It was shortly after the initial release of the original Mount&Blade (2006) that I posted an article extolling its virtues. I was smitten with Mount&Blade and wanted the world to know how impressive this little game from Turkey was, created by an incredibly small team of only a handful of people. It’s one of those rare pleasures as a video game journalist, when you can take a new, unknown game by the hand and expose it to a wider audience. Low and behold, Mount&Blade began to find traction and before long, the game was being distributed by a proper publisher, received a retail release, and finally, after all these years, a sequel has emerged in the form of Mount&Blade Warband.
Once again, I am in love. It feels like the same girl I cherished before, but she has more to talk about, is in better shape, and has more depth. Oh, and 64 players can handle her at the same time, via multiplayer, the tramp.
Mount&Blade Warband Primer
Mount&Blade is strategy/action/RPG game unlike any other. In some aspects it feels like a medieval version of Grand Theft Auto, in that you can go anywhere and do whatever you want. In other respects, it feels like the Total War games, with epic battles depicted between two foes upon the battlefield. One can also find parallels between Bioware’s RPGs of old. Yet, despite similarities to other games, Mount&Blade is its own entity, a beautifully realized experience that has no peer or equal.
Mount&Blade casts you in the role of an up-and-coming warlord in the land of Calradia, a mammoth game world comprised of many factions. Once you have created a character by answering a few questions and adding skill points, you select a land of residency and begin your epic adventure from young upstart to, well, whatever you want to be.
Along the way, you will rise in skill, able to command more men (and women) under your banner. You will receive castles and villages to rule and improve as your standing rises amongst your people. You’ll wage war against roving bands of marauders, rescue hostages from the clutches of your opponents, break prisoners out of jail, fend of peasant revolts, siege castles, engage in political hijinks and try to make some special time with the ladies. Amidst all this, the game world is constantly evolving and changing as new political alliances are formed and new territories conquered.
Kill Everyone
There are so many wonderful elements that conspire to form a unified whole in Mount&Blade, but no element is more critical or outstanding than the battle sequences. This is the bread and butter of Mount&Blade, its single strongest aspect that, even four years later since the original release, has no competition.
Leading your army in battle is a thrilling, cinematic experience. Heading the charge while on horseback, your men flooding behind you with shouts of rage in their lungs, is one of the finer moments in all of gaming. When the two sides finally meet, and this after trudging through a rain of crossbow bolts and arrows, swords clash, horses fall and all manner of weapon are employed in a brutal engagement that can twist and turn by the second. Therein lies the true glory of Mount&Blade.
As your character gains in strength and power, you’ll have access to better weapons and mounts, all of which is reflected upon your character with an effective paper-doll system. So to will your army gain experience and increase their respective skills, rising up the ranks of their individual class type, from mounted knights to simple farmers with nothing more than a pitchfork to fend off the enemy.
Battles take place on randomized maps that mimic the general area you see from the overhead map, so if your battle begins in a forest, the 3D battlefield will be rendered as such. This means you can never really be quite sure as to what kind of terrain you’ll be dealing with, beyond a basic concept, as you could be facing high, sloping hills that will slow your progress. Your situation could be even more dire as you soon realize your army will have to go uphill while the enemy is poised for a quick, downward assault. This randomization within a defined variable means no two battles will ever play out the same, just one of many features that extends the playability of Mount&Blade considerably.
Mount&Blade Warband Multiplayer
The biggest addition to Mount&Blade Warband is multiplayer, a long-requested feature from the community that has finally become a reality. You’ll find plenty of game modes on offer, including standards like Capture the Flag and team deathwatch, plus a few interesting concepts like Siege.
Playing Mount&Blade Warband over the Internet has been surprisingly smooth, no small matter considering the game supports 64 players wailing on each other. Dealing with AI in the single-player campaign is one thing, but fighting live human opponents means you’re in for a real slugfest and the experience will be daunting and humiliating for new players, as you will get your ass handed to you by wily veterans. However, perseverance will pay off and you’ll soon find yourself felling opponents and, like the single-player, becoming hopelessly addicted.
Multiplayer is an important addition to the Mount&Blade universe and what you’ll find on offer is quite competent and rewarding, but I can’t help but feel far more could have been accomplished. Currently, Mount&Blade multiplayer feels like an aside, not the epic experience you find in single-player. I guess what I’m missing is that campaign feel, but instead of AI running around everywhere, I’d like to see human opponents and allies going about their business in a real-time world. Perhaps that is asking too much, but that seems like a reasonable, long-term goal for the developers of Mount&Blade.
The Rough Edges
Mount&Blade is not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination. It has a lot of rough edges that have never been smoothed with the passing of time. For instance, the overall interface remains unattractive and cumbersome. Text can be hard to read and is presented in windows that are far too large and ungainly. Everything from the characters sheet to the inventory screen looks half-assed and poorly designed. Nothing here breaks the game or makes it unplayable in any way, but it is the one area where Mount&Blade has always been weak.
In terms of graphics, Mount&Blade Warband looks considerably better than all previous versions, using a ton of new tricks from HDR lighting to increased textures sizes. Though it has received a nice graphical upgrade, certain parts of the game remain feeble to the eyes, namely the interior of buildings, which lack character or solid aesthetics.
Certain aspects of the game could use a lot more work, specifically the siege of castles, something Mount&Blade has long struggled with. It remains a frustrating interlude as you watch your men helplessly try to navigate a ladder so they can breach the walls, much to no avail as they become stuck, fodder for the hungry bowmen lining the parapet.
My Wishlist
What’s Mount&Blade Warband missing? For my money, I’d love to see a more blood. Mount&Blade is pretty cheap with the blood. I want buckets of blood. I want severed limbs and rolling heads. I want bodies flailing around on the ground, legless foes pulling themselves to safety with their hands. Simply put, Mount&Blade needs more carnage. It’s the one aspect of the game that falls very short of reality and I don’t see any technical reason why these things can’t be done.
While I’m on this subject, I would like to urge all video game makers to up their blood quotient in war-games depicting battles, whether it be Modern Warfare or Mount&Blade. Games have always been criticized for being too graphic; I’d rather see them critiqued for being too realistic.
As much as I love the single-player campaign, very little has fundamentally changed in Mount&Blade from previous versions. I’d like to see a much richer political environment that isn’t so easily manipulated by a devious player. Further options on managing and operating castles and villages would also go a long way in enhancing the economic realities of the game.
Basically, I’m just being greedy, because as it stands, Mount&Blade is a marvel and I love it, warts and all, just the way it is.
How much do I love Mount&Blade? Well, a version of Mount&Blade has been on my hard drive since 2006. In that time, hundreds of games have come and gone, deleted, never to be seen again. Dragon Age…played to completion three times, deleted, gone. Mass Effect 2…deleted, gone. Neverwinter Nights 2…deleted, gone. Yet, Mount&Blade remains. It appears it will be sitting on my hard drive for at least another 4 years.
