For me, it's unplayable. I don't define playability as being able to load the game and play it. If that was the case, you could create a game in a few minutes, drop a ball to a plane, give control over the ball to player and let him roll the ball around. There, a game that can be played. Does playing it makes any sense? No. Same goes for Bannerlord.
I wish I had power to make legislation in real life. Sale or purchase of software in this state would be forbidden and punishable. Selling software that is 30% complete and is more or less in a bare bones demo state, that I would place on a level of an investment pitch during talks with potential investors is highly immoral and should be punishable by law.
Early access. Pff. No. Early access or closed beta in my dictionary means full content, stable game, that has passed intensive internal testing and is free of major bugs, given for free to certain reliable people for additional testing, people who would play for reviews and valuable feedback, considering that it's not possible to test every individual environment case in the studio. After closed beta, there is an open beta which is also free, where people can try and see if it's worth their time and money (even though games are never worth money) and perhaps offer some valuable feedback, even though that can't and shouldn't be expected from an average person. It's more of a marketing thing. We are not there to test, we are consumers. I don't test any products before manufacturer puts it on the market. I try it once it's out there and decide if I will buy it. Finally, once it's released, there has to be a free demo, so that people can make their final decision. Periods between beta and release is usually short, if everything is ok. If it's not ok, that means team has failed and should save what can be saved if anything can be saved, as it's too late to start over. Many games were cancelled before release.
After 8 years of development, Warband still has more content and even it was content dry and would become boring quickly without mods. Relying on mods to make base game worth buying is unacceptable, which is the reason I never bought it, but got it for free, played it for a few days until I've seen everything that it could offer and uninstalled. No, it's not stealing, as you can make infinite copies and sell the product indefinitely without any new production investments, which is not moral and my actions have not made any losses on your side, as I would've never bought the game anyway, even if piracy didn't exist. Games get developed and released in 1-2 years if team is capable and has enough money. If you don't have what's required, why try? Huge MMO's take a few as they are...well huge. Bannerlord is not huge. Not even close.
During numerous blog posts it was clear to me that developer was beating around the bush as they didn't have a product, so they had to do something to trick us into thinking that there is one and that it's going through fine polishing in order to be perfect. Hype. Wow, imagine the physics, immersion. Yeah, sure, like a sane person can care about such easily undetectable details as shield moving differently when hit in different part of it, while focused on staying alive in a battle of hundreds, with hundred different things happening on the screen at each moment. Didn't see anything wrong with Warband regarding immersion. Can you even get immersed, truly lose the sense of reality, forget that you are playing a game? Nope.
I haven't bought Bannerlord and never will. Taleworlds should be closed, no support from my side. I got it for free as a gift, by a tricked friend, Warband fan who actually thought that he was buying a 90% finished game, which is reasonable, played for a few hours and gave up. I'm not sure how refund works and if it's even possible anymore as some time has passed and I'm not going to spend time on researching that. I felt sorry for him, even thought of paying him for his gift, as a refund, in one moment.
Trade? Yes, it's there. It was there in Warband and it was kind of worth it, even though it required a lot of time investment into leading a ledger and statistics manually. Can you get rich by trading quickly? Not really, I traded for hours, made detailed excel sheet of buying and selling prices for every product, every village and city, talked with caravans and made notes of rumors, made analysis of what is worth trading and where. Spent more time doing that than playing really. Invested all points into trading and crafting and I had made a trader background. So, in the end, more time spent going around trying to make profit than actually making a profit and investing it further. Took forever to get to ~15k to buy a caravan, only to lose an expensive companion and get a few hundred per day. So, no caravans, ever again. Ok, workshops. Wait...how do you buy them? Ah, talk to a random worker. 200 per day and only 3 in the whole world. Fantastic, never again. Velvet factory Warband, anyone? Automatic ledger which would track all buying and selling prices of every place you have visited and trading rumors? No? Not even something similar to Patrician III ? I have to spend hours filling an excel table, noting down what I've bought, where, for how much, where I should sell, how many, for how much, what my profit will be? No warehouses to store goods for later when prices rise or auto traders that would buy goods once price drops below a certain value or sell once it's above a certain value?
Crafting for a few seconds, then resting more than it takes to craft to get stamina to craft again, to get random unlocks, to make useless worthless items. Spend bunch of money and time on buying materials. Money which you get how if you only craft, as it's a full time job? You can't be a trader, craftsmen, warrior and a lord at the same time. Immersion ? No stamina when you travel, I guess no one rests during travel. Keep repeating it for a year, perhaps you will level up enough, unlock everything and make something useful one day. Is that ever going to lead to a better weapon than a one you can buy?
Good luck with crossbows, I guess it requires years of practice to be able to use a simple tool.
Village and town immersion? Skip. Could've saved a lot of time and resources on that. Yeah, don't really see a reason to enter a village or a town, ever. Walking around just for the sake of immersion is a waste of time in a game such this one. One of a few features I missed the most in vanilla Warband was to be able to talk with an elder without having to ride into village or a city. So, mods implemented it, as many felt the same. Thanks for that in Bannerlord.
Reputation in order to get recruits? Having to do whole 5 quests that exist in the game, for who knows how long, having to lose reputation with one person in order to get it with another person, so that you could recruit real troops? Wouldn't even try. Warband system was ok, but even that was tiring without automatic experience gain from the trainer perk, which still wouldn't speed things up enough.
Didn't do quests in Warband, as it was pointless and there was silly small variety of them. Didn't do them here either after trying a few of them, for the same reason.
Battles with looters, to level up villagers that throw stones and die in 2 seconds or turn their backs and run away, while getting picked off, again and again and again. Nah.
Kingdom management and diplomacy I wouldn't even touch, as I'm playing a role playing action game, not RTS and the game doesn't have RTS controls either...not going to run around, taking over, investing into and developing properties, while others are being taken from me and destroyed at the same time, which can't be prevented. Got sick of babysitting castles, villages and towns in Warband, just so that they wouldn't be taken over or destroyed, which makes all my previous effort pointless. More you have, harder it gets. Tiresome. Never enough profit to make it worth my time. If stuff in real life was getting destroyed so often and so quickly, I wonder how anyone is alive today. All villages burned, castles sieged and looted again and again. For RTS I reach for Total War, Europa Universalis and such.
In the end, I went from tournament to tournament, got some loot and money from betting (you can't bet on others, but you can watch, really?) as it was the quickest way, even though rewards and tournament concept are silly, invested into trading, which wasn't worth it and that was it. At least rewards in Warband were making it worth your time if you win. Even in Warband I would only play tournaments that had no long range weapons.
Non existing conversations in an RPG? Place holders. No story? Right, sandbox and demo state, ok. Then there shouldn't be a conversation option. Dull in Warband, worse in Bannerlord.
Skilling system that makes some sense, but is terrible in general and not worth it?
Children? Wives. Dinasties. What the...Crusader Kings? What are you trying to be?
Major bugs, bunch of bugs and glitches in general, no content, bad implementation of so many things.
No map in battles which would make some tactical outcome possible, at least? Commands that have no function really. Just charge as in Warband. They will all start running away soon and won't object as you move slowly near by, picking them off one by one.
Multiplayer? Mordhau.
Single player? Kingdom come deliverance.
Only things I appreciated in Bannerlord are easier trade and physics, as I don't have to click 10 times to sell 10 pieces of the same product, but only move a slider (pretty wierd that no one thought of such a simple and logical thing during Warband development) and that I could realistically destroy people for a few battles before it got repetetive. Siege weapons are a plus, but can you fully destroy walls with them which is the only reason to justify their existence? I gave up before getting that far into the game, but from reading comments I can conclude sieges are also terrible.
I guess this is my review. No, it's not a change request or feedback. I'm sure you will do just fine with this, as you are already doing from such high sales, which was the point all along. No need for quality, if you can sell trash. I understand, it's the market today. Include DLC and lootboxes just in case. What was the name...No man's sky? Fallout 4 / 76 ? Electronic Arts?
