Best
1) Combat, but i would divide feelings about SP and MP:
1.1) In single player combat seems just perfect, superior to warband in every aspect.
1.2) Im multiplayer combat feels worse than in warband but still decent - in warband it is more simple yet elegant, in bannerlord it seems more clumsy, heavy and unresponsible.
2) General aestetics (but i think could be done better within the same setting. Personally, i dont like those huge clumsy looking shoulder armor)
3) Beautiful and atmospheric battle scenes, town scenes, village scenes, really enjoing.
4) Face editor where you can create radioactive ugly mutants with acnes and totally absurd hair (but please, make room for even more epic ugliness)
5) world map
6) custom battles mode
Worst
1) Balance
1.1) Troops balance: Vlandian knights army easily kills spearmen army with their maces almost without loosing a single unit. Overall strange feelings with cavalry, it does not feel right. Archers deal very serious harm to cavalry. Archers sometimes even beat infantry in melee. There is video on youtube where dude shows that loose formation for infantry is the best against cavalry and square is worst which is strange.
1.2) Weapon balance: Bows and crossbows seem extreemly overpowered and armor feels extreemly underwpowered. Blunt weapons very overpowered. Two handed weapons are overpowered; using menavlion on cavalry feels odd and unnatural and is completely cheating in multiplayer. Couch lance feels extreemly overpowered (in warband also). Regarding armor and archery: If taking reality in mind, swords could not cut through simple mail armor even from a horse(there will be blunt damage through armor nevertheless) and the most powerfull crossbow will not penetrate scale armor until the bolt gets inbetween individual scales (see skallagrim armor tests on youtube). Armor was something very difficult to deal with. I dont want to say that the game should be completely realistic, but it should be logical and predictable, and things in current state seem to be TOO weird and dont work well enough.
3) Sieges. It seems very weird that sieging army can kill defending army of equal size. Just destroy a wall and push everyone inside in melee. I think that defenders should have a really huge advantage over attakers. (In reality you will just never manage to destroy a wall until you get a huge powder cannon) (Well, i did not siege castles in campaign, so, maybe this is only the case for custom battles mode)
Also: poor AI, poor control for defenders
4) Dialogs and iteractions feel hollow. Quests are not interesting.
5) Very grindy at a start, overall progress feels like having no soul and interest in it. This is why i dont make progress in campaign - just no pleasure in playing.
6) Completely broken smithing. In current state i believe smithing should not even exist in your list of skills at all and should be implemented in a completely different way, for example you can order specially crafted weapon from a blacksmith for greatly increased price.
7) Multiplayer: Bad customization. Too short tdm sessions (seriously, i really dont care who wins, just let me kill everyone i see without having to rejoin server all the time). Servers restart takes quite a while. No battle mode present, skirmish is ugly.
7.1) BUT: captain mode is cool.
Please fix
Weird balance, make more depth and immersiveness, fix crashes, broken perks, rework smithing, fix sieges, make total rework for class system in multiplayer. Make additional world speed button, improve interface and make other cool things that are implemented in mods. Fix first person camera. It was much better in warband.
Thoughts
I would compare to warband: Warband is my favourite game ever and is great both in singleplayer and multiplayer, so:
- For singleplayer I would still play heavily modded warband (prophecy of pendor for example). But BL has tendency to become better in a short time. And if comparing NATIVE WB and BL, i will choose BL.
- For multiplayer i would prefer warband. BL is not even close to WB on multiplayer, but unfortinately a week ago I found that there are almost nobody playing warband on the servers list, so... Play BL, it is quite decent still.
- From time to time I would play BL with custom battles mode - this is very relaxing and satisfying, pure enjoyment.
Conclusion: BL is a very decent game. It is overally worse than warband but may one day become better in single player mode. For multiplayer - i doubt but still possible.
