Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord

Introduction

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord (Bannerlord for short) is a medieval life simulator/RPG/sandbox about, and let me quote the steam store description:

Explore, raid and conquer your way across the vast continent of Calradia, making friends and enemies along the way. Raise your own army and lead it into battle, commanding and fighting alongside your troops in the thick of the action.

Basically it’s a game that lets you be whoever you want and do whatever you want within reason of course. Fair warning, Bannerlord is really light on story, this is the type of games where you make your own stories about the adventures and challenges that you face.

Questions you might have if you're interested in playing it

What is it exactly that you do in the game?

Like I mentioned before, Bannerlord is the type of game that is more focused on the sandbox and simulation side of their gameplay rather than in the RPG. Sure this game offers you a deep character customization with dozens of background stories and classes, each one with a playstyle associated with them. Along with this there is the classic stats, gear and crafting system expected in modern RPGs. But the whole point of the game is for you to look for your own fun looking for adventures and sometimes misadventures in the huge open world map that it has.

I personally played as an archer, the charming son of a merchant, and I spent most of my time with the game going around raiding towns and castles in order to get more resources to raid bigger towns and castles. But I had seen people doing pacifist runs of this game or joining factions and climbing their ranks to become the emperor of the whole world. My point stands, this is the type of game where you make your own fun and the sky's the limit on what you can do with the mechanics that the game offers you.

Will it make my eyes bleed?

It looks a bit dated in some places and decent in others. For example, the top down view of the open-world map looks incredibly bland and simple. Maybe it’s just me who compares it to the Total War games, but the terrain textures and the map density feel like something from the early 2010’s. The game starts looking decent when you engage in 3rd person gameplay. The armors, NPCS and buildings don’t look so bad, a bit dated for modern standards but since this is an AA size game I will give it a pass.

Something that I love from this game are the animations that the characters do during combat. You can feel the weight and impact behind all the attacks. It’s something hard to describe with just words but it helps the combat feel great and like I said before, it’s my favorite part of this game.

Historically Mount & Blade games never were “good lookers” and this game is a huge improvement over the previous installment. But I honestly believe that for the $50 that this game asks for, it should have looked way better.

Does it have a good story?

Doesn’t apply. This game virtually has no story.

Does it have replay value?

Tons of it. From the multiple combinations of back stories and stats that you can get, to the random encounters that you can find in the open-world and the multiple weird and niche playstyles and builds that this game supports. You easily can get dozens maybe hundreds of hours out of this game.

Does it run well?

No complains on this from me on this front. I maxed out all settings at 1080p and got a smooth 60 FPS all the time. I didn’t find any major bugs or glitches in my 30 hours play through of this game.

Is it fun?

Yes, but only if you are willing to tank through the inherent jankiness that his game has.

So what is Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord?

It’s probably the best medieval life simulation that lets you siege castles that exists on steam to date. But it is also a game that looks somewhat dated and has a huge learning curve. The amount of amazing and deep mechanics that Bannerlord offers you is sometimes overwhelming. From the whole banner system that gives buffs to you and your army, to how complex the diplomacy and trading systems are and how it lets you do all kinds of crazy and fun stuff… this game sometimes amazes me. There is simply too much to learn and do. This is a good problem to have in your game, Bannerlord luckily has a tutorial that explains the base mechanics of the game, but it is lacking in some aspects. I had to look for guides to understand enough of some mechanics to not get myself humiliated on starting areas.

Something that I hear a lot when someone mentions the Mount & Blade games is how “fantastic” the combat system is and well… it’s going to depend on what you expect of a modern RPG combat system. I can admit that (like most of the mechanics of this game) it has a somewhat stiff learning curve and it has a lot of complexities that makes it deep and strangely addictive. I also mentioned before how the animations give it an extra feeling of “weight” and “impact”, but I can’t ever shake up the feeling that it never really clicked with me. I think it’s because it’s slower than most modern action RPGs out there but I’m not quite sure.

For me, the moment that I understood why this game is so widely praised despite its shortcomings was when I was besieging a huge castle and I found myself in the middle of my army giving them orders and trying not to die. This is not the type of game where you can fight 5 to 10 enemies at once, in Bannerlord you have to be tactical and smart in order to beat just one enemy and watching the whole carnage around me… it felt real… it felt like I really was there. Bannerlord is probably the most immersive game that I have ever played. It encapsulated perfectly what it is to live in the middle ages with all their ups and downs and never forces you to do anything. This is a niche experience that you can’t find anywhere else.

Music and Audio

Does it have a good soundtrack? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_ksqhX_Rdc It’s all orchestral songs that aren’t that catchy or memorable. The OST is not particularly good or bad, but it gets the job done.

Pros

Deep combat system.
Fun and complex sandbox mechanics
It’s the best sieging simulator out there.
Great RPG mechanics.
Amazing mod support. Everything on my dislike list can be fixed with mods.

Cons

It’s overall janky gameplay.
No story at all.
The graphics are a bit outdated.

Conclusion - Is it worth the money?

Chances are that if you like the Mount & Blade series you already own this game and you have several hundreds of hours of play time in Bannerlord. So… If you like games like the Total War series and you don’t mind janky games that look like the early 2010’s… Buy Bannerlord on sale… It’s a game that offers you an experience like no other game on steam has but… $50 is a hard sale for me. At the time of writing this review, Bannerlord gets regularly updated and the devs constantly add more content… I like the game but it’s not quite worth the $50 price tag.

This is Fun.

Rating: 8/10