Mount & Blade: Warband Review (Hat8)
Mount and Blade: Warband is one of the greatest games ever made. It has some of the best melee & ranged combat in any game ever, great commander controls, a well crafted medieval world with lots of player freedom, and a huge modding scene. This lengthy review is only a basic overview.
The combat of Mount and Blade: Warband is excellent as it is easy to quickly understand, but difficult to master. The game has a large number of melee weapons that can attack from a variety of different ranges and from up to 5 different directions. The default setting is that right click slowly automatically blocks attacks from any direction, but for higher level play blocking should be set to either mouse direction or keys because players and higher level AI enemies use fake outs and attacks from angles with jumps + spins. Weapons include many different kinds of swords, scimitars, two-handed swords, axes, two-handed axes pikes, hammers, maces, spears, lances, and many different types of shields. Lances can be couched while on horseback to do insane amounts of charge damage and weapons work differently against different types of armor. Ranged combat also has alot of depth as bows can do more damage and be fired while on horseback, but require a large amount of skillpoints to be put into the Power Draw and Horse Archery skills to access their increased utility over crossbows. Crossbows lock aim in place and can be fired like snipers from the start, while bows require leveling the skill to reach that accuracy. There are also thrown weapons like knives, javelins and throwing axes that have their own complexities.
Mount and Blade is not just about fighting, but also about building and leading an army made up of many different kinds of units. The army command system is very basic, but it allows for skirmishing, flanking, rotating charges, and even hit & run tactics. By default commanding is done through the F1-F8 keys and the 1-8 keys with each key linked to menus that let you command different kind of units. Units and companion characters can also be rebranded to being different types of units. There are 6 different factions modeled off of historical medieval regions that each have their own specialized units and you can use any of them and even create mixed armies. Mount and Blade is probably the best game where you lead soldiers in battle.
Alot of attention has clearly been paid to developing Calradia. Before you start you have to build and design a character. Skill points, weapon points, starting items & reputation are allocated based on the many different backgrounds you pick for your character as they age up to adulthood. Gender affects how the points are allocated and how your character is treated throughout the game. Calradia is a patriarchal society that gives women a harder time, but marrying a lord can also give your character a fast pass to riches. The backgrounds can be mixed and matched and most are affected by gender. The game has alot of optional text for those who want to learn, but these traditions, economic lessons, peoples concerns, and conflicts all manifest as mechanics. Money can be made by killing bandits, trading goods between cities & villages, investing in manufacturing, doing quests, fighting in tournaments and more. Players can set any goals, from conquering the whole of Calradia with themselves as monarch to making a fortune as a merchant or installing a pretender on a throne.The game has companions that all have their own skillset, backgrounds and dramas with other companions. The sheer number of different party skills makes creating a balanced party a good idea, but picking characters you like is also an option.
Mount and Blade: Warband is a game that you can pour thousands of hours into without getting bored. Its limited number of skillpoints, large number of factions and political system justifies specialized characters and many different playthroughs. It has mods that fundamentally change the game and even represent epics the Sengoku Jidai, Viking Era, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and Lord of the Rings. Its eighteenth century combat mod had hundreds of players organizing into regiments for historical line battles and this eventually became its own DLC. This game has endless content for both singleplayer and multiplayer.