Bannerlord is a good game, but...

[Nicoseb]

I've been enjoying Bannerlord, but I'm realizing it's only because it's yet another Mount & Blade game and not because it's a sequel that looks like it's gone through 8+ years of development.

The reason I play these games is because they offer something that no other game does, but after 8 years of waiting, I expected something a little more, and there's certain design decisions that make no sense to me as a fan. I'm optimistic that many of these things will be fixed and/or changed, but this is an Early Access review.

- When factions go to war, there's no easy way to tell. Half the time I have no idea that we're at war with someone because the game doesn't clearly tell you this. In Warband, when factions go to war, the game stops you with a full-screen message saying this. Why? Because it's a big deal and it deserves your attention. Placing important faction related information like this into the bottom-left feed (which almost nobody reads) is not a good decision.

- No Masterwork/Lordly etc. items. This for me is a huge problem, because I loved the fact that items had different tiers. It made you want to keep playing, fighting and the feeling of finally finding that Lordly Winged Helmet gave me such an euphoric feeling. As of now, I'm already getting so sick and tired of seeing many of the same items, that I just don't see much point in fighting, when I know almost for certain what I'm getting. In Warband, when fighting a big battle, there was always that excitement of possibly getting something fantastic for your hard work, then hearing that familiar jingle and reading you received bonus loot.

- The crafting serves no purpose. I for one, was looking forward to this feature, but it's useless. Even when I try to craft an item that is within the "green" threshold, 1/10 times I might actually get a sword that has an improved stat on it, but other than that it's always something totally garbage. The worst part is, after winning a sword from a tournament during my first hour of play, I still can't craft anything nearly as good after nearly 40 hours. The perks also don't seem to work and the grind of getting new part designs is ridiculous, which won't matter anyway because the stats on the weapons you craft are awful. It just has no viability in any stage of the game and I don't feel like using a sword I created when it's 3 times as bad as the one I have now.

- The character models are ugly. I'm sorry but they are, and it's really reflective of the game's insane development time. This game would have looked fine 5 years ago, but now it looks really last-gen. I understand that most people do not play these games for the graphics, me included. Hell, I spent nearly as thousand hours of Warband and it's one of the most ugliest games ever. However, I did expect for a full-fledged sequel to look a bit better than this. Most of the time, the characters just stare into the distance with a blank stare and even the Faction Leaders look totally generic, and not fearsome rulers the game tries to portray them as. Also, why do most character have this weird goofy grin on their face in their portrait? What's up with that?

- Useless NPC conversations. When I engage a group of bandits, I don't want to talk to them. They have nothing to say, they can't be recruited or reasoned with, so why is the game forcing me into a conversation? I should be able to engage them in combat right away and not waste my time talking to a Looter. Is that a joke? Thankfully, there's already a mod that makes this stupidity go away and Taleworlds should definitely code it into the actual game, because that's how it should be. If the NPC has nothing to say to you, you shouldn't be forced to talk to them. Simple.

- You can own property without even knowing. This sort of ties in with the issue of faction wars, because it's yet another thing the game tells you NOTHING ABOUT. Last time playing the game, I accidentally looked through the list of faction fiefs and realized I owned a castle. This shocked me, because again, the game did not clearly tell me this, except in the bottom-left feed, which probably scrolled past in 2 seconds because I was resting in a settlement. Shouldn't there be a huge message or a clear notificiation telling you that you own a castle? Apparently the game doesn't think so. I could have lost that castle to an enemy siege and not even know I owned it in the first place.

You could argue I'm not paying enough attention to the feed, but we have to establish what the feed should be there for. It should be for casual news and notifications, like the consumption of daily gold, resources and when somebody has a baby or something. Not lump all of these topics of varying importance into a same small box and expect us to read it at all times. When you make an UI element small like that and place it in the bottom corner, it tells the player that it's something they shouldn't really pay attention to, unless they want to know every little detail that's going on. My point is: Notifications about new fief ownership and war declarations DO NOT belong there.

I could go on, but I think I made my point. This game needs a lot of work and it's currently missing features and functions that should already be there, frankly. Thankfully the TW team seem to be really busy updating this game and they certainly receive props for that. I can't wait to see what this game will look like in the future.

 

[Sidhwen_Khorest]

I agree with you that the feed is a bit useless, because I almost never notice things that are important. I wouldn't mind a system like mount and blade where important changes like war or relevent fiefs changing hands was a pop up that stopped the game.

Masterwork items are incoming, they say they can't add them yet because it will break certain peoples saves and they want to resolve that before patching them back in.

Some bandit conversations are actually worthwhile, since this recent patch I've had some surrender and offer to join my troop before fighting. might be good to not have to talk to them if there is nothing to say, like a popup window instead of actually loading in their character model, but im willing to overlook it.

 

[Tanrıkut]

Bandit conversations issue could be easily solved if we could right click on them and gve order of attack without speaking. If we wish to speak to them then we can still do so.
Also, craft becomes extremely strong with all tier 5 parts

 

[Cossack8559]

Notifications need to be improved. Wars,Peace, even being given castles etc often go unnoticed by me as they scroll past in the bottom left corner. What i am confused about is sometimes i get a icon pop up when my kingdom is at war or has made peace. But then other times i see the whole map is red and yet no icon has popped up or anything. It needs to be improved.

 

[Nikomakkos]

... but not finished yet.

 

[Nicoseb]

Masterwork items are incoming, they say they can't add them yet because it will break certain peoples saves and they want to resolve that before patching them back in.

Some bandit conversations are actually worthwhile, since this recent patch I've had some surrender and offer to join my troop before fighting. might be good to not have to talk to them if there is nothing to say, like a popup window instead of actually loading in their character model, but im willing to overlook it.

This is good to hear. Also, I had no idea about this bandit surrendering thing. I'm glad the devs are working on this as we speak.

Bandit conversations issue could be easily solved if we could right click on them and gve order of attack without speaking. If we wish to speak to them then we can still do so.
Also, craft becomes extremely strong with all tier 5 parts

Yes, indeed. The mod I mentioned gives you the pop-up window which has options to Attack and Converse, which I think is the right way to do it.

Fast Dialogue

Removes loading screens from interactions with essentially all map interactions. Including lords, bandits, villagers, caravans, and small faction meetings.

www.nexusmods.com

 

[Earth Dragon]

Wow....it’s like we forgot we’re in early access and this build was put forward specifically to test certain things.

We know expierence isnt being calculated right, yet people post as if it is

We know of dozens of things already in game that keep getting axes to avoid file corruption, yet people still complain about them.

We know this team is kicking out patches almost daily, and that the game is in early access, yet posts and criticism would have you think it’s a new release

 

[Lord Irontoe]

Wow....it’s like we forgot we’re in early access and this build was put forward specifically to test certain things.

We know expierence isnt being calculated right, yet people post as if it is

We know of dozens of things already in game that keep getting axes to avoid file corruption, yet people still complain about them.

We know this team is kicking out patches almost daily, and that the game is in early access, yet posts and criticism would have you think it’s a new release

People need to complain about the things that aren't working right or the devs will think everything's peachy and won't fix them. That too is an important part of early access.

 

[MKLVN]

God I hate these posts. Almost none of this is constructive outside of the lack of notifications.

Don’t like graphics? The same graphics we’ve been seeing for years now with gameplay vids and dev blogs? Okay, well I’m not sure what you were looking at beforehand that gave you the impression graphics would look different than they currently do. I mean they literally showed us goofy looking Albert Einstein, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vin Diesel, and Professor Snape characters at Gamescom.

It’s hard to craft a masterwork item? Yeah it should be. Unless your character has years of smithing under his/her belt you should be crafting average weapons. I arm all my companions and myself with weapons I craft and they are all viable choices if I don’t want to spend +15k denar on a better weapon from a trader. Why should you just be a masterwork blacksmith out of nowhere?

Dialogue with bandits and looters is useless? It offers the chance for the player to bribe his/her way out of combat or get the bandits to join his/her party instead of fighting.

The only thing relevant or worthy of being posted as a suggestion is the lack of notifications of major events in game. The rest of this doesn’t even make sense.

 

[Nicoseb]

God I hate these posts. Almost none of this is constructive outside of the lack of notifications.

Don’t like graphics? The same graphics we’ve been seeing for years now with gameplay vids and dev blogs? Okay, well I’m not sure what you were looking at beforehand that gave you the impression graphics would look different than they currently do. I mean they literally showed us goofy looking Albert Einstein, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Vin Diesel, and Professor Snape characters at Gamescom.

It’s hard to craft a masterwork item? Yeah it should be. Unless your character has years of smithing under his/her belt you should be crafting average weapons. I arm all my companions and myself with weapons I craft and they are all viable choices if I don’t want to spend +15k denar on a better weapon from a trader. Why should you just be a masterwork blacksmith out of nowhere?

Dialogue with bandits and looters is useless? It offers the chance for the player to bribe his/her way out of combat or get the bandits to join his/her party instead of fighting.

If you hate these kind of posts, then why even reply? I don't get the negative vibe you're giving, I had a good sentiment behind the post. It's okay to discuss problems that the game has, because we want it to be better. I'm not here to hate on it. Furthermore, you might say most of what I said is irrelevant, but I wholeheartedly disagree.

When you talked about masterwork items, I never said it should be easy to craft them. I said that it's difficult to craft something that's very useful even in early game. It makes the whole Smithing thing useless until way later. It needs balancing and tweaking. Nobody said you should get Masterwork items out of nowhere.

Dialogue with Looters in particular was useless (until the very last patch) because there was no other point in the dialogue window, except engage them in combat. Therefore, it should've been skippable.

The only thing relevant or worthy of being posted as a suggestion is the lack of notifications of major events in game. The rest of this doesn’t even make sense.

If it doesn't make sense to you, then maybe you should read it again, since you clearly didn't understand most of the points I made anyway and just wanted to argue for no reason.

 

[MKLVN]

If you hate these kind of posts, then why even reply? I don't get the negative vibe you're giving, I had a good sentiment behind the post. It's okay to discuss problems that the game has, because we want it to be better. I'm not here to hate on it. Furthermore, you might say most of what I said is irrelevant, but I wholeheartedly disagree.

When you talked about masterwork items, I never said it should be easy to craft them. I said that it's difficult to craft something that's very useful even in early game. It makes the whole Smithing thing useless until way later. It needs balancing and tweaking. Nobody said you should get Masterwork items out of nowhere.

Dialogue with Looters in particular was useless (until the very last patch) because there was no other point in the dialogue window, except engage them in combat. Therefore, it should've been skippable.



If it doesn't make sense to you, then maybe you should read it again, since you clearly didn't understand most of the points I made anyway and just wanted to argue for no reason.

I explicitly stated that I don't like them because they're not constructive, you're just complaining. Stating that crafting is useless is absolutely not true. You don't make any valid points about it. I guarantee the weapon your craft is not three times worse than a sword you win in a tournament. That's obnoxious. You don't offer any suggestions you're just ranting that after "40 hours" you still have yet to be able to craft a usable weapon. Stating that dialogue with looters/bandits is useless isn't valid. You have dialogue options to barter, surrender, try to convince them to surrender. Even if it's use is only for immersion, it has a use and if you don't like the use, suggest a viable alternative.

Almost all of your points are subjective and exaggerated, not actual constructive criticisms with reasonable alternative solutions. Plenty of posts here include actual evidence backing the game's shortcomings, this one does not and therefore doesn't help developers in an EA release. That's why I hate these posts.

 

[JohannTheFirst]

He already provided an alternative for at least one of his issues, given he specifically referenced the fast dialogues mod. You're absolutely needlessly aggressive, disrespectful and arrogant.

For pretty much all of his points the solutions for his gripes are implicitly or explicitly available in his post, and you're choosing to completely disregard it. That's rude, man.

 

[MBeagleguy]

I think people are taking the graphics for granted. Do the graphics look like what we may see in other games released this year? No, but graphics were never the essence of Mount and Blade.

And the graphics actually are nice in many different details. Have you seen the graphics and animation when you zoom up close on the world map?

 

[Mrhazard1989]

I've been enjoying Bannerlord, but I'm realizing it's only because it's yet another Mount & Blade game and not because it's a sequel that looks like it's gone through 8+ years of development.

The reason I play these games is because they offer something that no other game does, but after 8 years of waiting, I expected something a little more, and there's certain design decisions that make no sense to me as a fan. I'm optimistic that many of these things will be fixed and/or changed, but this is an Early Access review.

- When factions go to war, there's no easy way to tell. Half the time I have no idea that we're at war with someone because the game doesn't clearly tell you this. In Warband, when factions go to war, the game stops you with a full-screen message saying this. Why? Because it's a big deal and it deserves your attention. Placing important faction related information like this into the bottom-left feed (which almost nobody reads) is not a good decision.

- No Masterwork/Lordly etc. items. This for me is a huge problem, because I loved the fact that items had different tiers. It made you want to keep playing, fighting and the feeling of finally finding that Lordly Winged Helmet gave me such an euphoric feeling. As of now, I'm already getting so sick and tired of seeing many of the same items, that I just don't see much point in fighting, when I know almost for certain what I'm getting. In Warband, when fighting a big battle, there was always that excitement of possibly getting something fantastic for your hard work, then hearing that familiar jingle and reading you received bonus loot.

- The crafting serves no purpose. I for one, was looking forward to this feature, but it's useless. Even when I try to craft an item that is within the "green" threshold, 1/10 times I might actually get a sword that has an improved stat on it, but other than that it's always something totally garbage. The worst part is, after winning a sword from a tournament during my first hour of play, I still can't craft anything nearly as good after nearly 40 hours. The perks also don't seem to work and the grind of getting new part designs is ridiculous, which won't matter anyway because the stats on the weapons you craft are awful. It just has no viability in any stage of the game and I don't feel like using a sword I created when it's 3 times as bad as the one I have now.

- The character models are ugly. I'm sorry but they are, and it's really reflective of the game's insane development time. This game would have looked fine 5 years ago, but now it looks really last-gen. I understand that most people do not play these games for the graphics, me included. Hell, I spent nearly as thousand hours of Warband and it's one of the most ugliest games ever. However, I did expect for a full-fledged sequel to look a bit better than this. Most of the time, the characters just stare into the distance with a blank stare and even the Faction Leaders look totally generic, and not fearsome rulers the game tries to portray them as. Also, why do most character have this weird goofy grin on their face in their portrait? What's up with that?

- Useless NPC conversations. When I engage a group of bandits, I don't want to talk to them. They have nothing to say, they can't be recruited or reasoned with, so why is the game forcing me into a conversation? I should be able to engage them in combat right away and not waste my time talking to a Looter. Is that a joke? Thankfully, there's already a mod that makes this stupidity go away and Taleworlds should definitely code it into the actual game, because that's how it should be. If the NPC has nothing to say to you, you shouldn't be forced to talk to them. Simple.

- You can own property without even knowing. This sort of ties in with the issue of faction wars, because it's yet another thing the game tells you NOTHING ABOUT. Last time playing the game, I accidentally looked through the list of faction fiefs and realized I owned a castle. This shocked me, because again, the game did not clearly tell me this, except in the bottom-left feed, which probably scrolled past in 2 seconds because I was resting in a settlement. Shouldn't there be a huge message or a clear notificiation telling you that you own a castle? Apparently the game doesn't think so. I could have lost that castle to an enemy siege and not even know I owned it in the first place.

You could argue I'm not paying enough attention to the feed, but we have to establish what the feed should be there for. It should be for casual news and notifications, like the consumption of daily gold, resources and when somebody has a baby or something. Not lump all of these topics of varying importance into a same small box and expect us to read it at all times. When you make an UI element small like that and place it in the bottom corner, it tells the player that it's something they shouldn't really pay attention to, unless they want to know every little detail that's going on. My point is: Notifications about new fief ownership and war declarations DO NOT belong there.

I could go on, but I think I made my point. This game needs a lot of work and it's currently missing features and functions that should already be there, frankly. Thankfully the TW team seem to be really busy updating this game and they certainly receive props for that. I can't wait to see what this game will look like in the future.

These are all valid criticisms. The only thing I kinda disagree with is the character models being ugly. I think they can be quite good but rendering so many is too taxing.

 

[Mrhazard1989]

Wow....it’s like we forgot we’re in early access and this build was put forward specifically to test certain things.

We know expierence isnt being calculated right, yet people post as if it is

We know of dozens of things already in game that keep getting axes to avoid file corruption, yet people still complain about them.

We know this team is kicking out patches almost daily, and that the game is in early access, yet posts and criticism would have you think it’s a new release

He tested it and is giving his criticism. Stop saying EARLY ACCESS TO EVERYTHING

 

[MBeagleguy]

These are all valid criticisms. The only thing I kinda disagree with is the character models being ugly. I think they can be quite good but rendering so many is too taxing.

This as well. There's a lot of moving parts to this game and you don't want to bog the system down too much.

 

[Depressinho]

war and peace declarations are on the right, you just need to pay attention.

 

[Benjamin Bones]

Notifications need to be improved. Wars,Peace, even being given castles etc often go unnoticed by me as they scroll past in the bottom left corner. What i am confused about is sometimes get an icon pop up when my kingdom is at war or has made peace. But then other times i see the whole map is red and yet no icon has popped up or anything. It needs to be improved.

%100. I'm a little perplexed as to how this isn't rock solid. Even though we're in EA you'd think the notification system would have been all set.

 

[Benjamin Bones]

war and peace declarations are on the right, you just need to pay attention.

I STRONGLY disagree. As mentioned earlier the notifications are actually not consistent. Sometimes you get a prompt with a sound (a sword on the right if war declared, or a dove on the right if peace is declared). However, this does not happen every time war is declared or a peace accord is struck. It is inconsistent.

Also, those very inconsistent prompts only (sometimes) tell you when your faction is at war but not when other factions declare war.

 

[mamastoast]

I basically agree with everything you said except the character models... Aside from incredibly derpy facial expressions (smiling women terrify me in this game).

That fact that the game doesn't clearly notifiy you of important events is a major flaw right now. A lot of the time I'm fast forwarding either due travel or waiting for some thing so it's really erally easy to miss messages... Honestly I feel like I have no clue what's going on half the time.

Even if war declarions were consistent, they are much too subtle right now...Don't put important announcements off to the side or in the corners.