Mount and blade 2023 first impressions

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord has already become one of the main hits of 2023. By the number of players on Steam, it easily bypassed Doom Eternal and Borderlands 3, despite the fact that it was released so far only in early access. What is the reason for such success – in PC exclusivity, the coronavirus pandemic, a dedicated fan base or a unique combination of genres? We will understand this article.

On horses, but always with a card

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is a sandbox combining action-RPG and real-time military strategy. Moreover, it is genres, and not individual elements – the game really fully realizes completely different gameplay mechanics. Users will need to equally swing a sword, pump, establish relationships with rulers and their vassals, lead the army, and also engage in politics and economics.

At the same time, you can practically refuse any of the genres. If you do not like to deal with global issues, no one will stop you from abandoning Napoleonic plans and devote yourself to the craft of a blacksmith. And those who are not accustomed to getting their hands dirty themselves will be able, shortly after the start of the game, to lay down their sweeping functions and take up politics. However, in this case, you are unlikely to understand what is unique about the title, and you will be terribly lacking in content. This is how to use GTA V exclusively as a car simulator – it is possible, but rather pointless.

Better to start from the beginning.

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord begins, as expected, with a private, and then goes on to the general. In other words, at first we are met by RPG with all the relevant elements – editor, skills, leveling, inventory, relationships and more.

At the beginning of the game, they will let us determine the appearance and initial characteristics. The latter depend on the background of the character. The game will ask a few questions about the hero’s parents and childhood, after which he will determine his indicators. I helped a hunter in childhood – get a plus for owning a bow, was polite – a point in the sociability scale. Not revolutionary, but in any case more interesting and inventive than simply distributing the numbers in graphs.

The initial characteristics strongly affect the first stages of the passage, but do not determine it at all. If you have time and desire, you can improve any skill by performing the necessary actions. Spear ownership is enhanced when used in battle, and managerial abilities can be enhanced by simply purchasing supplies for your troops on time.

After exiting the character creation menu, the game will give out several training tasks for an hour and a half, where it will explain the most elementary mechanics, and then release it into free swimming. At this point, the game will begin to show its strategic nature, and here it is important not to make a mistake and not immediately begin to complete the main quest. In Bannerlord, it serves not so much as a direct indication of action, but as an approximate guideline.

The first task required to interview ten Lords about the events of the war. At first glance – a trifling matter. But we don’t know who these lords are and where they are. Determining their location is not so bad, because all NPCs are constantly moving around the map. To find everyone, I needed to spend three nights in the game. And all subsequent missions turned out to be even more voluminous and more abstract – to become a vassal or establish a kingdom, help restore an empire or destroy it and so on.

As you advance, the strategic part of the game will grow more and more. Local skirmishes will develop into battles of huge armies. In addition to their own well-being, they will have to take care of their subjects, and politics will be added to personal relationships. With all this, the RPG component will not go anywhere.

Knightly tournaments, burnt villages and other delights of medieval life

So that during the long preparation for the great battle, the player does not get bored, the developers added side tasks to M&B – unfortunately, they are very monotonous. I basically came across only two types: delivery of an item and search for a spy. There are several types of tasks, but they do not shine with variety.

The second entertainment is tournaments. They take place every day in any major city and depending on the location they differ in conditions: somewhere it’s one-on-one horse fights, and in other places team foot battles, etc. Even in cities you can play several kinds of drafts and … to sit on a chair.

Oddly enough, on this activity “on the ground” ends. Despite the fact that the developers have drawn different cities, castles and villages, the player has absolutely nothing to do in them. Trading, searching for characters and signing up for tournaments is much more convenient on the strategic map, so there’s no point in switching to a location through the boot screen for the same thing. I would like to hope that in the future other activities will be added to the drafts, otherwise the three-dimensional models of settlements will remain a very large, expensive and useless appendage.

On the global map in Mount & Blade, you can start your own production, forge weapons, establish retail chains, buying cheaper and selling more expensive, as well as build relationships with other characters or just rob their villages. However, the main activity of M&B has always been and will be war in all its possible manifestations – in three, if we talk about the realities of the game.

War. War never changes

The main share of battles is occupied by ordinary battles in the field. This includes clashes between armies, skirmishes with bandits, village attacks, looting of caravans, and in general everything that does not fall into the other two categories, that is, in sieges and attacks on bandit shelters. The latter is a small corridor location where you need to kill everyone, leading a small detachment. The only complaint against it is the inability to independently select units. The game stubbornly palms me peasants and recruits instead of heavy foot soldiers.

The sieges are exactly what they seem: one side is defending itself in the castle, and the other is trying to capture this castle with the help of trebuchet, rams, stairs and other medieval devices. In this mode, there are many small mechanics that can not be found in other places: the destructibility of individual objects, catapult shooting, etc.

We should also mention network battles. So far, three types of multiplayer battles are available that do not stand out for anything special. Of interest is perhaps the captain mode, in which players control not individual characters, but immediately entire units.

From a simple soldier

Fencing in Bannerlord is built on a standard system in which the player can choose the direction to strike or block. Holding LMB, you need to drag the mouse in one of four directions to perform the corresponding blow. When working with a shield, the mechanics are similar.

If you approach the battle with feeling, sense, alignment, you can enjoy intense duels, predicting the steps of the enemy. And for lovers of slashers there are spears with which the choice of direction is reduced to two options, and fights on horseback, where timings play a decisive role.

The developers have not forgotten about those who prefer to maintain maximum social distance. Bows and crossbows are an almost ultimate means of destroying living targets. Only their shields and limited ammunition balance them – on average 20-30 arrows are placed in a quiver.

To the general

It is worth noting that rushing into battle in the forefront or even alone makes sense only in small collisions. If the count of troops goes to hundreds, it makes more sense to keep behind the backs of soldiers – for their own and their safety.

At the current stage, the artificial intelligence of a soldier can only recklessly go into a head-on attack or meekly wait. Unfortunately, the player cannot help them in any way, since the capabilities of command and tactics are extremely limited. In fact, they come down only to the choice of construction, as well as to the “attack” and “stand” commands.

This is compounded by the fact that the commander himself is also in the field, and does not hang out somewhere in the clouds, as, for example, in Total War. As a result, even such an elementary maneuver as a cavalry attack from the flank will have to be controlled step by step, constantly accompanying one detachment and cutting itself off from the rest of the troops. In real life, this problem was solved by planning, and in strategies by a global survey and tactical pause.

Fortunately, the difficulties of more precise army control are offset by AI tactical maneuvers. Not once in 40 hours did I meet a computer commander who would come up with something more interesting than an attack on the forehead. Even when the enemy is defending, he can still be easily made to launch an offensive through a narrow bridge under a hail of arrows.

Early Access Reservations

When launching Bannerlord, you need to remember – the game is in early access. It cannot be objectively observed, because part of the mechanic is simply not ready. Strictly speaking, this is a test, only for some unknown reason testers, and not developers, pay for it. Patches for the game come out almost every day, and they still have some fixes to fix.

Despite this, part of the quests in M&B are now frankly broken, and those that work can lead to a crash. There is nothing to talk about with local characters, and their personal qualities have almost no effect. Activities, in addition to battles, look poor and get bored very soon.