Strategyking92

User Score
8.8

Presentation - 7.0
Gameplay - 8.5
Value - 9.5

Mount & Blade is an indie game, first started by a Husband and Wife team. Now, I know this almost never sounds good, as it usually means some sort of cake/food making game. But Mount and Blade is a Medieval strategy/combat game. Yep, I bet you didn't see that one coming either.

As you start the main game, you get to choose to be male or female, who your father was, what your early life was like, how your young adulthood was like, and what made you go out adventuring into the world. This decides your early traits in the game.  You are greeted with a deep character customization feature afterwards, where you mostly just choose your skin color, and facial features. It goes really in depth in the face department, but you will most likely spend virtually the whole game with a helmet on your head, so it's a little unnecessary for it to go THAT deep.

Before I go any further, I would also like to mention that the game has a tutorial mode, and some instant action scenarios for when you just want to slaughter your enemies. There are only 5 of them though, but that's okay, because the real meat of the game lies in the main campaign.

As you can see in the background, in some parts of the battlefield troops will be more concentrated, while other areas won't be.

After you finish creating your character, you are plopped into a sandbox world, the world of Calradia. Five Nations Vie for control of the land, the Nords, the Rhodoks, the Khergits, the Swadians, and the Vaegirs. You can fight for these factions, help cities and towns, just go around attacking weakly guarded caravans, or become a mercenary. Another thing you can do is to help a claimant regain his throne, which would belong to one of the five factions. Your character is represented on the map by a small character on horseback. You can check your quests, view relations, check your army, and so on.

Missions in the game come from Taverns, the lords of the land (which are found on the map, or in castles and cities), and village elders. Combat usually comes with the missions. Such as killing a murderer, taking part in fighting tournaments, raiding caravans to start wars, following a general on the war trail, or capturing an enemy lord in battle so he could be used as ransom.

All of this is very cool, but noticeably low budget. But none of this can kill the actual combat. In Mount and Blade, you only use the wsad keys to move, the mouse wheel to choose your weapon, the spacebar to jump, the shift key to zoom, the right mouse button to use your shield and block, and your left mouse button to attack. You move your mouse in the direction to want to attack. Sounds simple, right? Well, it really, really is. But don't get me wrong, this is not a dynasty warriors type game. You command your troops using the backspace key and choosing your commands. Which is good, unless you're just using cavalry, then you just want to charge and get it all over with.

Ugh, who's on who's side??

I loved taking castles and stuff, but the sieges last too long, especially since you have to participate in each battle, or your troops get slaughtered, even if they are the best units in the game. The armor, weapons and horses are upgradeable for you and your companions, up to a point.

One of my other quips with the game is that going around the map feels slow sometimes. The game just.. sucks you in though despite this. You make your own goals, you decide when to stop.

One thing I need to mention before the end of this review: the mods. The mods are greatly supported, and sometimes make the game better than the original, since you cannot have your own kingdom in the main game, this was a big plus for me on the mod side of things.

A screen of one of the many mods out there for M&B.

 I have logged around 100 hours with this game, and plan to go back later.