Mount & Blade: Warband

Released 15 years ago. Ugly as hell. Clunky combat. Dumb AI. Basic sounds. ... And still more fun and addictive than most modern AAA games

The turks have delved too greedily and too deep. In their infernal laboratories TaleWorlds Entertainment have mixed together all that is addicting into one game to create the perfect drug. Is it the slow build up of your army and then empire? Is it seeing up close the screaming soldier hordes rushing to kill each other? I'm not sure what it is but when you get a taste of it you just cannot stop. The game is far from from being flawless: by its very nature it's supposed to be grindy and repetitive, many design choices seem completely out of whack (I'm looking at you, sieges) but despite its imperfections, or maybe because of them, this is withouth doubt one of the best blends of RTS and 3rd/1st person combat ever created. Is the RTS element good or complex? No. Is the combat advanced? Not really. But togheter they manage to capture the most satisfying feeling for this mixed genre. I'd say the most complex aspects were put in the kingdom management/simulation system. Despite it being simple they basically recreated a whole economy and political system that changes each game so that even withouth player's intervention you can see each campaign develope in completely different ways. Of course there's also an absurd amount of mods that can change or fix everything I just said so... keep in mind just one thing: beware of trying this out! You can easily sink dozens of hours with no way to resist or stop.

2300 hours says it all. It is totally fun and satisfying. Graphics are not too bad. A medieval Conquer the World game! I won with every faction.

Mount & Blade is personally the best nostalgic hack and slash war game I've ever played. The game is set during the medieval era on the continent of Calradia where there are 6 kingdoms fighting an endless battle royale. You have the Swadians whose heavy knights love touching grass, Khergits whose horse archers love eating grass, Rhodoks whose heavy crossbow enjoy the high ground, Sarranids whose Tusken raiders love making sand castles, Vaegirs whose twinks make love to sea raiders in the snow and Nords whose chad vikings make love to strangers by the shore. The main point of the game is to build up your warband and kill billions to expand your kingdom. You first start off as an undocumented immigrant with 3 pennies, a few rags and Dobby's sock for clothes, a butter knife, a slice of beef jerky and ole' bessie your steed. Your first task is to recruit peasants into your warband and then fight a turf war with the local looters, forest bandits, sea raiders and deserters who make an honest living of kidnapping farmers and peasant women. This allows you to level up your skills, companions and troops as well as earn a little bit of pocket change. Once you have a decent force of around 50 men, it's time to appropriate and redistribute the means of production from the greedy peasantry whose sole purpose in life is to be harvested and to recruit their teenage boys in my forever wars. Pro tip: don't pillage villages where you plan to recruit from. I personally go on a biweekly crusade to the Middle East to raid Sarranid villages, earning around $10k while I recruit breedable stock in the West. The population mechanics of this game makes no sense. A random lord can loot and massacre a village and then a week later you can come back and recruit 1-6 peasants. It's like the women of the village fully repopulate it with their sons who grow into adulthood in 7 days. You can also make decent money the fun way by competing in tournaments and then partying with all the daughters of the local lords or the boring way by investing in industry and earning a weekly income. Combat in this game is hilariously stupid. Field battles are essentially mosh pits where the AI troops charge at each other like it's the beginning of the Hunger Games. If you had any semblance of common sense, you would command your infantry to form the front line, archers in the rear to provide covering fire and your cavalry on the flanks to peg your enemies in the ass. Even if you're heavily outnumbered, I guarantee you would win with basic tactics. However, if you want to put your 2 brain cells to rest, just recruit 100 Swadian knights and they'll trample anything in the field. The only exception in every scenario is against the Khergits whose beta male horse archers run around the entire field like a zebra with a bow and arrow being chased by a lion. The geography is randomly generated and can sometimes be in the worst spots possible. You can spawn in a ravine and fight like the survivors in the insect death pit in the King Kong movie or on top of Mount Everest where the enemy cavalry has to ascend an 80 degree slope with their Skyrim horses as your archers pelt them. Siege battles are on a whole new level of mental retardation. YOU SET UP ONE LADDER AND SINGLE FILE CLIMB TO YOUR DEATH. It's so extremely broken that your warband of 50 country bumpkins and hillbillies can defend any castle against an army of 1000 simply by camping the ladder with your two handed battle axe. The amount of time I spent chopping off my enemy's heads was akin to a factory worker with 30 years experience whose job is to pull a lever up and down 12 hours a day in order to provide a stable single household income with a beautiful stay-at-home wife, a two story house, 2 cars and 4 kids. As an intellectual with 3 brain cells, I instead fight my offensive siege battles with an army of archers. I would pepper the defenders with arrows then retreat once I ran out of ammo. Rinse and repeat until the castle is yours. Sometimes I love to live dangerously and climb the ladder to point blank range shoot the defenders in the face. They can't do anything about it (so long as all their archers are dead) since they can't simply push the ladder down. One final fun part about battles is the prisoners, more specifically the slimy cockroaches that are lords. You can personally impale a lord in the heart with a lance, slice open his guts with a bastard sword, headshot with an arrow and crack open his skull with a battleaxe and HE STILL MANAGES TO ESCAPE. Diplomacy is too broken to even function properly. When I had enough renown, I became a vassal of the Nords whose king is the worst monarch on the entire continent. You'd have to pray to God that when you get employed as a vassal, your king would recognize your valiant efforts in solo conquering a castle. Instead, the king is a smiling Karen who rewards the lords of the realm with a pizza party for conquering the neighboring kingdom's territory while pocketing the profits, i.e. you receive a letter in the mail of your rejection of a 50 cent raise. I was cucked so many times from owning my first castle that the moment I managed to capture the city of Wercheg and my king demanded I relinquish it to him, I declared independence. Not a day later, he shows up with an army of 800 men to teach me a lesson. Like honestly dude, conquer your own land with that force instead of leeching off a homeless veteran. Anyways, as mentioned above, I chopped my way to victory in the 3 separate attempts to seize my property and then peaced him out. Unfortunately, every other kingdom in their mother saw my city as free real estate and declared war. I had to fight total war against these rats for the rest of the game with the Nord chads as my only recruitable source. Every defensive siege was like the 100th Battle of Stalingrad. The only reason why I can't peace them out, even if I decimate their armies in the field, is an arbitrary number called right to rule which I can't reliably increase if I don't make peace. See the problem here? Slowly and methodically, I grew my kingdom 1 conquered castle at a time. Occasionally, random lords would get exiled from other kingdoms and end up homeless in my court. I'd employ anyone I could get as vassals to protect my castles and build up the garrison. This was a massive mistake that I had to pay dearly for. When you reward a vassal with a fief, all the other vassals suffer a drastic relation penalty simply out of greed. There were so many lords with negative relations that they eventually seceded from my kingdom, taking their castles with them to another kingdom. I'd then have to reconquer that land, now with a fully replenished garrison. I got so fed up that I exiled all my vassals and shifted to giving new vassals only villages since villages are tied to castles/cities and don't seceded when a lord betrays you. Later on the in game I also noticed all the other kingdoms were having the same problem. It was funny when I went to war against the Swadians and Rhodoks that their lords were Khergit and Sarranid as if these kingdoms were modern day Europe. It took me 1400 days to fully conquer Calradia, each battle personally fought and won the hard way. It was somewhat difficult in the middle of the run partly due to the vassal situation and also the fact that 6 kingdoms can siege 6 different castles at once while you can only siege 1 at a time. I felt like Napoleon fighting against endless waves of coalitions just to secure peace in the world. I'd personally rate this game 9/10 despite its many flaws. The music, combat and random voice lines are well worth the gruesome total war experience. Would definitely have an "EH?" with your purse-onal belongings, admire that nice head on your shoulders, drink from your skull and have our pay or have our fun while going on a stroll, almost waiting for harvesting season and telling the vile beggar "Oi you there! Stop!"

If you're bored playing the same old campaign, there's countless amounts of mods that take place in interesting settings throughout history or fiction in the steam workshop, like gekokujo or suvarnabhumi mahayuth.

An endless sea of fantastic mods Concoures of caltorn and ASOIAF are great.

What can i say about warband, its been my confort game for years, i love everything about it. if you like big battles in a somewhat rpg system, this game is definitely for you. and also there is mods, i mean, ALOT of mods. if you're going to try this game, i definitely recommend you to get at least the mod: "Diplomacy 4.3 - Mrcmod and bugfixes" or if you wanna try a more custom experience, please check out my tweak of the Mrcmod13 Diplomacy 4.3 mod: "Mrcmod13_Diplomacy_4_3 - Tweaks by Snake" you can find both versions on Google. they're both hosted on Nexus. warband is a great game, have fun! :)

You could play a single save for hundreds of hours easily. The "game completion" is up to the player. You can say you won when you take over an entire kingdom, you can say you won when you take over the entire map. This game can be replayed an infinite amount of times and never be bored of it. The modding community has made masterpieces as well, which can refresh your love for the game.

Mount & Blade: Warband isn’t a game you play for stunning visuals or scripted stories—it’s a game you live in. Released in 2010, it has aged in appearance but thrived in spirit, thanks to its one-of-a-kind blend of medieval combat, open-world strategy, and RPG freedom. Even in 2025, Warband remains a modder’s paradise, a strategy-sandbox gem, and a classic that refuses to fade. This is the kind of game where you start as a nameless peasant and end up as a king, mercenary warlord, or outlaw legend—if you're cunning, lucky, and brutal enough. Warband drops you into Calradia, a fictional medieval continent in chaos. You create your character and begin with little more than a rusty sword and a tattered cloak. There are no pre-written paths—just a massive sandbox filled with: -Kingdoms warring for power -Bandits and raiders haunting the roads -Villages to trade with or pillage -Lords to serve, betray, or conquer -Tournaments, feasts, rebellions, and sieges You can be a trader, mercenary, lord, rebel, or king, switching roles as your story evolves. It's about emergent storytelling, not cutscenes—and that's exactly why it works. Warband’s combat is its most defining—and divisive—mechanic. Directional melee combat means every swing, block, and stab depends on timing and positioning. Archery is skill-based and unforgiving. Mounted combat is where the game truly shines: lances, cavalry charges, and horseback duels are thrilling. You control your troops in real-time battles with surprisingly deep tactical options. Yes, the animations are stiff. Yes, it's janky. But once it clicks, it's visceral and satisfying in a way modern games rarely capture. Beyond fighting, Warband features a dynamic map-layer strategy game: -Build your warband, manage troop wages and morale -Pledge allegiance to a king—or usurp one -Manage fiefs, collect taxes, resolve disputes -Join politics, arrange marriages, and sway nobles It’s not as deep as a full grand strategy title, but the combination of personal combat and factional control is what sets Warband apart from any other RPG. Visually, Warband looks... rough. Even in 2025, the textures are basic, the faces flat, and the animations awkward. But Calradia is alive in ways that count: -Lords and armies roam the map independently, starting wars or making peace -Villages grow, revolt, or suffer -Armies form dynamically, reacting to your choices This living world, though built with old tech, feels more responsive and consequence-driven than many modern AAA open-worlds. If vanilla Warband is the skeleton, mods are the flesh and soul. Even over a decade later, its modding scene is phenomenally active, with legendary total conversions like: -Prophecy of Pendor – Dark fantasy overhaul -Floris Mod Pack – Polished vanilla+ with new gear and mechanics -Gekokujo – Sengoku-era Japan -A World of Ice and Fire – Game of Thrones-inspired -Perisno, The Last Days, and many more You could play nothing but Warband mods for years and still discover new worlds, stories, and systems. The Downsides: -Dated visuals and UI – No getting around it, it looks old. -Clunky diplomacy and politics – Still fun, but shallow compared to modern strategy games. -No voice acting, minimal narrative direction – Entirely driven by player agency. -Learning curve – Unforgiving at first, especially in combat. Yet for many players, these flaws are part of the charm. Warband’s “rough edges” are what make its victories feel earned. Mount & Blade: Warband is more than a game—it’s a sandbox of systems, stories, and ambition that few titles have ever matched. It’s not beautiful, it’s not easy, and it doesn’t hold your hand. But for those willing to dive in, it offers hundreds of hours of unique, unscripted adventure. In a gaming world full of scripted linearity, Warband is a breath of freedom, challenge, and storytelling by consequence. Bannerlord may be newer, but Warband remains the gold standard for emergent medieval chaos. Rating: 9/10

11 hours in. First playthrough. Those faccing steppe bandits keep killing my men and then imprisoning me. I'm dead broke. My character retires. Became a beggar in Dhirim. 10/10 CINEMA.

Played on PS4 years ago Still incredible Better than Bannerlord Diverse and mature modding scene with some truly game changing overhaul mods (Prophesy of Pendor, Warsword Conquest, Gekokujo Daimyo Edition, and many others) 5/5

Eskiden bilgisayarım eski olduğu için üzülürdüm, şimdi eski tadını vermediği için üzülüyorum...

It may look boring from the images but when you start playing the game, you might playing it nonstop for hours. Very highly recommended, just give it a try.

I have played this game since 2013, I really have no idea why I am drawn to it, the highs are high and the lows are low.

If you truly want to feel like a medieval warlord, Mount & Blade: Warband is the perfect game for you. Here, you decide your own path: become a mercenary, a noble, a trader, or even a king. The game offers real-time tactical battles, character progression, castle sieges, politics, economy, and tons of freedom. Yes, the graphics are dated and the learning curve isn’t very beginner-friendly, but the gameplay more than makes up for it. Plus, there are tons of mods and a solid multiplayer mode. Highly recommended if you’d rather build your own empire than follow someone else’s story.

A nostalgic, classic multiplayer experience - perfect for fans of multiplayer battles and history buffs. One of the only issues is the lack of active servers, but thankfully there are a few dedicated servers still up and running with great mod teams. If you can get it on sale, it's a must buy.

I became a Jarl for a kingdom, helped build said kingdom up, convinced a couple Jarls to break away, took over said kingdom, then conquered the world. 10/10

bodo isnt a very talkative guy. was stuck on viking conquest tutorial for 20 minutes trying to talk to that brick wall

Great game, loving the gameplay loop, just wish the singleplayer mode had Co-Op

You will lose sleep for this game. You may dedicate your time to whatever isn't this game, but you will make time. No matter how bad the UI or the AI are any abbreviation that starts with a vowel and ends with an I is, time will be made.

Better then WB 2, and it's my second most played game behind KSP1. This game is the tops.

There are no words to describe how I feel about this game. I've put in over two thousand hours into this game, mainly into multiplayer and thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

played more on Playstation. The feeling of commanding a elite band of warriors and fighting against the odds is great. Vikings are also cool.

Oyun eğlenceli fakat grafikler aşırı ilkel özellikle karakterlerin donuk suratları rahatsız edici görünüyor, oyun buna rağmen hiç çökmedi sağlam bir oyun. Eğlenceli fakat zor.

Slavjank except it's Turkish instead. Absolute peak, very moddable too which is fun

Perhaps the most fun I have had playing a game in the recent years. I felt like a child again, herding a large army around on the battlefield and engaging with the clunky (but incredibly lovely!) combat mechanics. The jank is part of the experience, do not let yourself be deterred by the dated optics and gameplay. I audibly laughed on many occasions during the game and just loved every little bit about the beautiful camp presented. There is usually a layer of irony about it all when playing this game, sure, but does that diminish the game in any way? No, it is the opposite I believe. The game is situated somewhere between a regression to childhood knights play fantasies, extravagant, cluttered jank and utter relaxing fun. Turn of your brain for a few hours, stop caring about graphics and polish and jump into the world of Calradia. On top of everything, the game is incredibly charming. The only problem that people may encounter is that the gameplay loop gets stale as you approach the 100h mark - but there are mods for that. Overall highly recommended!

The game is a nice experience on its own and the mods just put the cherry on top. (F1 + F3 Best strategy)

[h3] A strangely [i]comforting[/i] game that I very much haven't mastered yet. [/h3] Until this week I had never played the original Mount & Blade: Warband, only playing the multiplayer DLC, Napoleonic Wars (which is also amazing and definitely recommended). It has been a hot minute since the last time I sunk this many hours into a game in such a short time span, usually getting bored of most games these days after only a couple of hours. And I haven't even gotten around to the seemingly endless amount of awesome total conversion mods for every time period, theater of war, and fictional universe out there! There's just something about these older games that fill me with comfort and warmth, unlike those more recent, and being able to walk around a decent amount of towns and villages in all their graphically dated glory. <3 Fighting satisfying 2010s medieval battles has never felt this good before, and I will definitely be putting many more hours into this game, both native and modded.

This game is absolutely electric. You start from nothing and you slowly build an army and an empire. The means of doing so are at your whim. Will you recruit and army of bandits or will you join forces with a ruler seeking to grow their influence? Your path through the world is yours to make.

It's fun! Killed a bunch of goons, made some cash, and has mods.

great gameplay. graphics per its time, but still so much fun.

This is a great game, but it HAS aged somewhat poorly. Nothing else (except for Bannerlord, its sequel) will sate the fantasy of commanding a warband and slowly growing from a small bandit-hunting mercenary band up to an army that fights epic battles and sieges cities.

This is warband. You will have the time of your life regardless if you start playing vanilla without any mods or with mods. I would recommend you install the diplomacy mod though as it does add some nice extra touch to the game, especially if you would like to conquer the entire map in your first campaign. Do also read into the mechanics, as half the lords will be "honorable" and the other half randomized between different personalities, which adds some nice complexity that Bannerlord ever so lacks to this day. Maxing out Honor makes it extremely more convenient for you later if you so decide to form your own kingdom and conquer the lands of Calradia for yourself. I cannot say this is a replacement for Bannerlord, however, this simply is a very nice game you should at least play one compaign through fully. I myself have not even finished my full conquer the entire map campaign yet. I remain at a long war with 3 clans remaining.

very fun to play difficult at first but once you understand the game gets fun

The game is old and not graphically competitive to modern titles, I do not glorify this game based on it being a staple of my childhood gaming. This game is truly a work of art with an active community and mods still being developed. Its a game truly unlike all others based on how versatile it is with gameplay and the wide variety of mods which spice up the game and change the very foundation. It is worth it, honest to god.

AI isnt much better than Bannerlord 2 and UI is way worse

Excellent game, i burned villages, monasteries, robbed peasants and shepherds, then i got home, turned on my PC and started playing Mount & Blade: Warband.

A downgrade from the original even tho many features were added. everything feels robotic and non-smooth.

At Martini Debreli Hasan Dağlar inlesin Drama mahpusunda bre Hasan Dostlar dinlesin

That's a nice head on your shoulder. but, seriously tho one of the best game i've played.

This might just be a "git gud" thing, but this game is impossible from the start. Bandits come out of nowhere and take anything you have, including someone you saved for a quest. Pretty garbage game. To much reading. If I wanted to read I'd play a ttrpg or read a good fantasy book. Not worth the praise this game receives.

I've spent many a long day off getting lost creating my own lore in this game! Tons of fun.

Warband + Diplomacy 4 is the greatest hack-and-slash RPG of all time.

This is the best game that i ever played. Thankyou TaleWorld Entertainment!

Would recommend to anyone quite literally was a fun game

Played it a lot before I had steam, countless hours spend on this game

amazing game that i played continuously for past decade

I really liked the napoleonic wars dlc paired with L'aigle mod

Yıl oldu 2025 oyun hala çoğu yeni nesil oyunlara taş çıkartır

One of the best medieval RPG sims out there. A genre on its own.