Gamertell

Title: Mount & Blade
Price: $39.99 from most retail outlets
System(s): PC
Release Date: November 03, 2008
Publisher (Developer): Paradox Interactive (TaleWorlds)
ESRB Rating: “Teen” for Alcohol Reference, Blood, Mild Language, Violence and Mild Suggestive Themes
Pros: Fun, intelligent, a lot of action, highly addictive, isn’t too demanding in terms of system specs
Cons: Difficulty can be unforgiving especially at the start. Hit detection occasionally makes absolutely no sense. It will make you miserable if you have little patience.
Overall Score:  One thumb up and one sideways; 82/100; B-; * * * out of five.

Mount & Blade is a bit of a paradox with the way it is set up. It’s not a hardcore gamer’s game and it isn’t a casual gamer’s game. Halting somewhere in the middle, it’s a bit of an acquired taste with a simple story that mixes Elder Scrolls character building and the Medieval II: Total War game play.

You’re a nameless hero caught on a continent caught in the middle of a massive war. Now it’s your choice on how you want to play. It’s time for you to make a name for yourself.

Ride to Battle

The political structure and nature of medieval warfare is very intelligent. The story, since it’s all politics and warfare, follows suit with the level of intelligence of the game play. The game is also very customizable, allowing you to increase or decrease everything from general difficulty to enemy combat AI just as easily as some other games allow you to make graphics changes.

The game isn’t demanding in terms of the required system specs. Some people who have it have been able to play it on a computer that is was top of the line about five or six years ago without graphics lag. So you should be fine if you don’t have the best of the best computers nowadays. If you want everything optimized to have the ridiculously large epic battles, though, you might run into some lag when hundreds of troops appear on the screen.

The game in its entirety is fun, though it is an acquired taste. You either love it after the first hour or so of playing it or you absolutely hate it. However, if it does grip you (or can get past an initial negative reaction), you’ll be finding an addictive game that won’t even let you go after the end of the story.

Part of the reason is that there are multiple mods that allow for a new sight on the world of Calradia. That is by far the best thing about this game. Making of free mods is actually encouraged and are posted on TaleWorlds’ Official Mount & Blade forum. Just look in the Cartographer’s Guild sub-forum for some of them.

We’ve Lost It

With the good out of the way, here’s the bad. Even though this game isn’t necessarily a hardcore gamer’s game, it can get quite difficult rather fast. Occasionally you get attacked by raiders, looters, cut-throats, highwaymen, what have you, before you’ve even reached the first town to recruit people into your forces. At which point it’s one against six and the only advantage you have is being on horseback. Then again, that advantage can be rather short lived if the opposition has quite a few troops with ranged weapons (like short bows, long bows, crossbows and, in the case of one of the mods, pistols). So difficulty will drive players crazy and make it hard to get into.

There’s also a problem with friendly AI. In a big battles they can get in the way which stops you on a dime. If you’re in the middle of a big battle, friendly AI’s immobility can kill you.

The renown system, even though it’s pretty cool, doesn’t really make much sense in the greater scheme of things. You gain renown through completing jobs, much like the Morrowind and Oblivion, but you also get renown for winning battles. Sometimes the amount of renown you gain from any one battle is completely arbitrary since one battle where you have a battle advantage might give you less renown than a later battle with the same advantage.

So hit detection is a bit of a problem, though looking at the whole product, it’s pretty ignorable. Sometimes you hit and it registers as a miss. Sometimes you miss and it registers as a hit. Sometimes an enemy can have his back to you guarding from an ally’s frontal attack and when you attack, you’re the one who is blocked. Sometimes the speed bonus for damage is recorded but it still registers as a miss since it was a hit and wasn’t blocked but it just didn’t seem right to kill that one enemy just yet. Then there’s the occasions where an enemy’s far miss becomes becomes so painfully accurate you’re knocked out, ending the battle.

When in Doubt, Charge

Mount & Blade is a pretty good game. You just need to have the patience to get into it.

Site [Mount & Blade]