Mount and Blade: Warbands

[mkenyon]

Anyone been playing? Looking at my Steam profile, I've sunk 30 hours into this game in the past two weeks, which is huge for a person that averages 10-15.

I've barely dipped into the multiplayer. However, the additions to the single player campaign, although fairly simple, have made it a richer experience. There's now marriage, politics, and a slightly changed early game that makes it much more approachable. You can even start your own Kingdom now.

To me, this game really encapsulates what is so great about PC games. It doesn't have to cater to a broad audience through profit motive, and it doesn't need to be absolutely polished to have people enjoy the mechanics and overall game. Furthermore, it's a completely open and emergent world. Being able to create your own experience is a trait that seems unique to the video game medium. I love it.

[Erkki]

Yeah, I've been playing the demo a bit, I'm at level 4 or so. The beginning is indeed more approachable, but I'm not sure if I want to buy this when I spent only maybe 5 hours playing the first game.

I may go back and just play the first one... or is Warband basically everything in the first game + made a lot better by the stuff you mentioned?

[Sergey]

Is this game standalone? Is it worth playing if you didn't care too much for the original?

[F4T C4T]

Sergey, it is standalone but despite all the new bits it adds (which I think are great btw), it plays very much the same as the original so if you didn't care too much for that, I'm not sure you'll care too much for this one either.

I guess it depends what exactly you didn't care about in the original though.

[Garple]

Sorry to be this guy once again, but I want to ask: the original game runs decently on my laptop...has the sequel become much more extensive to the point that I probably can't run it (on an integrated card).

[mkenyon]

You'll be fine. Everything in the game is very scalable, and to be honest, it seems mostly CPU dependent rather than GPU dependent. I'm getting about the same frames from running the original release on a GTX260 as I am currently on my 5870.

Although the basic game is still the same, the additions in the game is giving me much more of that "just a few more minutes" syndrome because there are many more small objectives to complete than there were before. Before I'd get burnt out after about 15-20 hours of gameplay, but I'm still going strong on this play through.

Rather than an expansion, this feels like a (mostly) full release of the game where as the original release was simply a beta.

[Erkki]

Hmm... I'm getting close to level 7 and I like this more than the first game, but I don't want to spend 30 € (Steam price) considering that it's not that much different from the original, basically the same game with some added stuff

Maybe I'll wait for a sale.

[Erkki]

Oh well, I couldn't resist. Bought it immediately after the trial ended. I still feel a bit swindled, or almost as if I had payed twice for the same game.

[mkenyon]

Nice

You won't regret it.

[Erkki]

Don't know if it's just because I played differently, but I'm enjoying this game a lot more than the original Mount&Blade game I started some time ago.

I slowly started building my army and wealth, travelling from places and trying to make a profit from selling goods. Unfortunately, you'd really have to use a notebook or some other software to track prices. The game doesn't really make it easy. "Assessing prices" will point you towards random faraway cities, but if I want to make a specific route, it's hard to figure out what goods to bring with me. I wish the game supported it better.

I stupidly joined a war as a mercenary after having built up a band of ~40 men, and lost that group even more stupidly as I tried to ride too close by an enemy castle. It's not too difficult to build a new army, though (luckily you keep your money when you're taken prisoner and escape), but to get them trained will take some time.

I also lost the second joke of a band I built (mostly fresh recruits) but this time I'm going to try and stay away from large enemy troops and train them quickly on bandits and the like.

Some of the bandit-finding quests seem impossible though. I've already failed several and made my status drop

[Erkki]

I declare this game awesome, but probably not for everyone. Played for several hours straight yesterday and today evening and am finding it more and more fun.

I've been doing some espionage missions for a king, and though I failed to get them on my first try, luckily the game gives you enough time to complete them so that you can try again, even if it may take a long while to get back to the point where you had something that was required for the mission. In my case I lost all my Mercenary Cavalry but needed one, so I had to find lower ranked mercenaries that could be trained into cavalry. There are plenty of options for escaping from bad situations (I have "no quitting without saving turned on") even if you lose your army or some of your wealth.

[mkenyon]

Yeah, there's a lot of stuff that is just so awesome about this game. If only there was that level of polish...

In a way, I like a lot of the clunky mechanics, maybe it's my old curmudgeony PC gamer ethic. Having to write down the cities I need to travel to in order to sell goods properly, or even head towards if I'm looking for someone just tickles a part of me.

What I did this time around was completely change up the type of troops and playstyle I usually go for. Rather than a fully mounted army of Khergit and Swadians, I went for a full on norse with heavy archer army. For my character in previous games I went for mounted archer + two hander, this one I'm doing polearm + shield/1hander. Just that change significantly altered my experience in the game. The sight of baiting the enemy into a line of 50 Huscarls that all throw their axes and javelins at the same time is quite rewarding.

[Erkki]

Aargh. I was following the main army of my faction, almost a dozen Boyars (I am still a mercenary) and it rode RIGHT THROUGH a large enemy army. Then I was left to fight that army alone. Fucking ingrateful bastards.

If these kind of losses keep happening, the game should at least have a speedup button so I don't have to just watch myself riding somewhere and rebuilding my wealth/army.

[mkenyon]

There *is* a speedup button. You either camp, or if you are in a town/case you can "stay there awhile".

It'll put the game into fast forward mode. If you have a party member with a high training skill, you can train up troops fairly quickly.

[brkl]

Rather than an expansion, this feels like a (mostly) full release of the game where as the original release was simply a beta.

What it seems is that when they sold the original game's pre-release versions for cheaper (it got more expensive every version closer to release), they desided to shaft those early adopters and charge again for a slightly modified game. I got the original way back, before actual release. I lost interest quickly, though, so I haven't even played the release version.

[mikemariano]

Here are some review quotes!

"If games were women, Mound and Blade: Warband would be that girl with a hormone disorder that made her have kind of a beard. But like beard-girl, Warband has a really good personality and if you close your eyes when you kiss you can pretend that the facial hair is just a scarf or something."

"It is very similar to the Elder Scrolls games, except not even remotely technically groundbreaking."

"The complexity of the combat doesn't detract from the brutality and the feeling of impact that you usually experience when you swing your blade at some poor dude's face."

"Horse sound effects get a little annoying after a while."

All quotes courtesy of---well, you guessed it.

[Erkki]

There *is* a speedup button. You either camp, or if you are in a town/case you can "stay there awhile".

It'll put the game into fast forward mode. If you have a party member with a high training skill, you can train up troops fairly quickly.

That's not it, what I want is speeding up while travelling on the map.

[mkenyon]

Oh! That would be sweet. When you're traveling from Khergit to Nords, it does seem to take forever.

[AndrewArmstrong]

Ordered this, was playing the beta multiplayer a bit and liked it, enjoyable romp, but the thought of replaying a slightly improved singleplayer has me going - like Michalius I might well change my playstyle (I loved Swadia though...), depends what I feel like I guess. The thought of creating my own kingdom is bloody tempting though....*chuckles madly*

Hopefully there'll be a updated NPC guide somewhere though if the silly "don't like this team mate" thing is still there, was about the only thing that annoyed me vastly in the singleplayer until I found the "NPC relationship guide" everything else about the game was found easily through a mixture of trial and error (ie; massive crushing loss and defeat) and experience (food and money management was quite nicely built up).

[Erkki]

I finally gave the multiplayer a shot and it's really fun. But there's a limited number of servers where I have good ping and I've yet to find a really organized battle. It's mostly still messy, although not as much as the single player battles.

[Erkki]

I played the MP almost the entire day yesterday, but I suck at it. The only thing I'm even remotely good at playing are cavalry units, but there are only a few maps where playing cavalry is fun (Ruins, Field by the River). Ok, perhaps steppes also. And I can choose between about 5 servers where I have ping < 100 that aren't otherwise limited.

[Erkki]

Achievement unlocked: I have spent 100+ hours playing Mount & Blade. Earlier it was only single-player, but once I tried the MP I didn't go back, so most of it has been multi-player battles.

[Erkki]

Approaching 150 hours... god damn, I can't remember the last time I played one game for so long. But then again, I haven't played many multi-player games. I really like this one, and Red Dead Redemption will have to be really good to drag me away from it.

BTW. Giant Bomb has a quick look http://www.giantbomb.com/quick-look-mount-blade-warband/17-2414/

It's slightly annoying as it get's most of the facts wrong, but it gives a general overview of what the game is like. Oh, and if you haven't played the game and watch it, levelling up single guys is just one button press, not the level up screen that was shown (that would be unmanageable).

[Erkki]

Is anyone else here playing it? I've completely stopped playing the single player, but I've played ~150 hours of multiplayer. Scary. I think I've never played any multiplayer game that much before. No One Lives Forever may have come close.

[brkl]

I'm not really interested in playing the single player at all, but a Thumb army could entice me to buy this.