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POLL: Your reviews of the COMPLETED FINAL Bannerlord
- Thread starter bonerstorm
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That is their problem. While you can enjoy something for a particular reason and spent considerable amount of time doing it, you can hate that thing for another particular reason at the same time. And after that considerable amount of time, the thing you enjoy does not overwhelm the thing you hate.
Bazza_ov_da_Norf
Recruit
My opinion hasn't changed - Bannerlord is a 7/10 that should and could have been a 10/10. Held back by a high lack of ambition and stubborn/bad game design decisions, the devs have actively chosen to miss an open goal.
But that doesn't matter, it's already been a massive financial success for them. I'll just be happy to see the "final" release so that modders have a more stable base to work from, to add the depth that should've been in vanilla.
But that doesn't matter, it's already been a massive financial success for them. I'll just be happy to see the "final" release so that modders have a more stable base to work from, to add the depth that should've been in vanilla.
Also some people have hardcore insomnia and would rather play a game that's deeply flawed than let their $50 investment go to waste.
There's only so much crap I can binge on Netflix. I like playing a game to completion and publishing a detailed takedown on why it sucks. The REEEE of the fanbois is music to my ears... If I can't get full enjoyment out of a game, I can get enjoyment out of utterly eviscerating it and saving prospective buyers from making the same mistake while legions of obsessed lunatics scream.
This is a fair characterization. BL is a good game using the rest of the games industry as a barometer. It is a disappointment compared to the potential shown in WB/VC/etc.
König Harlaus
Recruit
Ι have more than 450 hours.But my negative review is regarding the full price product i paid for and not what i am actually playing with which is literally 16 mods.Its like ordering a pizza and get only the dough.Why do i need to add pepperoni,cheese,pepper,tomato sause,mashroom and oil to a pizza?
I both love and hate that analogy.
Insomnia is an absolute ***** and what works for you, works. Here's some unwanted, unasked for advice from an internet stranger: What worked for me, instead of beefing it out with the loonies on a forum, was reading (about stoicism mainly). A calm mind takes care of a restless body. If reading isn't your thing, there's tons of videos, podcasts or subreddits about it. I can wholeheartedly recommend it.
redmark
Squire
Dipping into the game every few updates or so, and reading many of the discussions on here I think that's actually fine - and 'should have' been in vanilla is arguable in some cases. Some of the things some people think should be in vanilla conflict; whether the game should be faster or slower paced (children, levelling, the rate at which you gain renown, etc.), the nature of warring, whether you should explore every location to find quest givers or be able to quick-talk everyone to play more as grand strategy. The vanilla game is a base; players can choose which mods to use to take the game in the direction they prefer.
Not reviewed yet, if I do it will be a 7 or 8. Early through to mid game is actually a reasonably polished, engaging game now. Late game is a siege grind and once you have a few million to recruit clans, ultimately there's little jeopardy in it.
LuciusDomitiusAurelianus
Sergeant
tl;dr Left a negative review around 1.4.x? with 70 or so hours and am closer to 300 now and still negative, just update it. Game is a solid 6/10 - good base to build off of but frustratingly soulless in areas that matter.
Now for the rant...
Devils advocate: Bannerlord is am ambitious jack-of-all-trades (at least that is how it was positioned) that was supposed to hit all the marks for combat, roleplaying, immersion, politics, fief/kingdom management since that is what Warband had (which was deeply flawed on its own) but since it's next-gen you'd expect all of those systems to be built out. I get that's hard to do during a brutal economic crisis manufactured by a bad response to what turned out to be just another coronavirus - add to the fact that Turkey has its own geopolitical and economic issues with currency solvency and fighting a ton of proxy wars in Syria, Iraqi Kurdistan, etc. - it's hard to employ folks with the skills AND theyre doing 4 or 5 console ports all in house...that's a lot to overcome.
While I am sympathetic to all of that, having been a product manager and a principal engineer for larger scaled projects in different settings (outside of gaming), it's still frustrating when elements are missing, bugs are never fixed, and the "core" features such as combat AI, strategic AI and diplomacy are not that great.
Battles are nice, graphics are good, it's always fun smashing guys over the head with 2-handers but it gets tiresome when it's the same ole watching my HAs run into the enemy infantry, my cataphracts having 10% accuracy on thrusts, and the enemy forming up in a donut but I cannot flank them because they magically know where everyone is despite not having Line-of-Site
It's frustrating when I need to cheese policies just to stop fiefs from collapsing all the while my AI lords have zero respect for me as a ruler, even if they were a former companion, and I have to constantly resist their desire for war. While campaign/Army AI has improved a bit to be more cohesive, that model breaks immediately there is a 2-front war or if there are defensive and offensive actions required. Party targeting behavior is still really bad.
The economy is manic at best, with workshops and caravans having no real rhyme or reason why they earn money or not, any economic warfare is null since enemies spawn with gold and troops and don't have a concept of running into bankruptcy which is what mostly ended wars to begin with if there wasn't an outright massacre (which there really wasn't since 60% of the world died - there were not 60K doom stacks running around). While I can build out towns and castles, it's all rather static and the scaling for construction is very poor and still doesn't give great bonuses. Doesn't matter if I have level 3 walls the auto-calc will still decide.
Late game is also dreadful. With the lack of roleplaying and the fact you cannot do many quests to begin with and are too busy micro-managing the stupid AI and dealing with raids...it becomes a chore...like the end of an EU4 campaign and burns me out.
And that is all to say that I still like it - early game is almost always fun, smashing dudes over the head is always fun, coming in clutch to save a party getting gang-stomped or to lift a siege, unlocking weapon parts or getting good drops is awesome as is winning close-quarters combat against the AI to get a victory during a siege or killing an enemy lord. There are legitimate parts that are exciting but once you do it 5 times it's a grind again.
And I am not even sure mods can really fix that gameplay loop.
Now for the rant...
Devils advocate: Bannerlord is am ambitious jack-of-all-trades (at least that is how it was positioned) that was supposed to hit all the marks for combat, roleplaying, immersion, politics, fief/kingdom management since that is what Warband had (which was deeply flawed on its own) but since it's next-gen you'd expect all of those systems to be built out. I get that's hard to do during a brutal economic crisis manufactured by a bad response to what turned out to be just another coronavirus - add to the fact that Turkey has its own geopolitical and economic issues with currency solvency and fighting a ton of proxy wars in Syria, Iraqi Kurdistan, etc. - it's hard to employ folks with the skills AND theyre doing 4 or 5 console ports all in house...that's a lot to overcome.
While I am sympathetic to all of that, having been a product manager and a principal engineer for larger scaled projects in different settings (outside of gaming), it's still frustrating when elements are missing, bugs are never fixed, and the "core" features such as combat AI, strategic AI and diplomacy are not that great.
Battles are nice, graphics are good, it's always fun smashing guys over the head with 2-handers but it gets tiresome when it's the same ole watching my HAs run into the enemy infantry, my cataphracts having 10% accuracy on thrusts, and the enemy forming up in a donut but I cannot flank them because they magically know where everyone is despite not having Line-of-Site
It's frustrating when I need to cheese policies just to stop fiefs from collapsing all the while my AI lords have zero respect for me as a ruler, even if they were a former companion, and I have to constantly resist their desire for war. While campaign/Army AI has improved a bit to be more cohesive, that model breaks immediately there is a 2-front war or if there are defensive and offensive actions required. Party targeting behavior is still really bad.
The economy is manic at best, with workshops and caravans having no real rhyme or reason why they earn money or not, any economic warfare is null since enemies spawn with gold and troops and don't have a concept of running into bankruptcy which is what mostly ended wars to begin with if there wasn't an outright massacre (which there really wasn't since 60% of the world died - there were not 60K doom stacks running around). While I can build out towns and castles, it's all rather static and the scaling for construction is very poor and still doesn't give great bonuses. Doesn't matter if I have level 3 walls the auto-calc will still decide.
Late game is also dreadful. With the lack of roleplaying and the fact you cannot do many quests to begin with and are too busy micro-managing the stupid AI and dealing with raids...it becomes a chore...like the end of an EU4 campaign and burns me out.
And that is all to say that I still like it - early game is almost always fun, smashing dudes over the head is always fun, coming in clutch to save a party getting gang-stomped or to lift a siege, unlocking weapon parts or getting good drops is awesome as is winning close-quarters combat against the AI to get a victory during a siege or killing an enemy lord. There are legitimate parts that are exciting but once you do it 5 times it's a grind again.
And I am not even sure mods can really fix that gameplay loop.
TurkishEconomy
Regular
The game is in absolute disarray, of course it will be negative.
RozBritanicus
Sergeant
I just can't bring myself to play the game it's not good its average. Why because it's just battles no intrigues no other way of tackling a clan than a battle. The trading's fun at first and the quests are ok the arena is ok but get very boring after 20 plus times. When i do play it will be after release and with a lot of mods main one will be bannerkings other will be built around bannerkings. I hope any updates after release will be very few and actually have game play mechanics added.
mfuegemann
Regular
Rated it negative a while back with 185 hours playtime. The game had good visuals from the start, but there was and still is way too few mid and end game content. From the broken siege AI and incomplete siege scene usage to the hilarious campaign AI, I am very disappointed. So the rating will stand.
I will give the final release a try, but honestly I am only waiting for mods now.
I will give the final release a try, but honestly I am only waiting for mods now.
Au contraire, mon frere.
They didn't just code crappy AI. They coded GREAT AI, but then systematically nerfed it for every unit.
The suck in BL is entirely on purpose.
FireBlazinCandy
Should have built a solid game for the PC and only then started with the console versions. Instead, we have a half baked PC game with scaled backed and weird features to cater to consoles..one of the most egregious is the slow motion they added when giving commands. I know some people liked it, but it takes away from the mayhem of a battle and thinking on your feet.
I assume they spent their governments grant money on bollocks and their spanking new building and didn't put any away for a rainy day (the Turkish economy crashing) and had to pivot early to consoles, thus fking up the whole thing.
I assume they spent their governments grant money on bollocks and their spanking new building and didn't put any away for a rainy day (the Turkish economy crashing) and had to pivot early to consoles, thus fking up the whole thing.
StewVader
Sergeant
Not sure how anyone could give this dumpster fire a positive review.
No immersion, no strategy or tactics, no diplomacy, nonsensical map and settlement placements, grindy boring gameplay loop, insufferable AI, ridiculous mechanics and that's just a handful of the serious problems.
Its just bad all the way down to its core.
No immersion, no strategy or tactics, no diplomacy, nonsensical map and settlement placements, grindy boring gameplay loop, insufferable AI, ridiculous mechanics and that's just a handful of the serious problems.
Its just bad all the way down to its core.
Philozoraptor
Sergeant
Couching decision (when do they couch) for AI.
Weapon choice decision of the AI.
AI archer target aquisition.
Control over cavalry charge target.
Control over shield hitboxes (we would like to give shields passive block vs melee attacks when characters do not hold block).
Physics interactions (we would like to change how charges work, right now horses kinda flow through formation when there are other horses pushing behind them).
Addition of new hitboxes (face and perhaps armpits hitbox would be nice.
I'd say it is a bigger problem to waste hours of your leisure time on something you do not enjoy.
Not just Bannerlord, but I keep seeing this attitude with games like PoE, EVE, War Thunder, World of Tanks, etc. where the people with 500+ hours hate the game with a burning, incandescent rage (Last Played: Five minutes ago) while people with 60 hours are like "Man, it is pretty fun." (Last Played: August 2021).
Death2Tyrants
Veteran
So you're leaving it positive just because you're afraid people will laugh at your negative review and not because you actually think it's positive?
You're certainly showing your backbone there mate.
I think the game is a positive. If I didn't like the game, I would never bother posting a goddamned thing on these forums.
There's certainly something to be said for being able to simply walk away from a product you don't enjoy, whose makers hold you in contempt. The question is: why can't you?
The reason behind that attitude is likely to be a mental problem, but God forbid we refer to it as such.
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If I didn't like Bannerlord I wouldn't bother being angry or pissed off about the game. If I disliked the game I genuinely wouldn't care and would just move on with my life.
But unfortunately it is a bit disappointing that they're calling the next release a full release. Although I'm certain there will be patches and updates after release most people coming back into Bannerlord will get turned off by its current state unless TW have a separate fork of the game up their sleeve that is so different from the EA version, with fully implemented diplomacy, roleplay and management systems and multiplayer, that even the current player base will get caught completely off-guard.
But unfortunately it is a bit disappointing that they're calling the next release a full release. Although I'm certain there will be patches and updates after release most people coming back into Bannerlord will get turned off by its current state unless TW have a separate fork of the game up their sleeve that is so different from the EA version, with fully implemented diplomacy, roleplay and management systems and multiplayer, that even the current player base will get caught completely off-guard.
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