A few observations I've had during my first 45 hours of singleplayer:
I'm going to preface this by saying that I think there's plenty to love about the game, even if people are *****ing about it everywhere. Years ago, I reached the point where I'd played WB so much that I wasn't really into it anyone. Now, I'm glad to say M&B is back in my life, finally, and in a game that's familiar and yet different from its predecessors. Which is good, because change keeps things interesting. However, I have noticed a few things which, in my opinion detract somewhat from the experience:
1.) Crashes, crashes, and crashes. I can't believe how much this game crashes. I can expect the game to crash a few times every time I play. Today has been good, I've played for almost 2 hours and I think it's only crashed twice. Other days it can crash 3-4 times in an hour or so. A few nights ago I think it crashed 3 times in ~15 minutes. It reminds me of the good old days of playing modded Skyrim.
2.) There needs to be more variety in armor, and, frankly, I wonder if the armor values and costs of most armors need to be looked at: There are a lot of "beginner" armors that don't offer a great deal of protection, but are more affordable. The trouble is, it didn't take me very long to save up enough to buy a "mid-tier" suit of armor, which rendered all the lighter armors obsolete. After buying one or two more suits of armor, I'm now wearing armor that is better than just about anything else I see for sale except the high-tier stuff that costs 10k or more. The helmet I'm wearing now is only like the 2nd or
3rd one I've bought, and I've had it for ages and ages. It's got an armor value of like 29, so it's better than most everything else except the really expensive helmets that might cost 50-100k. It's like there are roughly three categories of armor: there's the crap/basic stuff, the good stuff that you can afford pretty early on in the game, and the heaviest or "elite" items which you won't be able to afford for quite some time and which might be the last pieces of armor you buy for yourself.
3.) There could be more variety in what merchants have for sale. It gets dull when the trade screen in every town in a faction/culture looks basically the same as it did in the last town you went through. If nothing that was for sale in one town caught your fancy, you might not have any better luck in the next town if the faction/culture is the same, because they all sell the same stuff.
4.) Having so many Imperial factions isn't such a good idea, at least in my opinion. I know the devs were trying to create a story like the breakup of the Roman Empire, but from a gameplay perspective it's pretty boring to have so much of the map be inhabited by the same culture. It would've been more interesting if instead of 3 Imperial factions we could've seen 1 Imperial faction and 1 or 2 other unique factions with their own cultures. My last point about item variety really applies in regards to the Imperial factions, because all three factions share a culture and therefore all the towns sell the same stuff. This greatly contributes to the boredom when traveling through Imperial lands.
5.) Tournaments and dull and repetitive. The multiple rounds don't help: the 2v2 and 1v1 rounds are the dullest because once you've gotten used to the combat it's really easy to beat the AI in a 1v1 fight, especially when you have armor and a shield. (Also,everyone always spawns in the same spot, which really adds to the feeling of it being the same thing over and over again.) Unless I mess up I'm almost certain to win, so it's just a matter of going through the motions and the rounds to get the prize, and then doing it again every time I come to a town with a tournament underway. Practice fights, on the other hand, are addictively fun. They're spontaneous, brutal free-for-alls, and since no one has any armor, no one can shrug off blows like I can in tournaments. In a practice fight, I always feel like I'm seconds away from potentially getting a sword in the back or a javelin in the face, and when I win I feel a sense of accomplishment. If the devs could make tournaments feel like that, that'd be great.
