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A medieval RPG with a taste of Age of Empires - Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Quick Review

4K View2022-10-29

One of the first games I played as a child was the 1999 real-time strategy title Age of Empires II. The campaign allowed me to explore medieval history and experience the stories of some of history’s greatest military leaders, like Joan of Arc and Genghis Khan. Though it’s set in a fantasy world rather than a real time in history, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord provided a similar feeling. Instead of playing historical leaders, though, I created my own hero and went on an adventure to shape history the way I saw fit.

THE STORY

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is set on the fictional continent of Calradia a couple of decades prior to the events of Mount & Blade: Warband. The Calradic Empire is in decline following the mysterious death of its emperor. A three-way civil war has broken out between factions vying for the empty throne, plunging the continent into further chaos and bloodshed. The player-created character begins their adventure in the middle of that mess.

PLATFORMS

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S—though notably it’s only just launched on consoles, while the PC version was available in early access form for a couple of years now. I played Bannerlord on the Xbox Series S, with no major issues encountered aside from minor lag when switching from the gameplay screen to menus.

TIME PLAYED

I played Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord for six and a half hours, which is definitely a short time for a game of this scope and size. Still, I was able to create a clan, explore most of Calradia’s western region, and complete a handful of missions in that amount of time.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Combat. Combat in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is marvelous. Players can manually swing attacks and block in four different directions. That means that when I was getting attacked, I had to block appropriately in the direction of the blow and return strikes of my own at the right moments. Winning encounters requires skill, precision, and patience, and when you add in the challenge of mounted combat, it’s even more complicated. Thankfully, the game does a great job of telegraphing why and by how much your attacks missed, and I should know—I missed an awful lot!

• Exploration. Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord has such a massive map that traversing a short part of it takes a considerable amount of time. A useful fast-forward button makes exploring Calradia much more comfortable and less time-consuming, though. That said, the game’s expansive world is one of its massive strengths, with each new city, forest, and battlefield providing new wonders to uncover.

• Character creation. Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord features an extensive, intricate character creation system. In fact, there are so many options that I was a little overwhelmed at first, but I appreciated being handed all the tools I needed to create whatever avatar I imagined. It took me a little while to get used to all the settings and adjustments, but eventually, I found myself enjoying the process of creating my perfect warlord. All said, I spent nearly an hour stuck in the customization menu, tweaking all the settings to make my character look as badass as the heroic deeds I was hoping to perform.

WHAT SUCKS

• Tutorial. Although Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord’s tutorial taught me some of the basics of the game, I was completely clueless on other fundamentals for hours, left to figure out how to properly move forward on my own. In my first go at the game, I accidentally waged war against multiple factions, ran into some brigands and died, and spent twenty minutes trying to figure out how to heal my character. By hour three or so, I felt like I grasped the mechanics and flow of the game enough to actually enjoy it, but I wish the game had helped me along a little better.

SHOULD YOU PLAY IT?

Yes, but you’ll need some time on your hands to truly enjoy Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. This game requires your attention; in fact, time itself serves as a mechanic, with the fragile state of the continent of Calradia and the balance of power between factions shifting continuously as I explored. That level of immersion and realism to how the game progresses can be quite entrancing, but it also requires some serious real-world time investment to witness how everything plays out.

💬 Have you played any medieval history games? If so, what’s your favorite title and why? Reply in the comments!

Mentioned games

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

9.5

SandboxHistoricalActionHorsesStrategyFirst-PersonRealisticRPG

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Comments

Resuu

i played M&B Warband on my highschool days and just yesterday i picked this gem again since i heard that it left the early access and to my surprise they did better, although some QoL are missing that can be addressed by using community mods to ease out the gameplay and bring better featurer out of vanilla. will continue to play this and see what bannerlord can offer ~ thanks for the post ! <3

2022-11-01

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