I am going to give a more detailed, argued and above all "documented" opinion, facts, facts, facts.
It's not about saying "is the game good" "yes" "no".
It's about saying, "What is this game?" "How can we play it?" "What do we do during the game?" "What are the different ways to play?" And, finally, a subjective opinion on "Why do we find the game both interesting and boring?" "Why do we call this game a 'skeleton game'? "What do we think is missing to make a good Bannerlord game?"
Already, to start, there are four generic ways to play:
- a "campaign" mode,
- a "sandbox" mode,
- a "battle" mode,
- a multiplayer mode.
The battle mode:
We will only talk here about the "campaign" and "sandbox" mode. The battle games did not catch our attention even if "we" (me and many friends) spent hours there, it is not in our opinion the heart of the game. If the battles are truly a success , we did not find a great "strategic" interest in it. The battle modalities are quite limited, it is difficult to develop clever strategies, on the other hand we can have fun doing fun experiments by mixing the troops, doing grandiose fights with a thousand troops... It's fun , but that's not what caught our attention the most. We fought more battles playing the "campaign" or playing in "sandbox", than on the specialized mode.
The battles themselves:
This is undoubtedly the greatest achievement of this game even if many criticisms are made by players who like to "calculate everything". Galloping in the middle of the fray while cutting, stabbing, piercing the opposing troops, it must be admitted that it is quite exciting. At the beginning... Because we expected more than that like many other players.
Why ?
Character creation and the big map:
Already, when we read the "advertisement" made on Steam, we could believe that we will discover a detailed Universe, RPG, an epic Universe with a real "lore", maybe even a story, memorable quests, or simply an atmosphere a "soul", a spirit, a dark world where war reigns permanently, moving, dark or funny NPCs (npc), secret points, points of interest, mysteries...
There is none of that. We are former Mount and Blade Warband players, we were impatiently waiting for this new opus. We thought Taleworld would take a leap forward, give us a livelier world than Warband was... Warband, we were sorry, because it was a small studio production, and the game mechanics didn It wasn't perfect, but there was, with the battles, something new, an interesting new game proposal even if incomplete and sometimes a little "wobbly".
We thought then that Bannerlord would progress towards a more dreamlike, more epic world, to compensate for what was the weakness of Warband, a great feeling of loneliness, if I may say so. The game was cold, very cold, only the mods had managed to break through the ice, and even then, not always.
What is Bannerlord's progress?
Bannerlord offers us a game very close to "Warband", with the same problem of lack of life, spirit, "soul", environment... Neither lore, nor point of interest, nor RPG proposal, in revenge, better graphics, "better-tuned" battles, some interesting gameplay intros with weddings.
You can lead, it is true, a dynasty over several generations.
Campaign mode
When you play the campaign mode, you are effectively led to create your own dynasty. The problem is that after a few hours of play, you realize that you will repeat the same actions a lot:
- do very uninteresting mini-quests, we expected more from this second opus,
- browse a large map for hours without having randomized events, as a result, it's quickly boring, not to say "irritating", "irritating", to become totally schizophrenic so much at the same time the game is sometimes pleasant ( when playing a crucial battle for example for the expansion of our Kingdom), as it can too often be "painful" because "not fun at all to walk around on a large map where there are no d interests, nor of unforeseeable events,
The diplomacy part:
it is currently in a "larval" state, the options are:
- you can convert an opposing lord to your cause and ask him to join your kingdom,
- you can offer influence points to improve your relations with a clan of your faction,
- you can donate money to improve your relations with a clan,
- you can improve your relations with a clan through marriage but it won't have a lot of consequences on the course of the game,
- you can improve your relations with a clan by helping them during a battle or a siege,
- you can improve your relations with a clan by voting for it in political decisions.
But this "economy" of influence is very quickly mastered. It is such a visible mechanism that it quickly loses interest. Something is missing in this game for this economy of influence to cause specific events. You can, thanks to your "reputation", another important DATA, become the King of your faction. This fame, you build it thanks to all the actions you carry out, winning fights, successful small quests, destroyed bandit bases, etc.
All this mechanics, we already knew it with Warband.
With hindsight, the movement system on the map, even though we are only masters of a single troop or army (the other troops are autonomous), is useless or of little use.
We are in a bad version of the game "Civilization", or we are in a bad version of a medieval fantasy RPG.
It lacks all the options of a management game:
- the management of the cities is very basic and does not present any interest, you put a governor, money, the city develops, and that's it... nothing happens, neither randomized events, nor anything. .. Life in the cities is almost non-existent. There are many NPCs, but they hardly speak, repeat all the same words everywhere. There is no work on the dialogues. Nothing. There are no notable NPCs and no amusing dialogues. Cities are dead. No creative effort has been made, and like in the first game, the cities are meaningless.
- the management of your kingdom seems to be more complex, but it is only an illusion. When your "dynasty" has developed (let's imagine that you are in the third generation, children and grandchildren), you will certainly have some difficulty knowing what to do with all these cherubim.
They grow up. You marry them. You have a big family. To do what ? Nothing in particular. For now, with version 1.8.0, this dynasty is only used to have "companions" whose characteristics you choose yourself from birth. So what ? Will you tell me... And that's a good question... So what? Ben... nothing... It has no playful interest. It makes no sense, neither "spiritual", nor "fun", nor "nothing". We end up with a big family but we don't know what to do with it.
The interactions :
As we said, NPCs are "living dead", they have nothing to say, they bring no story, no exciting quests (just repetitive "mini-quests").
The interactions with the other clans are summarized in the dialogues with 5 or 6 propositions, always the same, and without any "narrative" interest or Role Play. These dialogues are only useful for the overly visible and overly simplistic "mechanics" of the game.
The interactions between characters are therefore absolutely tasteless and repetitive. No character has been planned to surprise us. No randomized event to surprise the player with an NPC that could bring us a touch of humor, poetry, mystery, or other... nothing.
The whole "RPG" dimension has been completely abandoned, like for Warband, which gives the impression of sucking a bone. We have a game skeleton and all the wrapping is missing.
We had already felt that with "Warband", but at the time, this game brought us something new: grandiose battles in a totally original medieval world even if already poor in Role Play information. It was forgivable, it was a first version.
This game called itself a "sandbox game". But the options for "building your Kingdom" were quite short: management of oversimplified cities (a kind of pale and very bad copy of "Civilization" in terms of "politics", economy, diplomacy, and management of the cited). We thought then that with Bannerlord, Taleworld would free itself from the bad choices made in Warband (either to make a totally management game, or to make a totally "RPG" game), but they came back with a "bastard" game, neither management, neither "sandbox", nor "RPG", just a pretext to fight battles with 1000 troops.
In short, they made no choice and came back with a relatively unfinished game.
They have made some improvements since the release of the first Early Access version of Bannerlord:
- on scientific calculations on the strength of the troops, without any great playful interests but it interests a small niche of players,
- on the aesthetics of armor,
- on the rebellions in the cities,
- on marriages and the birth of children,
- on the battle maps (the large map is squared with different battle "minimaps"),
- many bugs have been fixed,
- some balances have been made concerning diplomacy but the game mechanics are still as limited,
- the mini-quests are still repetitive and uninteresting.
In short, there were no major changes in the mechanics of the game.
The "RPG" dimension of the game is totally neglected in favor of a small niche of players who are only interested in battles.
The global "strategic" dimension on the map is totally an illusion, and all the mechanics of the game would only be of interest if, implicitly, we were following a "story", a scenario, in an elaborate world with a lore rich and many surprises. But all that does not exist, there remains only a cold mechanics without "souls".
The "campaign" does not bring any "RPG" dimension.
The "sandbox" part offers too few ways to build your Kingdom, manage your city... You control almost nothing.
The battle part: TW could have sold the game without a map, without a Sandbox part and without a campaign, it would have been more honest, because ultimately it's the only successful dimension in this game.
Multiplayer mode: if you like playing with a slew of skills, if you like "FPS", if you like playing with many possibilities, go your way. No, the multiplayer is a bit "outdated"...
This game is very cold. It's a game without souls, without stories, therefore all the repetitive actions quickly become heavy.
TW forgot that what made it possible to accept repetitive actions, the artistic and narrative coating.
So there is a somewhat paradoxical, somewhat schizophrenic feeling, both an attachment to a game full of promise, and anger at false promises and false announcements.
There's no shame in playing this game. There should be a shame in selling it as is.
This game is simply not "finished". In the end, they will lose a lot of enthusiasts.
TW waits too much for modders to do their job.
I would like the modders to cease all activity to give a "lesson" to TW, TW makes fun of its public too much.