Is Mount & Blade worth playing if I already own Warband?

I recently purchased the "M&B Collection" that includes the orignal game, Warband, and WF&S.

I've so far played a few hours on M&B and, while I've enjoyed it a great deal, feel it's slightly unpolished and am a bit dissapointed at the lack of full widescreen implementation (apparently the HUD/GUI is stretched on modern 16:9 monitors).

As a casual player, do you recommend I move on to Warband at this point since I'm guessing it already does everything M&B does but is a bit or more 'enhanced'?  Or is there a whole original campaign storyline to the original M&B I would miss if I skipped it?

Unless you want to play some of the more imaginative and weird mods that there were for m&b, your answer is no.
Virtually everything about warband is better, and that's what makes it a good sequel, it makes m&b virtually obsolete.
Also there's no storyline you're missing out on in the original m&b, or warband for that matter. There are isolated bits of lore here and there, but the storyline is your own to create, pretty much.

Welcome to mount and blade, by the way. And goodbye to several hundred hours

He's right about M&B Warband being better in some spects than the original M&B, but...

jacobhinds said:

Unless you want to play some of the more imaginative and weird mods that there were for m&b (...)

Click to expand...

, here are some you definitely have to try out:

• Europe 1805 - II
• Solid and Shade
• 1866
• Sword of Damocles - Look for a Warband version too.
• The Last Days of the Third Age - Look for its dedicated forum at MBX
• Star Wars Conquest - Look for it at Moddb/ Desura
• The Wedding Dance
• High School Of The Dead - Look for a Warband version too.

Sort of a necro, but whatever.

I love Mount & Blade, but I hated Warband. Here's why:

1) Annoying combat mechanics: It's just plain way harder to hit anything with the slow, short, loopy mounted swing animations in Warband. The addition of forehand and backhand mounted swings is mostly irrelevant except to give you something to do wrong. The addition of a cooldown to the couched lance is just irritating. These changes were probably meant to be more realistic or to accomodate multiplayer, but ask me if I give a crap.

2) Controversy means being marshal sucks: In vanilla M&B I can rack up a bunch of renown and honor, join a faction, become marshal, and go about my business. In Warband I have to worry about every stupid village that gets raided, inevitably losing the position due to controversy. This makes joining a faction an incredible pain in the ass, since taking nonsensical orders from a retarded NPC marshal half the time is just awful.

3) Burning villages costs honor: In vanilla M&B when I needed a bunch of money, I raised an army and started plundering whatever faction I decided I didn't care about recruiting from. Villages got burned, the army came out to stop me, battles were fought, loot/fun/adventure were had. In Warband I dare not do all that for fear of wrecking my honor, so instead when I need money I go around opening wool factories and breweries. Oh boy, exciting.

4) Political system plays like a spreadsheet: On paper, Warband's more complex political system sounds like a blast. In reality, it's incredibly tedious, and none of the nobles in the game has enough personality to make me care about whose uncle I just gained +1 reputation with or whatever. At least in Vanilla I can just run a couple quests for a guy until he likes me and then not worry about him.

In short, Vanilla M&B was a fun game about leveling up, building a crew, joining a faction, becoming marshal, burning villages, and kicking the crap out of the other factions. Warband, on the other hand, is a laborious grind about building bakeries and ironworks and kissing the ass of 200 different faceless NPCs.