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When Diplomacy Meets Action RPG!
321 View2022-11-02
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is a strategy action role-playing video game developed and published by TaleWorlds Entertainment, and co-published by Prime Matter. It is a prequel to Mount & Blade: Warband, a stand-alone expansion for the 2008 game Mount & Blade. I've personally have not played mount and blade back in ‘08 so coming into mount and blade 2 was new but familiar since I have played other strategy games built like it back on PS2 but What made me fall in love with mount and blade 2 was the actual gameplay experience.
Bannerlord's main story is very thin, but revolves around finding the remnants of an ancient and symbolic banner – then deciding whether to use it to finish off the empire or take the banner to reunite its fragmented territories. The story is literally finding your kidnap family but in between all of that is conquering the lands while handling your diplomatic skills and war skills. Bannerlord qualifies as a sandbox game because of how you rise to power is largely up to you, the player and whether you trade fortune, becoming a famous mercenary, or working from inside one of the eight kingdoms. From there it's all about conquest in the name of your chosen nation – or throw that out the window and start a faction of your own.
This game I believe excels at the nice beautiful mixture of Strategy Games and as well as action role playing games. Most of your strategy brain cells will fall under the overview of the world when deciding on what's your next move. When you do arrive at towns or get into battles the game will switch from your usual RTS board game overview to a 3rd person view. Before you jump into the world of Mount and Blade, you'll have to go through an extensive character creation that will dictate how good your starting out point from choosing where you grew up all the way to whatever actions you have done during your childhood, adolescence and young adulthood when it comes to stats.
Once your character is made and there back stories are finished you'll get thrown into the world which your main job is to find out where your family has been kidnapped and now it's just you and your brother. You can play the game as political person which can get boring over time since the world is a bit more bland by itself. It's better to be a leader and just fight about anything you see haha but Not quite pretty much all the Looters and Bandits you'll come across you can throw hands with. That pretty much the game with just a bit more spice added to it. The combat is a bit of Strategy since spamming attacks don't work too much as you would think and some times the enemies can be predictable but you'll get your block/shield destroyed if you block too often.
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord roundly excels because it lets players be whatever they want to be and rather than penalize those choices, instead makes players own those decisions and provide a peerless theatre for them to thrive as the perfect Lord. The NPCs can be buggy sometimes and be a bit uncanny but it got old fast and didn't bother me too much when playing. The animations feel stiff when watching the NPCs talk. If were comparing from the older game to now it looks as if the game hasn't changed but received a massive graphic push and some changes for the story and the world AI that makes the world go round. I talked about this in my tip video for this game but
The amount of mountain bandits that travel at night is insane. Please do not travel at night unless you are well equipped for being attacked as well as Bandits and Looters tend to increase in multiple groups at night and most of them travel in singular groups during the day and Namely stealing from cities. When you do get stopped by bandits even there animation feels way too buggy but its a buggy mess and i still love the game.
My verdict is this game is grindy and difficult but it's fun and I love the constant switching between tactical and action. Out of the few hours I put into this game I can genuinely say it's a fun game. It is hard for me to compare this to the 08 mount and blade but I did have a great time. The large scale fights that can play out is crazy especially on your travels when you can go up against 20 or more bandits or even raid camps for more loot. Currently Mount and Blade is on steam right now on sale for $40 if it's something you looking to pick up then you can. With this review i was able to clock in about 4 hours for this review which is literally nothing and i barely scrapped the surface of the game but finishing the campaign will take you 70 hours at most and that's being nice if you don't die and get dragged around and have to keep starting fresh like i was.
Just make sure you have good inventory management, decent armies, use the encyclopedia to help you learn more about the world of mount and blade and you'll be able to survive the world of Bannerlord.
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2025-04-05