Genre: Action RPG
Developer: Tale Worlds
Released: 16 Sep 2008
Single player
Price: $29.99
Aesthetics – 7
Gameplay – 9.5
Technical – 8
Replayability – 9
Overall – 8.5
Mount & Blade puts you in the skin of an adventurer and hurls you into the medieval land of Calradia, which, incidentally, is chock-full of warring factions, mercenaries, and blood-thirsty bandits. It’s classified as an “Action RPG” but it is also, in great part, a combat simulator.
it has very advanced real-time combat. The best thing about it is that you swing your own weapon – that’s something that I value highly in games, full control. There’s no unrealistic magic or potions, no flashy active combat skills. It’s just you, the steel in your hand, and the enemy charging you.
Upon character creation, you choose your character’s life history from a few options in several steps, which will determine your starting stats, skills, inventory and weapon proficiencies. For instance, being the son of a hunter growing up in the steppes will grant you skill with a bow and arrows, and experience with horses.
Travelling on the world map
As you may have gathered from the name, horses play a large role in both travelling and combat. You will ride into battle most of the time – seriously, combat on foot is a chaotic whirlwind of steel and DEATH. Fighting upwards of two enemies at once is hard enough, if you get surrounded you’re as good as dead. Armor will reduce the damage you take considerably, and even stop weaker slashing attacks completely, but you’re never invincible. It can be fun, of course, but effective it is not.
A particularity of combat is that attack damage is heavily dependant on the speed of your weapon. If you swing at an enemy while backtracking away from them, your sword probably won’t be moving very fast when it makes contact, so damage is reduced. But if you’re running them down, you’ll do bonus damage. Now, if you swing a sword at an enemy while riding past them on your horse..you’re moving very fast and the attack is likely to do a whole lotta damage, often taking out troops in one hit.
Weapon proficiencies improve with use
Travel is done on a 3D world map, as a representation of yourparty. Other parties, be they warbands, raiders or bandits, are similarly represented, with a number to show the size of the group. NPC “bandit” groups and hostile warbands will chase you if they have the greater numbers, and run away if you do. Both the combat and the wilderness travel took some getting used to..the learning curve is a little steep, but it feels natural once you get the hang of it.
And then there’s the politics..you’ll definitely want to join a faction, because in native M&B, you can’t create your own faction. You could remain as a neutral trader or mercenary, but there’s only so much gameplay to get out of that. The real rewards are in faction wars, siege and siege defense, and getting your own land to manage.
Siege defense is a blast!
In many ways, M&B is like Morrowind with much more sophisticated combat. It doesn’t get much better than building and leading your own army into huge, epic battles, throwing orders with the command interface.
It has a mod-making community, too, and there’s something for every flaw that I have found in the game. Notably the lack of a central story, the inability to create your own faction, and the low amount of dialogue and quest variations. It even has third-party graphic engine, sound and animation improvements. One mod I tried had early firearms. The most fun I’ve had was setting up a large line of muskets and gunning down incoming infantry and cavalry.
Sunrise in Reyvadin
So, if this already innovative game had multiplayer capabilities, it would rule the genre as king. As it turns out, it already has a considerable community, and the “Warbands” expansion coming in Q3 2009 will enable massive 32-player battles. I honestly can’t wait.
