Mount & Blade Bannerlord Review - Is It an 8 Years Disappointment Like Some Say?

Cavalries March Towards Enemie

Siege battle

TalesWorlds Entertainment has finally given the community something we've been looking for after fans screaming on their official forum and Steam forum for years. Mount & Blade Bannerlord was "released" on March 30, 2020, note that this is an early access release, we have most of the game ready to play, but there are some features still in development.

The first couple of hours after it got released, thousands of players bought the game they've been waiting for 8 years, only to figure out that the game won't even run on some of their computers. The game had a pretty critical glitch, it crashes. There are players claimed that the game crashed 4 times within an hour. Gamers took their rage to the Steam store, many complaints were posted, but TalesWorlds' reacted fast, their game developers responded on Steam Store, and they released a day 1 hotfix to patch the crash glitches.

There was a period that I used to play the previous title Mount & Blade Warband quite religiously, I would sit in front of my computer for hours, just to get a couple of more troops so I can be a desert bandit. Without a doubt, I bought Bannerlord on the release day. When I first launched the game, the crash glitch has already been fixed. So, fortunately, I didn't run into any issues that stopped me from playing the game.

My First Impression

The game gave me an amazing first impression: the good old character background builder, more detailed character model creation, improved skill/stat tree and a new perk system. The new beautiful UI, much better character models and the classic feeling of old Mount & Blade keep me interested for hours and hours of gameplay. I could spend hours just to chase down looters and mountain bandits, riding on my horse and hacking my enemies with a single-handed sword. The quest did have a bit improvement but for the most part, it's not really that interesting. I also experience some glitches here and there to prevent me from completing the quest, but TalesWorlds did say that quest is one of the aspects that are still in development, so I'll give them a pass. The controls are nice and smooth, combating has the same good old feeling from Warband, weapon swinging feels powerful and satisfying. The only bad thing I can think of is horse riding experience, when I first start the game it feels a bit like drifting. Even though a higher riding skill and getting a better horse make it overall better, it takes a significant amount of time to level up riding skill, or almost any other skills.

Continued Experiences

After 10 ~ 15 hours of gameplay, my in-game character has progressed quite a bit, for some part. The game's progression system is a little bit confusing and rather slow, I found it a lot slower than the Warband. My riding skill and leadership skill didn't go up as fast as I would expect, which slows me down significantly. The new smithing system gives players more freedom on weapon selection, but the smithing stamina makes the whole smithing experience painful. Hours of grinding are needed just to level up smithing skill and craft a decent weapon. Many other players have the same thoughts because there are already a few mods out there to remove the smithing stamina. There are some other balancing issues like overpowered weapons, troops that have unreasonable stats, but all these flaws are expected to be fixed later down the road, as the game is, after all, in early access. Besides the balancing issue, the biggest aspect that disappoints some players is that the game looks and feels a lot like the previous title, Mount & Blade Warband. There are players review the game as an uncreative Warband with better graphics and worse game mechanism, which I can see why, but disagree with. This game is like the prequel of the previous Mount & blade, many aspects should be expected to be the same. Bannerlord does bring some innovation on the table, with its new clan system, smithing system and perk system, it offers rich gameplay experiences. I had a lot of fun roaming the map, building my crew, making a name for myself, and slashing enemies.

Final Thoughts

Mount & Blade Bannerlord does have some flaws, its launch is nearly disastrous, the game suffers from balancing issue, the graphics are not really on par with other games in 2020, but I think overall, it's a good game. TalesWorlds are extremely responsive to the community feedback, they have devs answering questions and solving problems in the Steam Store page. They release a patch pretty much every day to hotfix some of the critical glitches, many major, especially game-breaking glitches have already been fixed. Another thing to keep note is that Bannerlord, like all other Mount & Blade titles, is pretty much one of its kind, you won't get the same experience anywhere else. I can imagine later down the road, this game will live up to players' expectations. So whether you are a new traveller or a battlefield veteran, I recommend giving this game a try, especially when it's still on sale until 13th April.