Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

[h3] 8/10 [/h3] Probably the best real world medieval war simulator there is right now. I'm talking conquering kingdoms, executing kings, real time battles like lord of the rings. [h3] Pros: [/h3]The foundation for this game is ten out of ten, its pretty unbelievable. They have systems setup that are extremely complex, like relations with nobles, factions, trading, policies for your kingdom. And they're done very well. It really does feel like i'm in a real time medieval war. Everything already really good about this game is topped off with very well executed combat and ability to command armies. There's a pretty big skill curve with the combat. You can get really good at playing the game, but you can't become a one man army, its balanced very well. Commanding armies is really good, i really couldn't imagine it being better. its pretty cool to be able to command a thousand guys. [h3] Cons: [/h3]A terrible thing but this game really just needs more content. They might add a lot more over the coming years but till then. I think they should add stuff for more of a reason to interact real time. Like there just isn't a real reason ever to walk through towns or cities. You can interact with them on the map, but i think it would be a lot more immersive if there was a reason to walk through them. Also i shouldn't have to manage my cities, the person governing the city should manage it for me. And the bugs... There aren't to many, but they are there. I have a graphical bug right now, where if i have my graphics turned up my game crashes. Says its a texture problem, could be my AMD graphics card though, really not sure. Also there was this really crazy one, where a bunch of parties were stuck fighting these bandits forever. I ended up resolving it, but just pointing it out.

It feels like there has always been so much potential with this game, but it was never realized. The combat system is glorious, in my opinion. Mounts and mounted combat handles exceptional compared to other games I played, and melee fighting also feels very satisfying to me. Ranged does its job as well. Only small nitpick, spears are useless, doing barely any damage in most cases, and never got fixed. Attack damage type and armor should matter more. But at least it feels good to hit things! The problem is, this game should be about a lot more than close combat, and this is where it falls short of what it could have been. Managing and commanding your party in and for combat is a mess. You are not able to assign your soldiers into specific formations outside of battle. Only at the beginning of a battle can you set up formations, but you cannot sort specific troops into specific formations, like swordmen into one formation, pikemen into another or dividing bow- and crossbowmen. It only allows you to set formations to "melee", "ranged", "mounted" and "ranged mounted". Coordinating your troops in combat does not work too well. I understand it tries to simulate the difficulty of having to command people from the ground, but in real life you can much easier tell someone "take position on that hill" than trying to order your troops onto a hill in Bannerlord while you are on the other side of the hill. A quick way to switch between a bird's eye view and controlling your character would be great. it would also be great to be able to switch to companions when your character is knocked out during combat, instead of having to watch the AI battle it out (badly, usually). The difficulty of commanding troops becomes moot though, since all that usually needs to be done is waiting for the enemy to be weakened by your ranged troops, followed by hitting F1-F3 to win the battle. Because that's what it devolves to in the end anyway, hoping for your side to simply be stronger, with little regards for tactics. This sadly is not a Rome Total War kind of game when it comes to battles - and the sad thing is, in my opinion, it could have been. On a grand scale, the game is lacking even more. The low number of towns can quickly cause one side to snowball, as capturing even one or two of them puts the side at a great advantage. It would have been better if there had been more towns, instead of modeling them completely. When have you walked through the interior of them last? I can go a whole playthrough without actually seeing the nicely modeled insides besides the parts used for combat... Same goes for castles. It would also need more (smaller, land-owning) factions and more actual rebellions to prevent the snowballing. This results in an even bigger problem for the grand scale - politics are pretty much non-existent. Yes, there will be wars, there will be alliances, but nothing really feels indepth. This is not Crusader Kings, maybe it need not be, but it would have been nice if it provided at least some basic elements of such a game. The potential was there. The world feels small, and still empty somehow. I think it's because of the large towns/fortresses, but also because villages do not really matter. World map party handling is another part which could have been improved. It's nice that all parties actually travel on the world map, including other lords, traders, village and bandit parties. Could have used some more variety, but even more so, there are no random events when traveling, you cannot lie in ambush waiting for trading parties or get ambushed. Trying to hunt down enemy parties becomes a long chase, hoping that the other party is slower or the AI makes a mistake and you finally catch up to them. This is even more of a problem when you are in a slow army. Battles only happen when the other side thinks they are stronger, you happen to be faster (usually due to outsmarting AI) or for sieges. Making money mainly relies on smithing for me. Forget trading, forget trying to rely on workshops. Trading is just tedious, you buy goods, travel to a location you heard has a good price, and by the time you arrived, it either does not anymore, or you sell only a few items and the price drops so much it barely makes profit after the first. Workshops have never worked properly. Though they did change it so you get more loot from defeating enemies, so you can also make good money by defeating bandits and hostiles parties. Towns and fortresses barely pay for their own garrison. Many of these things are tackled by mods, some are implemented quite well by those, others as well as possible. But mods can only do so much, and many things just should have been in the game to begin with. I will probably keep coming back to it, just to realize, ever faster with every run I try to do, that there simply is not enough to do in the game, not enough happening. It feels like there is a framework for everything, but nothing is build onto it, though, having made some small mods myself, it also feels very messy on the insides. A lot of time seems to have been focussed on things that eventually do not matter in the actual game, like the fully designed towns and fortresses, while the mechanics that matter, like politics, are lacking. Is it fun? Well, I played for over 1'000 h. Most of it with at least some mods, though not with major reworks. Over time, its flaws just outshine its upsides for me. If you can grab it for a cheap price, it's worth it. You can definitely spend some hours in the game, and there are some good mods out there. It will always have some flaws though. To me, it just never embraced the potential it had, and with a DLC now looming, I do not foresee it ever embracing that potential. Mods can only do so much, and relying on mod makers to finish your game is just not (always) feasible.

If you spend five years polishing a turd, all you still have is a turd. Only the combat works in this game. Diplomacy, trading, nation-building really doesn't work. Character interactions are completely shallow. Game feels like its still in development.

i think it is evident with the amount of hours i have played that i like this game and would recommend it. mods breath new life into this game every few months so it is always easy to get back into it.

Until they speed up production and updates I just feel like its been too long for the game to still be half baked

Finally the actual game has been released with the Shokuho patch, thanks for the beta testing nerds. (I have never actually played vanilla Mount & Blade and exclusively only played Gekokujo in Warband) (I will not change this round)

Warning: Opinionated Rant I gave this game many chances. On the very first day of me playing it, Bannerlord once took my breath away. But as time goes on, the more I played it...the more I got frustrated. I realized the game was actually broken and as empty as an emo. No passion, not finished. The game was not finished by TaleWorlds, and they released it half-baked - with all the problems that were never corrected. And even if they were, it only made a smallest impact. TaleWorlds never bothered making significant improvements that would make Bannerlord complete. They never even listened to criticisms made by fans, remaining silent and allowing issues plaguing the game to worsen tenfold over the years. That was when the mods came in. They have life, unlike vanilla. The mods, and my love for the uniqueness of Bannerlord, were the reason why I played this game for so long. Now, even they cannot save it. After experiencing too many crashes over the years, as well as other issues, my patience finally died. No matter how much I tried to fix it, this game will remain broken forever. No way I'll stay in this toxic relationship. If it doesn't want to be fixed, why bother? I'm done. The modders are the true creators of Bannerlord, and they really keep this game more alive with great care. And it sucks, because their mods cannot keep up with the irreconcilable updates of TaleWorlds. And these updates are horrific, making the game more unplayable. Not fun, not immersive - at all. And without mods, Bannerlord in its vanilla form is boring and broken. Devoid of any life, just like TaleWorlds. The lack of care from the developers contrasts the passion of the modders. And if TaleWorlds harbors no passion for Bannerlord, why is it a company in the first place? Bannerlord would have been on the same level of Skyrim. It would have been among the best games out there. But no, TaleWorlds doesn't care about fulfilling the game's truest potential. They want a quick buck, instead of investing to a grand picture. And I don't think this upcoming DLC would help redeem this game. Issues would remain the same, and never resolved. And I don't think this heartless company cares about the DLC. It just wants your money. And I will not give them. My cash is better spent elsewhere, to creators who care greatly about their products. And guess what, Medieval: Chronicles looks like it will topple Bannerlord. An upcoming sandbox game set in the medieval era, developed by Raw Power Games. And that new studio is composed of experienced developers who worked on Assassin's Creed: Odyssey and Hogwarts Legacy. Based on their interviews I watched, they are very passionate about what they made - more passionate than the couch potatoes of TaleWorlds. After watching the trailer, I'm more eager for the new game's early access next year, more than this cash-grab DLC of Bannerlord. If Medieval: Chronicles lives up to its hype, then move aside Bannerlord. I will live and breath in a world made by the heart of artists.

this may well be the greatest game of all time, if the devs would work closer with the dedicated community of modders and players this could be UNBEATABLE

the most disgusting and unplayable game i ever played 1.Saves damaged by no reason and there is no way to fix them, this is how i lost progress of fucking 63 hour (487 in game days) 2. unstable game and if u adding mods u need pry to all gods u know that this piece of shit will not fucking crash just on lunch process (and the funny thing is, the mods is up to date XD) 3. the developers "working" on this game with no enthusiasm, you cann't see there progress, this game is fucking 6 years old (I am including also the early access) and those lazy basterds didn't make any significant update (like fucking optimize there trash game). they even delayed the new upcoming DLC with boats and they DIDN'T SWITCH THE FUCKING DATE RELEASE IN GAME ADS\NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! they are just pretending that they are working but actually, they playing with there balls or if be more correct, playing with your money while you trying to resolve problems that THE DEVELOPERS SHOULD DO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! in conclusion: if u gentlemens or ladys didn't want waste your time (like me) on game that will destroy your progress in some point on the campaign, that your game will crush immediately on fucking "Ironman Mod" (one save for game + battle size 443 vs 1102) and you CARE about your menthol health, don't buy this garbage, waste your money on fucking real Butter insteded. Thanks for your attention) have a wonderful day and be save from scammers and lazy developers) If maybe one day, they will fix there game i swear that i will rewrite this comment.

After so long it still feels like a beta. It's fun, but little to no improvement has been made in years and it leans extremely heavily on mods to provide basic features.

My god the crashes are endless fix one issue it crashes do to another. Every update you have to trouble shoot new issues.

The game is laughably unbalanced, "Veteran" combat is piss easy where the npcs will just stand there and take hits, and "Challenging" turns them into Neo from the Matrix where they know every move you're going to make and will block everything and never make mistakes. It's bad, like really bad. And no, I don't think players should have to cheese enemies to make a difficulty viable, and that feels like the main MO for strategies in this game, pick your vanilla/modded faction of OP cavalry and ranged troops, and just steamroll. No variety.

Going to start this off by saying, yes I have played this game a lot and have lots of hours in this one and the original Mount and Blade Warband. I kept telling myself I would wait until the developers "finished" the game to put a review in because in its current state, the vanilla version is just not the best, its a solid 6-7/10 title. However, it has become increasingly obvious to me that this game is somewhat abandoned a few years after release and now they are releasing paid DLC to keep milking more money out of their devoted fans. Don't get me wrong, Bannerlord builds on Warband in a lot of solid ways. Graphically it is actually decent to look at, the AI is better(still not the brightest) the strategic options are more plentiful and each one seems to serve a real purpose. Other than that, I don't feel like this game offers much more than Warband, especially when you factor in the decade of Mod support Warband has compared to Bannerlord, which will periodically receive a meaningless update from the developers and break all your mods. Warband still has the same amount of factions, a similar amount of weapons/armor, companions and although kingdom management is less "fleshed out" than Bannerlord, its simplicity has always been fine to me. When I play Bannerlord, I often find myself just wanting to play Warband and I don't think that's a good thing. The devs should have just made the sequel in the same vein as Warband and added to it more content and gave it a graphical upgrade and called it a day. Bannerlord just seems to have started from scratch too much, I didn't want a game that competed against Warband, I just wanted a more expansive version of Warband and I don't think you are getting that here. In its current state, I cannot reccomend this game over its predecessor, I will update my review in the future if it ever gets better, which I hope it will.

[h1]Negative Review – Why I can’t recommend this game:[/h1] - Many promises made, few actually delivered. - No major update in over 2 years. - Marketed as a sandbox, but lacks basic tools: no culture creation or troop editor. - Relies heavily on community mods to add features that should be part of the base game. - Yet every small update breaks most mods, pushing modders away. The result? A bland and lifeless native game.

I had been looking forward to this game for a long time. While it is quite an improvement over the previous game, it still lacks a significant amount of promised content that, even now, has yet to be delivered. Instead of focusing on completing core features, such as proper modding support, a functional level editor, and meaningful NPC interactions - the developers have shifted their focus to releasing DLCs. This feels premature and frustrating given the game's unfinished state. Additionally, there are several gameplay flaws. Exploring towns feels pointless, the smithing system is more annoying than enjoyable, and other design issues persist throughout the experience. As it stands, I can't recommend this game until these problems are fixed.

Very fun medevil sandbox game for both the simple game lovers and the people who like more of a complex game. :)

Game crashes on loading screen and has been doing so ever since I got a 4090 GPU. No fixes in sight and its a known issue.

Unfinished. It has soo much potential but the Devs release an unfinished game, and then abandon it and the people who bought it

Unplayable without mods. The idea is new and cool, and that's probably the only selling point. Deplomacy is trash, everyone keeps declaring wars on each other for no reasons at all. And the game targets the player heavily, whether it's just the combat ai or deplomacy. A lot of features are completely useless, a lot of things are not reasonable at all.

This game is still extremely buggy at times and is not enjoyable at all. I gave this an honest try because I really wanted to like it for the price point; however, it is just crap. For a strategy game, you have little army control and have to try to manage your units where half the time they don't follow your instructions. For a third person combat game, The combat is extremely janky making it impossible to fight without just getting pushed around by your own units. Finally for a kingdom management game, there is no management. Everything this game promised to do it does, just poorly. I spent multiple days try to figure out a way past all of the issues; however, it's just poorly made. I can't tell if I'm more upset at the developers for publishing something of such low quality or at me for spending that $40 on something not even worth $5.

Nice game with a strong immersion and amazing battle mechanics. It has astonishing modding community that fixed and added so much cool stuff that you never get tired of playing this game. Yet devs dont care much about it, otherwise their updates and patches wouldnt make all those mods break upon updating. Be careful with that and remember that some mods are abandoned, so it may be hard playing with them without some adjustment to devs code messing.

This game is bare bones , content feels rushed and sent out half done . The only thing that keeps this on the self is the wonderful modding community. The mods add FREE content to flesh out this game adding depth and replay ability . They will be soon adding a paid DLC to add in content that mostly should of been available at launch or shortly after . The nautical content which most people seem to be interested in has been available in a mod or mods for years at this point . They also say they will be adding to or fixing their broken economy system . With almost three years since launch I hope they can finally add some depth to a pretty underwhelming game , Until then I will depend on the modding community to make another half assed game enjoyable .

It is fun and plays well enough, but it has trouble starting up. Most of the time it just gets stuck at the start screen. so it takes a bunch of retries to get it to play.

idk why they changed but the game now just crashes constantly whenever i mod it, which yes i know modding reduces stability but i never had this man issues on warband or before on this game, also the base game has also been very unstable for me which is a shame because i love warband and enjoy bannerlord but in so many ways it feels like a downgrade and without mods that becomes even more obvious.

I really want to buy and play it but i am afraid that because I have a modern graphics card the game won't work and crash. Bought and returned under an hour because I couldn't get past character creation. 4070 super.

Great point and click strategy game. Its cool you can o into the battles yourself instead of the awful simulated war other games do. Go in yourself and have an impact on the battle!

it's fun. but then u have al the errors... can't save ur games.. there is always something...

This game had so much potential, but somehow they managed to make a less complete game than the prequel, Mount and Blade.

fun

The game hardly gets big updates it is almost only bug/crash fixes. The main questline is incomplete, some skills aren't even in the game. The game feels abandoned after you play a while you hope for a update but they only make Community tales. The only redeeming part of the game is the modding community they really try to make the game better. The multiplayer is fun too but that is mostly it.

Was working fine (360+ hours) and then won't start at launch. Uninstalled and reinstalled the game, tried different versions of gpu updates, adjusted 3D settings, cleared shader cache, and everything else in the book. The game itself is fun, but will no longer run.

Have played all of these hours in multilpayer! Been playing for the past 2 and a half years, I now own a group for the game. JOIN HERE https://discord.gg/HYegvS2Vsw

Chorelord by Faleworlds. An unfinished empty shell of a game and much less than its predecessor. Brought to you by a development team who failed to deliver and a company unable to communicate with customers. They took the money and ran. Now back to peddle some DLC (modders work and ideas) without fixing the base game first. Back for a quick cash grab for a limited time only. Scammers. Faleworlds = Abusive customer relationship.

This game is an absolute travesty. Mods were keeping this zombie alive for some time, but now the mod scene is dead too.

Game was great, mod support filled in a lot of gaps. Only recent issue is the stuttering issue. I have looked all over but to now avail have I found a solution. Once Stuttering issue is fixed, I will update my review. After play testing a bit, the best workaround I have found is to play in windowed mode, and that removes the stuttering issue. Hopefully this will get patched so I can return to full-screen or borderless windowed.

It's still glitchy. It's still unfinished. It will probably never BE finished. it's not what it promised to be. All of these things are true. However, this is Bannerlord, guys. We asked for Mount & Blade only more so, and that's what they gave us. Took 'em a million years to get to this point and the Universe will undergo heat death before they ever finish fixing the bugs, but it's what we asked for. Put together a band of random idiots and go smash up some bandits for the hell of it. You know what you're getting, now go get it.

Honestly the combat is still horrendous. This was fine for the original M&B but expectations are higher. It's just simply not fun in combat. Chivalry , KCD, For Honor, and Mordhau all do it better.

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord feels like a half-finished Frankenstein’s monster—launched years ago and left to rot while the developers move to try and rake in cash from DLCs that shoehorn in bits of promised content alongside gimmicky features nobody asked for. The base game remains a buggy dumpster fire: every season they rip the skill tree apart only to reassemble it worse than before, leaving perks glitched or completely nonfunctional. Voice acting is so sparse and low-grade that you’d swear the actors were recording from a tin can, and the side quests read like cut-and-paste filler with zero narrative weight. What started out as mildly engaging combat devolves into a tedious grind, since enemy AI is so brain-dead it might as well be punching bags, and the economy is so broken you’re forced into perpetual warfare just to scrape together a few denars. To add insult to injury, Bannerlord’s update cycle is a modder’s nightmare—micro-patches drop every other month and shatter any semblance of stability, turning even the most modest community mods into ticking time bombs. The “improvements” touted by the devs often feel like slapdash patches that introduce more problems than they solve. By now, Bannerlord is less a living game and more a perpetual beta test: a frustrating slog masquerading as “progress” while we wait in vain for the base game to ever be finished. If you’re hoping for a robust Mount & Blade experience, you’re better off sticking with Warband—or just accepting that Bannerlord is destined to remain an broken promise.

A worthy successor with modern polish Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord builds on everything that made Warband great, while bringing much-needed improvements in graphics, UI, and overall fluidity. The core gameplay loop—battles, diplomacy, kingdom-building—is still as captivating as ever, but now wrapped in a far more modern and immersive package. While it's still evolving with updates and community feedback, Bannerlord already delivers that same unique sandbox-RPG experience fans love. If you enjoyed Warband, this is the natural next step—bigger, deeper, and better.

very fun game but idk if its the game or a problem on my end, my game crashes very frequently and it gets very frustrating quickly. my game crashed 7 times in the last 2 days. better optimization??

Multiplayer wise the only improvement over warband are the numbers, everything else feels worse. The matchmaking alone deserves a negative review. just saw someone phase through walls. Holy shit dude u had early acces for eons and it still feels like an alpha. Spawning while surrounded by the enemy Singleplayer the ai is even dumber than in warband

This game keep breaking up mods, even without mods its crashing too. What utter shi

It's kinda repetitive-- game needs to be fleshed out more for it to be enjoyable to the masses. But I enjoyed it. So, take that as you want.

Even though the base game has lots of space for improvement (that will hopefully at least partly be filled with the DLC), the modding support and community is amazing (even though Warband had more), and makes up for a lot. Wasted to many days trying out too many new mod (recommend wasting your life on this game too)

This game is epic! Fighting is awesome, creating your clan and building your army is incredible and the physics are good, I love this game!

if you want to live out a fantasy of starting from nothing and become ruler of all the land this is the game for you.

this game is great, I really love the battle machanics and the way that I can play as any culture and conqure calradia on my own. Sorry for any bad spelling.

Talewords surely hate fun, since they basically deleted all the cool stuff that combat of warband have. Most of the weapon feels too short. Being a melee on horse is infinite time more annoying and less enjoying that it was in previous game. And after one of the updates, ai turned into a literal block god(sure, the warband has annoying blocking ai too, but it wasn't soo ever vigilant, and when it was...you always can just knock them out with your horse and then hit them, a move that is almost impossible to do in this game) even at the lowest ai difficulty, which basically make polearms unusable, outside of the coaching lance move...with the usage of feels like a play in russian roulette, since you forced to charge right on the enemy to actually hit something, which almost guaranteed you being hit in the leg or arm on half of your health bar. Cool game if you like archery, i guess, or seeing how your army of 100+ archers anihilates everything since now the ai shooting arrows like they using some fuching machine gun and also much more accurate at it.

Crash simulator, apparently not got enough ram... 600 plus hours with the same system and now i magically have not enough memory... get it together taleworlds...

Awesome game with lots of features. cant wait for further expansion.