Hi there gamers, today I am going to review Mount and Blade Warband! The game was developed by “TaleWorlds” and published by “Paradox Interactive“.
For those who don’t know, it’s a strategy/action role-playing, a medieval game where you conquer villages, castles, and even towns with your character and his army.
You can choose a Kingdom that already exists, or create your own. You can play single-player and multi-player.
So I do hope you enjoy my Mount and Blade: Warband review and I will analyze the good and bad aspects of the game so stay tuned!
Calradia, Here We Go!
Before you start the game, you must create your character and choose his path.
I like this part, but they shouldn’t put such a long text on the “intro” and on the merchant quest either, in my opinion, because in that way, makes it a bit boring, although you can skip the dialog without reading it. Tell me in the comments what you think about this.
I really liked the feature of being able to change the shape of the face, the hair, the beard, and almost everything in your character’s body to the way you like. Not forgetting you can name your character too and also attribute different points to his abilities!
After creating your character, you are asked to choose a Kingdom: Swadia, Vaegirs, Kergit, Nords, Rhodoks or Sarranid. These different Kingdoms are rivals and are always battling each other to gain leadership over the others on the Calradia Terrain.
After this comes the “merchant quest”, where you will help him find some traitors in the capital town, this being where you choose your kingdom. After you help him, he gets banished from the Kingdom and you can start your campaign! Although this mission isn’t mandatory, it’s nice if you do it because you will gain some experience and money.
World Map Mode:
Ready to buy the game? click on the image and also have more information below about this:
In the image you see above, the game is in world map mode. It’s in this mode that all your choices will reflect the most. You can choose to besiege/pillage one simple village and the other enemy Kingdoms catch you in the middle of it.
This simple example is just for you to know, that you need to do the right choices at the right time. I like this mode a lot, it’s very well-made and the map is very large.
The map has three different kinds of structures:
- Villages:
That most of the time are poor because everyone is raiding them, due to only being protected by villagers. They are not very capable of fighting soldiers and horsemen.
And you aren’t able to put soldiers, or any kind of army inside to help protect them, but you can rush your way when it’s being raided and, if you’re in time, you can stop the raid. I personally think they should have added better protection to the villages.
You are going to use the villages to recruit men so that later, they will become great soldiers. You will have to have a good trainer on the team and it could be a companion or your character.
- Castles:
They are always close to a village. If you conquer a Castle, you will also conquer the village next to it. If you visit a friendly castle, you can enter the courtyard or the Lord’s Hall. Sometimes the owner of the Castle, or another Lord of your kingdom could be inside the Lord’s Hall and you can interact with them.
If you try to enter an enemy Castle disguised and you are successful, you can go into the courtyard and try to release some Lords of your Kingdom that are trapped inside a prison. I really like this feature although it’s not easy to do it.
Towns:
They are the most important structures on Calradia and like castles, you can manage your garrison and you should, because if you have a Town, you would receive a lot of profit from it. So You should have more than 500 good quality troops on the garrison or else, the other kingdoms you are at war, will try to capture it.
In the Towns, you also have a lot of quests to do, in the Guild Master. You can also join Tournaments, sell the loot you won from battles, and buy items or food.
These tournaments are a very good way to make money because you will struggle a little at the beginning of the game if you don’t do them. I like the tournaments for that reason, but you only earn money if you finish in the first place.
Kingdoms:
As I said before, there are 5 Kingdoms and each Kingdom is unique. For example: The Kingdom of Nords doesn’t have any kinds of horsemen besides the Lords if they choose to have one. But their Elite troop like Huscarls are very resistant nonetheless.
On the other hand, the Kerghits, are composed of horsemen but aren’t as resistant as the Huscarl from the Nords.
Ready to buy the game? Click on the image.
Every Kingdom has its King and his Counts, that are his followers. You can only be part of one Kingdom at a time and you can even make your own Kingdom.
To do so, you have to be aggressive to a certain Kingdom and take at least a Castle or Town from them. After this, you will need to conquer as much as you can so you can start to win some respect, or else they will be all upon you.
To build trust with people, you have to assist them, like doing missions or favors, or even rush to a battle they were in and help them. In this way, your friendship will grow from 0 until it reaches a maximum of 99.
The same thing happens in villages or towns. You can increase the way people of a village look at you if you help them train, give them food, etc. If you do this in villages it will increase the recruits that are willing to follow you.
But the relationship can also become negative if you raid a village or do something to piss off someone you don’t like.
Everywhere in Calradia, you will find randomly, some people that will work for you. These people are going to be your companions, but sometimes they don’t get along with each other. You will need to make a group that always gets along. You can make an 8 man group without them starting to hate each other, see this post, how! You can also recruit mercenary troops instead of recruiting people from a certain faction. In this way, you can have positive party morale all the time. Great, right?
If you have your kingdom, You can make them your Counts, but beware if they are not royal blood, people will not respect them, at all.
I like the companion feature, but it is a bit hard to make them work well with each other without any problems, but at least they made it challenging.
Battle Mode:
In this mode, you will be in the third person, controlling your character and your army and it’s in this mode, that all the action will occur!
You can command your army by making them follow you, halt them, or make them charge the enemy. You can also make different formations: line, square, circle etc.
When you win a battle inside of a castle or town, you or your kingdom will take control of the region that you just conquered.
Then the king will decide to give the fief to whomever he desires. It’s good to have a good friendship with your king because you will receive more fiefs this way. But if you are the King it’s even better!
When you win too many battles you will start to gain renown and even your troops and companions will have more morale.
In battle mode, try to leave your swordsman in the front and your archers behind, ideally on a hill, because they will be more efficient that way.
You can also choose to attack with a sword, mace, bow, crossbow, knife, etc. It’s really up to you, just change to whatever weapon you may like before the battle.
You can also pick weapons and mount different horses inside battle mode, for example, if they kill your horse you can mount another one.
At the end of the battle, you will get a report with the casualties that occur in each team. if your soldiers are knocked unconscious in battle they can still recover, but not if the are killed.
So, I like this game, it’s medieval and you need to apply a good strategy. My first games were strategy ones, and that is why I like this game so much.
The dialog sometimes could be shorter and the game will take forever to end, but on the other hand, you will have a lot of time to enjoy it. By the way, the game will only end when there’s only one kingdom left and the others are conquered.
You can also install mods, like “Battle time” that you will able to play with friends in the battle mode, “The last days”, where you will play inside Middle Earth of The lord of the Rings, and many more!
Just go to this website for the mods.
Here is the image link if you wish to buy the game:
On this website you will get ~57% discount, which means instead of paying 20$, you will be paying only
8.50$ more or less. (The price can range a little bit). Such a nice discount, don’t you think?
So I hope you enjoyed my review, do comment below with what you think about this game! I will make more reviews from now on about other games, so keep following my website!
Chester
