more hours of fun than any game seducing you with an endgame FMV could provide. And then, in some months, a new version or a major mod comes out, and you get back to it again. What else is needed from a game?

 

[Severian Silk]

I played the LotR mod which allowed you to completely defeat a faction. Well I did, and couldn't bring myself to play the game again it bored me so much.

Empire-building aspects (like Rome: Total War) might have made things better, and made you really feel like you were competing with an equal adversary.

 

[HardCode]

Winning against a kingdom is anticlimactic and piss-poor. Even if you practically destroyed the nation on your own everyone still thinks of you as little more than a butler to fetch and carry. After a long wait you get a little floating text message in the corner (as you would for a damage report) saying that the kingdom is gone now. How dull. It is all done in a half-assed way (as is much in this game) that doesn't make it have any meaning or impact. The old kingdom's lords are shuffled and handed out like cards to the kingdoms left and you and the kingdom carry on as if nothing happened. Meh.

No story, no meaning or impact.

I agree that even for a game without a story, defeating a kingdom should do something in the game.

What M&B needs are unique events that happen, but still geared towards sandbox play, that happen when the player does something major, such as defeating a faction. What would have been ideal in this case is something along the lines of introducing new NPCs that, like the player, would come to you for quests. The game engine is capable of handling encounters in that way. Of course, not just a simple, "I'll get you, the player, 4 Swadian Knight prisoners."

However, your actions within your faction do not go unnoticed. If you do well, you could be selected Marshall and then command the other Lords.

 

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

One thing which I think might go a long way to adding some degree of... ah... motivation, would be simply to implement death. If not for the player, then for companions and for lords/kings. I know I got somewhat attached to the companions I rode into every battle alongside, and if they were killed, it'd provide some motivation to fight against a faction. Same with killing lords - there were one or two lords who beat the shit out of me and abused me when I was a tender level 7 or so, and when I reached a higher level, I was glad that I could meet them on equal footing and get my revenge. But they just either escape, or get sold back to the faction, or get taken prisoner and then escape. Even if you destroy their faction, they just switch to a new one. What's the point?

 

[dagorkan]

One thing which I think might go a long way to adding some degree of... ah... motivation, would be simply to implement death.

Exactly. It's the single biggest mistake making (N)PCs (named characters) unkillable.

If not for the player, then for companions and for lords/kings. I know I got somewhat attached to the companions I rode into every battle alongside, and if they were killed, it'd provide some motivation to fight against a faction. Same with killing lords - there were one or two lords who beat the shit out of me and abused me when I was a tender level 7 or so, and when I reached a higher level, I was glad that I could meet them on equal footing and get my revenge. But they just either escape, or get sold back to the faction, or get taken prisoner and then escape. Even if you destroy their faction, they just switch to a new one. What's the point?

What I don't get is why they didn't even put death/serious injury (not just low HPs) as an option. Most players could still have switched it off or left it on default if default was no death.

You should try out Maw's Murder Mod, it's for an older version of M&B but it's the most worthwhile mod I ever played. Just going through a few battles you get a hell of a lot more out of it than fifty battles in Native because you know if you're careless/stupid/reckless or not aggressive enough there's a good chance your game will end (it's also Iron Man, no saves) or that at best you will suffer a serious set back (lose your lieutenants and best troops). You're a mercenary captain so you have to rely on the quality of your troops to survive to make money and complete quests. You can't expect to be have to kill the enemies yourself since it involves too much risk in the long run. Without good troops you're worth very little.

Maybe it's because you have to rely on your instinct you notice the other game flaws less. Also you tend to play fewer battles so the fun is spaced out more.

And when you die as you inevitably win, like Dwarf Fortress you think, "that was fun" and you can remember battles to justify wasting your time.

I know if I ever play M&B 1+ again it's going to be on Maw's Murder Mod or TLD, the default game has become worthless.

 

[dagorkan]

http://forums.taleworlds.net/index.php/ ... 794.0.html

 

[Zas]

I never played Mount & Blade before 1.003.
When I saw the reviews I was disappointed, but who trusts reviews any more?

But I played it anyway..


I think its definitely game of the year, and if good mods are released, then game of the decade.

Sure it has some flaws, but its so awesome that even its flaws become lovable.



If I rated this game I would give it a 10/10, because its epic, mind blowing and I haven't had so much fun playing a game since I can't remember.

I always thought people in this forum would like it

If RPG is about immersion, then Mount & Blade has redefined RPGs.

 

[Gragt]

If RPG is about immersion, then Mount & Blade has redefined RPGs.

More like IMMERSHUN amirite?

You should apply to Bethesda, I heard they want to replace Pete Hines.

 

[flabbyjack]

10/10, because its epic, mind blowing and I haven't had so much fun playing a game since I can't remember.

You, sir, are a scholar and a gentleman. Mount&Blade is fun plain and simple. It's a shame that the vast majority of actiony games can't even come close to the gameplay in M&B.

 

[HardCode]

I always thought people in this forum would like it

If RPG is about immersion, then Mount & Blade has redefined RPGs.

Now let's stop this crazy talk. M&B is a great game, with a smattering of RPG elements, but it's NOT an RPG.

 

[Talby]

After I took a couple of castles and a town from sandniggers and beaten each of their lords at least twice, they started talking to me with a lot of fear in their dialogues

You will see the fear in the orcs dialogues.

 

[flabbyjack]

*blah blah blah* M&B is a great game, with a smattering of RPG elements, but it's NOT an RPG.

My lvl 32 badass knight who controls half Caldria would like a word with you. He'll use his persuasion skill of course, then maybe swing by Praven to finish up a quest. Don't let the abundant amount of fun gameplay fool you, M&B is indeed an RPG.

PS - How to control half the map:
Join a rebellion, then you can conquer and appoint all the towns to yourself, give the villages and some castles to the fellow lords you will persuade. When you've succeeded in the rebellion, go ahead and piss some other countries off and take some more towns. Then quit the rebellion, join another kingdom(This step resets your faction relations), and reconquer the castles you appointed to your fellow lords. Congrats you control half the map.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Then quit the rebellion, join another kingdom (This step resets your faction relations), and reconquer the castles you appointed to your fellow lords.

Choice and consequence in action!

 

[overtenemy]

OUUGH

Mount and Blade does suck, but for entirely different reasons. There's a much better review here: http://ouugh.blogspot.com/2008/09/less-mounts-more-boats-loser.html

 

[flabbyjack]

Then quit the rebellion, join another kingdom (This step resets your faction relations), and reconquer the castles you appointed to your fellow lords.

Choice and consequence in action!

Damn straight it's choices & consequences! They don't keep track of your faction relations for nothin'! But I really like how in certain circumstances(Like when pledging fealty) C&C gets reset, it's a nice feature. Other games haven't needed such a feature because all the C&C is scripted(Like the witcher) instead of having sides. A game that could benefit from such a feature would be Stalker : Clear Sky, EG - if you wanted to quit the stalkers and join the bandits.

 

[Chefe]

Re: OUUGH

Mount and Blade does suck, but for entirely different reasons. There's a much better review here: http://ouugh.blogspot.com/2008/09/less-mounts-more-boats-loser.html

They spread their message of the single God far and wide because one god is all a casual can handle. They dumbed down complex religion everywhere, until only a few survived. Regrettably, Norse Paganism was not among those few, and as a result the entirety of Viking culture declined to something akin to Mount and Blade.