Bannerlord SP First Reactions: Megathread

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I have about 90 hours in Bannerlords. I have about 1000 hours in the Total War series. I picked this game up on a whim, I heard about the predecessor that it had a following and was around for a while but for some reason I thought it was more of an RPG, like Witcher except you have bodies of troops and you can yell orders at them. I don't know, some review gave me that impression I don't remember was long time ago. But recently I heard from someone it was more like TW except the campaign was RTS so here I am.

My thoughts in no particular order:

I don't like it that I'm making all this money off looting my enemies and that I can individually manage the looting of every bloody tunic. Why is the lord bothering with it? Lords are rewarded with land, titles and they extract money from their new fief. Soldiers keep the loot, it raises morale and keeps the lord alive.

Why do towns sell quantities of elite weapons to passing strangers? Shouldn't the local lord trust me a LOT before that? Because I might kill him with those weapons?

I like the little armies that harass your main army, keeping tabs on you and letting you know more are coming and soon there will be more of them so watch out.

The music is very very good. A little too much shouting though during the battles.

I need the icons in battle to tell troops apart but man are they annoying af.

I don't understand the caravan mechanic at all. I mean I do in terms of world economy and moving good around. But for me as a player it's basically a choice to make a random investment, right? I don't seem to have any control or way to influence it, it just makes me money for a random amount of time and then it dies and I don't really know if it paid for itself unless I take screenshots every day.

I like that rulers just do what they want. You take the castle, you spend the influence and get shafted. Yeah sorry it's going to the other guy. Also not sorry. That's awesome. I hate systems where I have enough resources early to basically impose my will.

Trading is way too easy. Two cities one day travel apart and I realize a 30% profit? It seems my limiting factor in the early game is simply the amount of pack animals I can buy. After a couple of days I'm transferring a third the city contents at a time to the next city. Way too much trading income. Shouldn't all that stuff be taxed into the ground? Didn't the local guilds take their pound of flesh?

Building stuff is omg fast. What's with all these 1 day build times? Everything should take months or weeks at least. I visit my new castle, click all the projects and go around the countryside to inspect my new fief clear some looters I come back four days later I have brand new place.

I really like that I can spend influence to get other people to send their troops into the meatgrinder for me. Just like in real life. Awesome.

I just hate the whole hideout mechanic. I have 800 soldiers. I know exactly where the hideout is. I have the whole hill surrounded and heavy cavalry ready to charge. I'm bringing a couple of randos with me it, let's go!

I don't like it that I can kite bodies of infantry. No human being on foot would ever chase a horseman with a bow. Ever. You hide, you run away, you look for something, you form a turtle, literally any other action is more beneficial. Lying down and playing dead is better.

Bandits and looters and other trash are annoying. There's too many of them and they move too fast for disorganized rabble. It's like you're trying to chase down these little hyper-aware Jeb Stuart's when it should just be some slow mob.

I like that you can form a party of one with your companion and they go off and hopefully not get captured while growing troops and doing quests and patrolling around. I like seeing their medical skills go up cause I know they're getting captured next or maybe they'll get away. It's very tense. Then I can call them for free to my army and steal all their guys and send them off again.

The siege process seems weird. We build some towers and a ram so that's good. Then we build some onager whatever, it fires once or twice and it's dead. So we build another and it's dead. The guys on the walls have four. So yeah, maybe we can build them out of range? Then move them in at once and fire all at one point? Can we do that Engineer-role guy?

I know perks are borked. I like the choices you have to make though between some.

The leveling system is weird and also kinda cool. It's nice how you have to be truly versed in many disciplines to rise in level. However, it's really easy to create a bottleneck where it's very difficult to accumulate enough points to get more focus.

You raise Engineering only by doing siege stuff? How many sieges do I have to be in? I mean omg it's just insane amount of sieges no?

Some skills seem impossible to raise for companions.

Maybe because I haven't had any very large towns yet, but Governors seem kind of a waste. Like I could have a free party for my army and tons of great relations or I could have a guy sit in a town and have a minor effect that can be situational?

I'm not sure but it seems like every castle and town have the same facilities? Like I can improve irrigation the same amount in a desert town that I can one the fertile temperate belt?

There are no tradeoffs to building stuff or changing defaults in towns and castles it seems. You just build everything limited by the available cash and click the thing for default you want and that's it. Seems like useless button clicking. Like you take a castle it should just assume you're improving everything and give you some messages your castellan improved the granary and then it's all done.

I really like that you can dress up all your crew with all these different styles. I like my banner on the shield.

Swinging a big polearm and just cleaving a guy in half is satisfying, so is a nice charge with the lance and stuff. I know people have a problem with the AI but I'm just learning combat stuff so I'm not worried yet. But the animations and sound effects and everything is good. There is no excessive rag-doll issue that I hate where they really go into all that flailing and stuff. Dead bodies just drop and lay there like sacks not go flying with limbs akimbo. There is just the right amount of blood on everything.

I can marry and have children. Awesome! Do I die of old age or am I some sort of vampire? I haven't got that far.

There should be a skill check for acquiring companions and if rejected they should reject you for months.

The encyclopedia should not tell me anyone's current location or their skills. I mean it's nice to know that but I shouldn't know that. I should have a generic description that they like to frequent this region and are very charming.

What's cohesion? My armies have it, it runs down and then it gets replenished magically. I join other armies, sometimes they fall apart because they lose it. Is there some button I press to get more I missed that part.

The taverns are done really well. All the interiors and towns and castles. Really like visiting villages and just riding around looking at all my happy peasants. Walking around my castle battlements. Town market with the vendors. It's totally unnecessary and great.

There doesn't seem to be any traditional alliances. Kingdoms are liable to attack pretty much any other kingdom. I do see they prefer border wars but then I see the Khuzaits warring on the Vlandians again and I'm like why? I'm not too up on the lore but there should be like ok these two kingdoms fight rarely and these guys just can't stop.

Territory seems to change too easily. A typical outcome should be a sacking, or a reduction in facilities representing a razing, but control change should be rarer. Typically leaders who didn't allow their army to sack the city didn't fare well in future security arrangements if you know what I mean.

I thought there would be functional roads.

The questing mechanic for improving relations is not appealing to me at all. Time spent for relation gained is not worth it for me. I'd rather send out companions in parties, they do the quests for me. I had some notable up to 86 before I knew what was happening.

There are two big navigable bodies of water in the middle of the continent with six coastal cities between them and another eight cities on the ocean coast and I can't take a boat anywhere. Oceans, seas, lakes and rivers seem to play no part of the game besides channeling land movement. I'm not asking for detailed naval combat, I just want to take a ship between two towns.

I like the seasons with the snow and everything, and the clock with the sun/moon that's nicely done too.

Generally the UI is good but there are too many elements placed way too far from each other. I have to click LOOT ALL in one corner of the screen, then travel down to DONE on the bottom. Why not right next to each other since that's all you do? Stuff like that. There should be more sorting on the columns. Can I transfer by type? Like all foot archers? I know I can click for one and something-click for 5 but can I click for all? So the UI could use some work in the UE department, but the presentation is nice and generally functional.

However, the text log is absolutely horrid. Stuff just disappears I don't know what's happening I can't scroll someone is captured they're all getting captured are there filters do I have any control does it keep a permanent log?

When I talk to people I can be nice or a jerk or whatever. But it doesn't seem to make a difference they always reply the same.

I have not had one single crash. I have a GTX 1060 in a Helios 300 laptop and it's all max setting all the way including battle size and I can't complain one bit. Well, for a couple of giant sieges I had to turn it down to medium I can't lie but otherwise it's maxed out. Not one single crash or hang.

A lot of equipment is wildly under or overpriced. I'm not worried cause there will be a mod for that. People love modding the economy so as long as the basics aren't too off I should be fine.

There should be a way to set stances for your army. Like reckless or cautious or ambush. Like there should be a way to ambush an army coming down the wide road without them immediately spotting you and running away at .01 more speed than you. I should be able to entrench maybe like in Agincourt.

People complain about the battle AI and I see what they mean. Lots of reckless cavalry charges and foot soldier clumping.

So the Tactics skill with the simulated battles bonus, that's awful. You should never make it more appealing to skip the battle. If you want to skip the battle cause it's not worthy of you, that's cool, but don't prod the player please. Don't make me feel guilty about enjoying the blade.

What's going on in that deploy screen on the siege battles? I just click autodeploy, whatever, does it make a difference?

My scrubs pushed a siege tower into a ditch and went askew and no one could climb it. Hilarious and just like irl. Two thumbs up. Should I have deployed it somewhere else maybe? Is that what's going on with that screen?

I think no one should be able to recruit out of my fief without my permission. You can't just ride in and take my military-age males from my lands what the hell are you thinking? I mean yeah if you're my liege but this is just anyone! I own those people. Not like in the modern corporate way, but literally they are all my property.

The whole movement speed thing is very opaque to me. Seems like a lot of factors influence it, so I just try to do the logical thing like faster horses less stuff more riders. More skilled riders. I hope it's working, it seems like it is.

I hope the starting point changes based on player culture. I mean it's fine for the Empire guy but as a Khuzait I prefer to start near a yurt. I don't know how the rest of you play but I spend a couple of days doing nothing but traveling to my homeland so I can start the game right.

I stopped reading the main quest like three NPC's in. I don't care about the battle. My parents are dead I have no family what do I care what some stranger did to another back in the day? Then it gets ridiculous I don't want to spoil anything but I don't need anyone's permission to usurp power I have a thousand loyal men and a fierce desire to rule. Just erasing the whole thing would make a better focused game.

What's the benefit of helping out that artisan? He's like here is almost nothing and everyone hates you now. I help him out again same thing. Screw that guy.

Can I set waypoints for my party?

The character generator seems really weird. Like you have all these sliders but there's this archetype you kinda can't get away from. It's hard to describe but for example all the females look a little Finnish to me. Like you can darken their skin and slap an afro on 'em and still something is off. I don't like that I have a million sliders for the head and one for the rest of the body. And the big doesn't even look like a big person. They look like a scaled up small person. Big people are...thicker, not like fat but just more bigger in certain places to support that extra mass. So not a good effort on the body mod.

The bow arc is too limited for an offside target when mounted. It's a minor quibble but a skilled horse archer can shoot quite a bit more offside than is represented here, especially with the short bow.

Armies travel on their stomach, why can't these guys bring enough food? The influence gain from feeding the army is nice but I should not have to leave the army to run ahead to the city to buy 150 grain and 100 cheese so everyone can eat.

Garrison troops train on their own, right? Why do I have to transfer them to my party to promote them now they're all comingled and I'm clicking lots of stuff.

Need way more variety in companion surnames. I had two "The Golden" in my army cause they were the best fighters I could get.

New companions spawn over time so that's awesome. I abandoned a start because the initial pool was so bad before I knew that. Like I mentioned before, that's not knowledge I should have.

Is it better to take crappy companions that you can level how you like? Cause I always take the most developed guys but then I'm stuck with what they got cause it's so hard to raise them.

Moving slower at night? Thumbs up.

No matter what formation I choose, if want to shoot a guy coming up on my eight, Mudlips the Golden will be right there on his fine Arab charger with my crosshair pointed right at his skull. And when I adjust my target to the next guy, Mudlips slows down a bit to get between that guy. I just whiz the arrow right by his ear, he can't be really killed. Maybe he knows so he just watches me dumbly as I hold the string.

Cavalry fights in snowy forests are the most awesome thing. You can't see a thing, can't tell who is who, everything just running crazy total panic and terror horses charging out of the fog. You see guys get stuck on a tree then out of nowhere bam impaled by a lance. Atmosphere plus one.

I stopped caring about the small relation adjustments during kingdom things. Laws, fiefs, what should we do with this what law do we pass. I take a hit with Lord Mxlptlk over his fief, he likes me better because we both support Hunting Rights, it evens out. There's so many little adjustments coming at you they stop mattering. After a couple years in I can see this guy hates me or this guy really loves me and I have no idea why I tried to be equally nice to both.

I'm in a kingdom now I have like 2k influence for my clan, that's more than than some but the top two clans are just insane. The number one guy has like 90k influence. Number two is at 70k. I'm not saying that's good or bad gamewise, but damn. These guys passed laws that favor the top over my dissent and I'll never catch up. I get like 200 influence and I see these guys go up by 2k. I guess I'll stick around until I can gather some more territory if these guys throw me some more crumbs. Otherwise it's my own kingdom time. I kinda wanted to work from the inside here but these guys protect their own and I'm the outsider. I like all that. These are choices TW never gave me outside of stilted scripted events. I'm making my own political destiny here. I wish there were more choices how to interact with the other lords though.

Anyways, that's all for now. Not gonna get too deep here yet since EA is just breaking and changing stuff every day, but I really like this concept and I like what I see so far. I'm really positive on the game even though it's mostly all complaints above because sparse praise is the best praise imo :smile:
I hope this gets read, really great review. Would love to see some of these changes in the game
 
I like the graphics and the (individual) combat as well as the basics laid out for the economy and politics (though those are still a bit rough to say the least). The battles feel way to fast, people dying in droves before you can make any meaningful manoeuvres and cavalry generally charging in all directions at once except at the one blob of infantry you want to send them at.

The general gameplay seems to have so many flaws still that restrict you to the stupid dragon banner quest, force you to fight multiple kingdoms at once because you cannot stop the conspiracy, and then leave you to fight ever respawning peasant armies for the rest of the game, that I will spare myself the frustration and put it down for a while. Maybe it'll be better in a few weeks' or months' time.
 
I have about 90 hours in Bannerlords. I have about 1000 hours in the Total War series. I picked this game up on a whim, I heard about the predecessor that it had a following and was around for a while but for some reason I thought it was more of an RPG, like Witcher except you have bodies of troops and you can yell orders at them. I don't know, some review gave me that impression I don't remember was long time ago. But recently I heard from someone it was more like TW except the campaign was RTS so here I am.

My thoughts in no particular order:

I don't like it that I'm making all this money off looting my enemies and that I can individually manage the looting of every bloody tunic. Why is the lord bothering with it? Lords are rewarded with land, titles and they extract money from their new fief. Soldiers keep the loot, it raises morale and keeps the lord alive.

Why do towns sell quantities of elite weapons to passing strangers? Shouldn't the local lord trust me a LOT before that? Because I might kill him with those weapons?

I like the little armies that harass your main army, keeping tabs on you and letting you know more are coming and soon there will be more of them so watch out.

The music is very very good. A little too much shouting though during the battles.

I need the icons in battle to tell troops apart but man are they annoying af.

I don't understand the caravan mechanic at all. I mean I do in terms of world economy and moving good around. But for me as a player it's basically a choice to make a random investment, right? I don't seem to have any control or way to influence it, it just makes me money for a random amount of time and then it dies and I don't really know if it paid for itself unless I take screenshots every day.

I like that rulers just do what they want. You take the castle, you spend the influence and get shafted. Yeah sorry it's going to the other guy. Also not sorry. That's awesome. I hate systems where I have enough resources early to basically impose my will.

Trading is way too easy. Two cities one day travel apart and I realize a 30% profit? It seems my limiting factor in the early game is simply the amount of pack animals I can buy. After a couple of days I'm transferring a third the city contents at a time to the next city. Way too much trading income. Shouldn't all that stuff be taxed into the ground? Didn't the local guilds take their pound of flesh?

Building stuff is omg fast. What's with all these 1 day build times? Everything should take months or weeks at least. I visit my new castle, click all the projects and go around the countryside to inspect my new fief clear some looters I come back four days later I have brand new place.

I really like that I can spend influence to get other people to send their troops into the meatgrinder for me. Just like in real life. Awesome.

I just hate the whole hideout mechanic. I have 800 soldiers. I know exactly where the hideout is. I have the whole hill surrounded and heavy cavalry ready to charge. I'm bringing a couple of randos with me it, let's go!

I don't like it that I can kite bodies of infantry. No human being on foot would ever chase a horseman with a bow. Ever. You hide, you run away, you look for something, you form a turtle, literally any other action is more beneficial. Lying down and playing dead is better.

Bandits and looters and other trash are annoying. There's too many of them and they move too fast for disorganized rabble. It's like you're trying to chase down these little hyper-aware Jeb Stuart's when it should just be some slow mob.

I like that you can form a party of one with your companion and they go off and hopefully not get captured while growing troops and doing quests and patrolling around. I like seeing their medical skills go up cause I know they're getting captured next or maybe they'll get away. It's very tense. Then I can call them for free to my army and steal all their guys and send them off again.

The siege process seems weird. We build some towers and a ram so that's good. Then we build some onager whatever, it fires once or twice and it's dead. So we build another and it's dead. The guys on the walls have four. So yeah, maybe we can build them out of range? Then move them in at once and fire all at one point? Can we do that Engineer-role guy?

I know perks are borked. I like the choices you have to make though between some.

The leveling system is weird and also kinda cool. It's nice how you have to be truly versed in many disciplines to rise in level. However, it's really easy to create a bottleneck where it's very difficult to accumulate enough points to get more focus.

You raise Engineering only by doing siege stuff? How many sieges do I have to be in? I mean omg it's just insane amount of sieges no?

Some skills seem impossible to raise for companions.

Maybe because I haven't had any very large towns yet, but Governors seem kind of a waste. Like I could have a free party for my army and tons of great relations or I could have a guy sit in a town and have a minor effect that can be situational?

I'm not sure but it seems like every castle and town have the same facilities? Like I can improve irrigation the same amount in a desert town that I can one the fertile temperate belt?

There are no tradeoffs to building stuff or changing defaults in towns and castles it seems. You just build everything limited by the available cash and click the thing for default you want and that's it. Seems like useless button clicking. Like you take a castle it should just assume you're improving everything and give you some messages your castellan improved the granary and then it's all done.

I really like that you can dress up all your crew with all these different styles. I like my banner on the shield.

Swinging a big polearm and just cleaving a guy in half is satisfying, so is a nice charge with the lance and stuff. I know people have a problem with the AI but I'm just learning combat stuff so I'm not worried yet. But the animations and sound effects and everything is good. There is no excessive rag-doll issue that I hate where they really go into all that flailing and stuff. Dead bodies just drop and lay there like sacks not go flying with limbs akimbo. There is just the right amount of blood on everything.

I can marry and have children. Awesome! Do I die of old age or am I some sort of vampire? I haven't got that far.

There should be a skill check for acquiring companions and if rejected they should reject you for months.

The encyclopedia should not tell me anyone's current location or their skills. I mean it's nice to know that but I shouldn't know that. I should have a generic description that they like to frequent this region and are very charming.

What's cohesion? My armies have it, it runs down and then it gets replenished magically. I join other armies, sometimes they fall apart because they lose it. Is there some button I press to get more I missed that part.

The taverns are done really well. All the interiors and towns and castles. Really like visiting villages and just riding around looking at all my happy peasants. Walking around my castle battlements. Town market with the vendors. It's totally unnecessary and great.

There doesn't seem to be any traditional alliances. Kingdoms are liable to attack pretty much any other kingdom. I do see they prefer border wars but then I see the Khuzaits warring on the Vlandians again and I'm like why? I'm not too up on the lore but there should be like ok these two kingdoms fight rarely and these guys just can't stop.

Territory seems to change too easily. A typical outcome should be a sacking, or a reduction in facilities representing a razing, but control change should be rarer. Typically leaders who didn't allow their army to sack the city didn't fare well in future security arrangements if you know what I mean.

I thought there would be functional roads.

The questing mechanic for improving relations is not appealing to me at all. Time spent for relation gained is not worth it for me. I'd rather send out companions in parties, they do the quests for me. I had some notable up to 86 before I knew what was happening.

There are two big navigable bodies of water in the middle of the continent with six coastal cities between them and another eight cities on the ocean coast and I can't take a boat anywhere. Oceans, seas, lakes and rivers seem to play no part of the game besides channeling land movement. I'm not asking for detailed naval combat, I just want to take a ship between two towns.

I like the seasons with the snow and everything, and the clock with the sun/moon that's nicely done too.

Generally the UI is good but there are too many elements placed way too far from each other. I have to click LOOT ALL in one corner of the screen, then travel down to DONE on the bottom. Why not right next to each other since that's all you do? Stuff like that. There should be more sorting on the columns. Can I transfer by type? Like all foot archers? I know I can click for one and something-click for 5 but can I click for all? So the UI could use some work in the UE department, but the presentation is nice and generally functional.

However, the text log is absolutely horrid. Stuff just disappears I don't know what's happening I can't scroll someone is captured they're all getting captured are there filters do I have any control does it keep a permanent log?

When I talk to people I can be nice or a jerk or whatever. But it doesn't seem to make a difference they always reply the same.

I have not had one single crash. I have a GTX 1060 in a Helios 300 laptop and it's all max setting all the way including battle size and I can't complain one bit. Well, for a couple of giant sieges I had to turn it down to medium I can't lie but otherwise it's maxed out. Not one single crash or hang.

A lot of equipment is wildly under or overpriced. I'm not worried cause there will be a mod for that. People love modding the economy so as long as the basics aren't too off I should be fine.

There should be a way to set stances for your army. Like reckless or cautious or ambush. Like there should be a way to ambush an army coming down the wide road without them immediately spotting you and running away at .01 more speed than you. I should be able to entrench maybe like in Agincourt.

People complain about the battle AI and I see what they mean. Lots of reckless cavalry charges and foot soldier clumping.

So the Tactics skill with the simulated battles bonus, that's awful. You should never make it more appealing to skip the battle. If you want to skip the battle cause it's not worthy of you, that's cool, but don't prod the player please. Don't make me feel guilty about enjoying the blade.

What's going on in that deploy screen on the siege battles? I just click autodeploy, whatever, does it make a difference?

My scrubs pushed a siege tower into a ditch and went askew and no one could climb it. Hilarious and just like irl. Two thumbs up. Should I have deployed it somewhere else maybe? Is that what's going on with that screen?

I think no one should be able to recruit out of my fief without my permission. You can't just ride in and take my military-age males from my lands what the hell are you thinking? I mean yeah if you're my liege but this is just anyone! I own those people. Not like in the modern corporate way, but literally they are all my property.

The whole movement speed thing is very opaque to me. Seems like a lot of factors influence it, so I just try to do the logical thing like faster horses less stuff more riders. More skilled riders. I hope it's working, it seems like it is.

I hope the starting point changes based on player culture. I mean it's fine for the Empire guy but as a Khuzait I prefer to start near a yurt. I don't know how the rest of you play but I spend a couple of days doing nothing but traveling to my homeland so I can start the game right.

I stopped reading the main quest like three NPC's in. I don't care about the battle. My parents are dead I have no family what do I care what some stranger did to another back in the day? Then it gets ridiculous I don't want to spoil anything but I don't need anyone's permission to usurp power I have a thousand loyal men and a fierce desire to rule. Just erasing the whole thing would make a better focused game.

What's the benefit of helping out that artisan? He's like here is almost nothing and everyone hates you now. I help him out again same thing. Screw that guy.

Can I set waypoints for my party?

The character generator seems really weird. Like you have all these sliders but there's this archetype you kinda can't get away from. It's hard to describe but for example all the females look a little Finnish to me. Like you can darken their skin and slap an afro on 'em and still something is off. I don't like that I have a million sliders for the head and one for the rest of the body. And the big doesn't even look like a big person. They look like a scaled up small person. Big people are...thicker, not like fat but just more bigger in certain places to support that extra mass. So not a good effort on the body mod.

The bow arc is too limited for an offside target when mounted. It's a minor quibble but a skilled horse archer can shoot quite a bit more offside than is represented here, especially with the short bow.

Armies travel on their stomach, why can't these guys bring enough food? The influence gain from feeding the army is nice but I should not have to leave the army to run ahead to the city to buy 150 grain and 100 cheese so everyone can eat.

Garrison troops train on their own, right? Why do I have to transfer them to my party to promote them now they're all comingled and I'm clicking lots of stuff.

Need way more variety in companion surnames. I had two "The Golden" in my army cause they were the best fighters I could get.

New companions spawn over time so that's awesome. I abandoned a start because the initial pool was so bad before I knew that. Like I mentioned before, that's not knowledge I should have.

Is it better to take crappy companions that you can level how you like? Cause I always take the most developed guys but then I'm stuck with what they got cause it's so hard to raise them.

Moving slower at night? Thumbs up.

No matter what formation I choose, if want to shoot a guy coming up on my eight, Mudlips the Golden will be right there on his fine Arab charger with my crosshair pointed right at his skull. And when I adjust my target to the next guy, Mudlips slows down a bit to get between that guy. I just whiz the arrow right by his ear, he can't be really killed. Maybe he knows so he just watches me dumbly as I hold the string.

Cavalry fights in snowy forests are the most awesome thing. You can't see a thing, can't tell who is who, everything just running crazy total panic and terror horses charging out of the fog. You see guys get stuck on a tree then out of nowhere bam impaled by a lance. Atmosphere plus one.

I stopped caring about the small relation adjustments during kingdom things. Laws, fiefs, what should we do with this what law do we pass. I take a hit with Lord Mxlptlk over his fief, he likes me better because we both support Hunting Rights, it evens out. There's so many little adjustments coming at you they stop mattering. After a couple years in I can see this guy hates me or this guy really loves me and I have no idea why I tried to be equally nice to both.

I'm in a kingdom now I have like 2k influence for my clan, that's more than than some but the top two clans are just insane. The number one guy has like 90k influence. Number two is at 70k. I'm not saying that's good or bad gamewise, but damn. These guys passed laws that favor the top over my dissent and I'll never catch up. I get like 200 influence and I see these guys go up by 2k. I guess I'll stick around until I can gather some more territory if these guys throw me some more crumbs. Otherwise it's my own kingdom time. I kinda wanted to work from the inside here but these guys protect their own and I'm the outsider. I like all that. These are choices TW never gave me outside of stilted scripted events. I'm making my own political destiny here. I wish there were more choices how to interact with the other lords though.

Anyways, that's all for now. Not gonna get too deep here yet since EA is just breaking and changing stuff every day, but I really like this concept and I like what I see so far. I'm really positive on the game even though it's mostly all complaints above because sparse praise is the best praise imo :smile:
Great review dude, I can agree on almost everything and surely most of people here do. I think you should open a separate thread in the suggestions subforum so that you can make this comment more visible.
 
ok. Played about 30 hours. I just restarted in order to just play it sandbox as an itinerant smith. He doesn't interact with Nobles, at this stage why would he? Maybe after he has become a better Smith then yes. He and his body guard help quell looters and bandits, both to increase stability and to get weapons he can smelt down so as to increase his skill. He is a little annoyed by Nobles joining his battles and taking most of the loot. He is also annoyed when their disputes interfere with his trading in a city because there is a siege. It is, for me, a fun way to play. This character is not a Glory Hound... he is a craftsman. He seeks not to rule, but to master his craft. You know what? For me this is FUN. I have a game which will grow and which I can play in the background without having to be the hero or villain if I don't want to me. Hopefully, as his craft grows and his renown he will be recognized. I know this is an Early Access game and that there will be problems before it is finished and that it is not finished yet. Personally I applaud the Devs for what is becoming my favorite game. Thank you.

Agreed you should have the choice to gain renown through other means like business or mastering a craft. If you want to be a lone rider and not a warlord it should be your choice.
 
I have about 90 hours in Bannerlords. I have about 1000 hours in the Total War series. I picked this game up on a whim, I heard about the predecessor that it had a following and was around for a while but for some reason I thought it was more of an RPG, like Witcher except you have bodies of troops and you can yell orders at them. I don't know, some review gave me that impression I don't remember was long time ago. But recently I heard from someone it was more like TW except the campaign was RTS so here I am.

My thoughts in no particular order:

I don't like it that I'm making all this money off looting my enemies and that I can individually manage the looting of every bloody tunic. Why is the lord bothering with it? Lords are rewarded with land, titles and they extract money from their new fief. Soldiers keep the loot, it raises morale and keeps the lord alive.

Why do towns sell quantities of elite weapons to passing strangers? Shouldn't the local lord trust me a LOT before that? Because I might kill him with those weapons?

I like the little armies that harass your main army, keeping tabs on you and letting you know more are coming and soon there will be more of them so watch out.

The music is very very good. A little too much shouting though during the battles.

I need the icons in battle to tell troops apart but man are they annoying af.

I don't understand the caravan mechanic at all. I mean I do in terms of world economy and moving good around. But for me as a player it's basically a choice to make a random investment, right? I don't seem to have any control or way to influence it, it just makes me money for a random amount of time and then it dies and I don't really know if it paid for itself unless I take screenshots every day.

I like that rulers just do what they want. You take the castle, you spend the influence and get shafted. Yeah sorry it's going to the other guy. Also not sorry. That's awesome. I hate systems where I have enough resources early to basically impose my will.

Trading is way too easy. Two cities one day travel apart and I realize a 30% profit? It seems my limiting factor in the early game is simply the amount of pack animals I can buy. After a couple of days I'm transferring a third the city contents at a time to the next city. Way too much trading income. Shouldn't all that stuff be taxed into the ground? Didn't the local guilds take their pound of flesh?

Building stuff is omg fast. What's with all these 1 day build times? Everything should take months or weeks at least. I visit my new castle, click all the projects and go around the countryside to inspect my new fief clear some looters I come back four days later I have brand new place.

I really like that I can spend influence to get other people to send their troops into the meatgrinder for me. Just like in real life. Awesome.

I just hate the whole hideout mechanic. I have 800 soldiers. I know exactly where the hideout is. I have the whole hill surrounded and heavy cavalry ready to charge. I'm bringing a couple of randos with me it, let's go!

I don't like it that I can kite bodies of infantry. No human being on foot would ever chase a horseman with a bow. Ever. You hide, you run away, you look for something, you form a turtle, literally any other action is more beneficial. Lying down and playing dead is better.

Bandits and looters and other trash are annoying. There's too many of them and they move too fast for disorganized rabble. It's like you're trying to chase down these little hyper-aware Jeb Stuart's when it should just be some slow mob.

I like that you can form a party of one with your companion and they go off and hopefully not get captured while growing troops and doing quests and patrolling around. I like seeing their medical skills go up cause I know they're getting captured next or maybe they'll get away. It's very tense. Then I can call them for free to my army and steal all their guys and send them off again.

The siege process seems weird. We build some towers and a ram so that's good. Then we build some onager whatever, it fires once or twice and it's dead. So we build another and it's dead. The guys on the walls have four. So yeah, maybe we can build them out of range? Then move them in at once and fire all at one point? Can we do that Engineer-role guy?

I know perks are borked. I like the choices you have to make though between some.

The leveling system is weird and also kinda cool. It's nice how you have to be truly versed in many disciplines to rise in level. However, it's really easy to create a bottleneck where it's very difficult to accumulate enough points to get more focus.

You raise Engineering only by doing siege stuff? How many sieges do I have to be in? I mean omg it's just insane amount of sieges no?

Some skills seem impossible to raise for companions.

Maybe because I haven't had any very large towns yet, but Governors seem kind of a waste. Like I could have a free party for my army and tons of great relations or I could have a guy sit in a town and have a minor effect that can be situational?

I'm not sure but it seems like every castle and town have the same facilities? Like I can improve irrigation the same amount in a desert town that I can one the fertile temperate belt?

There are no tradeoffs to building stuff or changing defaults in towns and castles it seems. You just build everything limited by the available cash and click the thing for default you want and that's it. Seems like useless button clicking. Like you take a castle it should just assume you're improving everything and give you some messages your castellan improved the granary and then it's all done.

I really like that you can dress up all your crew with all these different styles. I like my banner on the shield.

Swinging a big polearm and just cleaving a guy in half is satisfying, so is a nice charge with the lance and stuff. I know people have a problem with the AI but I'm just learning combat stuff so I'm not worried yet. But the animations and sound effects and everything is good. There is no excessive rag-doll issue that I hate where they really go into all that flailing and stuff. Dead bodies just drop and lay there like sacks not go flying with limbs akimbo. There is just the right amount of blood on everything.

I can marry and have children. Awesome! Do I die of old age or am I some sort of vampire? I haven't got that far.

There should be a skill check for acquiring companions and if rejected they should reject you for months.

The encyclopedia should not tell me anyone's current location or their skills. I mean it's nice to know that but I shouldn't know that. I should have a generic description that they like to frequent this region and are very charming.

What's cohesion? My armies have it, it runs down and then it gets replenished magically. I join other armies, sometimes they fall apart because they lose it. Is there some button I press to get more I missed that part.

The taverns are done really well. All the interiors and towns and castles. Really like visiting villages and just riding around looking at all my happy peasants. Walking around my castle battlements. Town market with the vendors. It's totally unnecessary and great.

There doesn't seem to be any traditional alliances. Kingdoms are liable to attack pretty much any other kingdom. I do see they prefer border wars but then I see the Khuzaits warring on the Vlandians again and I'm like why? I'm not too up on the lore but there should be like ok these two kingdoms fight rarely and these guys just can't stop.

Territory seems to change too easily. A typical outcome should be a sacking, or a reduction in facilities representing a razing, but control change should be rarer. Typically leaders who didn't allow their army to sack the city didn't fare well in future security arrangements if you know what I mean.

I thought there would be functional roads.

The questing mechanic for improving relations is not appealing to me at all. Time spent for relation gained is not worth it for me. I'd rather send out companions in parties, they do the quests for me. I had some notable up to 86 before I knew what was happening.

There are two big navigable bodies of water in the middle of the continent with six coastal cities between them and another eight cities on the ocean coast and I can't take a boat anywhere. Oceans, seas, lakes and rivers seem to play no part of the game besides channeling land movement. I'm not asking for detailed naval combat, I just want to take a ship between two towns.

I like the seasons with the snow and everything, and the clock with the sun/moon that's nicely done too.

Generally the UI is good but there are too many elements placed way too far from each other. I have to click LOOT ALL in one corner of the screen, then travel down to DONE on the bottom. Why not right next to each other since that's all you do? Stuff like that. There should be more sorting on the columns. Can I transfer by type? Like all foot archers? I know I can click for one and something-click for 5 but can I click for all? So the UI could use some work in the UE department, but the presentation is nice and generally functional.

However, the text log is absolutely horrid. Stuff just disappears I don't know what's happening I can't scroll someone is captured they're all getting captured are there filters do I have any control does it keep a permanent log?

When I talk to people I can be nice or a jerk or whatever. But it doesn't seem to make a difference they always reply the same.

I have not had one single crash. I have a GTX 1060 in a Helios 300 laptop and it's all max setting all the way including battle size and I can't complain one bit. Well, for a couple of giant sieges I had to turn it down to medium I can't lie but otherwise it's maxed out. Not one single crash or hang.

A lot of equipment is wildly under or overpriced. I'm not worried cause there will be a mod for that. People love modding the economy so as long as the basics aren't too off I should be fine.

There should be a way to set stances for your army. Like reckless or cautious or ambush. Like there should be a way to ambush an army coming down the wide road without them immediately spotting you and running away at .01 more speed than you. I should be able to entrench maybe like in Agincourt.

People complain about the battle AI and I see what they mean. Lots of reckless cavalry charges and foot soldier clumping.

So the Tactics skill with the simulated battles bonus, that's awful. You should never make it more appealing to skip the battle. If you want to skip the battle cause it's not worthy of you, that's cool, but don't prod the player please. Don't make me feel guilty about enjoying the blade.

What's going on in that deploy screen on the siege battles? I just click autodeploy, whatever, does it make a difference?

My scrubs pushed a siege tower into a ditch and went askew and no one could climb it. Hilarious and just like irl. Two thumbs up. Should I have deployed it somewhere else maybe? Is that what's going on with that screen?

I think no one should be able to recruit out of my fief without my permission. You can't just ride in and take my military-age males from my lands what the hell are you thinking? I mean yeah if you're my liege but this is just anyone! I own those people. Not like in the modern corporate way, but literally they are all my property.

The whole movement speed thing is very opaque to me. Seems like a lot of factors influence it, so I just try to do the logical thing like faster horses less stuff more riders. More skilled riders. I hope it's working, it seems like it is.

I hope the starting point changes based on player culture. I mean it's fine for the Empire guy but as a Khuzait I prefer to start near a yurt. I don't know how the rest of you play but I spend a couple of days doing nothing but traveling to my homeland so I can start the game right.

I stopped reading the main quest like three NPC's in. I don't care about the battle. My parents are dead I have no family what do I care what some stranger did to another back in the day? Then it gets ridiculous I don't want to spoil anything but I don't need anyone's permission to usurp power I have a thousand loyal men and a fierce desire to rule. Just erasing the whole thing would make a better focused game.

What's the benefit of helping out that artisan? He's like here is almost nothing and everyone hates you now. I help him out again same thing. Screw that guy.

Can I set waypoints for my party?

The character generator seems really weird. Like you have all these sliders but there's this archetype you kinda can't get away from. It's hard to describe but for example all the females look a little Finnish to me. Like you can darken their skin and slap an afro on 'em and still something is off. I don't like that I have a million sliders for the head and one for the rest of the body. And the big doesn't even look like a big person. They look like a scaled up small person. Big people are...thicker, not like fat but just more bigger in certain places to support that extra mass. So not a good effort on the body mod.

The bow arc is too limited for an offside target when mounted. It's a minor quibble but a skilled horse archer can shoot quite a bit more offside than is represented here, especially with the short bow.

Armies travel on their stomach, why can't these guys bring enough food? The influence gain from feeding the army is nice but I should not have to leave the army to run ahead to the city to buy 150 grain and 100 cheese so everyone can eat.

Garrison troops train on their own, right? Why do I have to transfer them to my party to promote them now they're all comingled and I'm clicking lots of stuff.

Need way more variety in companion surnames. I had two "The Golden" in my army cause they were the best fighters I could get.

New companions spawn over time so that's awesome. I abandoned a start because the initial pool was so bad before I knew that. Like I mentioned before, that's not knowledge I should have.

Is it better to take crappy companions that you can level how you like? Cause I always take the most developed guys but then I'm stuck with what they got cause it's so hard to raise them.

Moving slower at night? Thumbs up.

No matter what formation I choose, if want to shoot a guy coming up on my eight, Mudlips the Golden will be right there on his fine Arab charger with my crosshair pointed right at his skull. And when I adjust my target to the next guy, Mudlips slows down a bit to get between that guy. I just whiz the arrow right by his ear, he can't be really killed. Maybe he knows so he just watches me dumbly as I hold the string.

Cavalry fights in snowy forests are the most awesome thing. You can't see a thing, can't tell who is who, everything just running crazy total panic and terror horses charging out of the fog. You see guys get stuck on a tree then out of nowhere bam impaled by a lance. Atmosphere plus one.

I stopped caring about the small relation adjustments during kingdom things. Laws, fiefs, what should we do with this what law do we pass. I take a hit with Lord Mxlptlk over his fief, he likes me better because we both support Hunting Rights, it evens out. There's so many little adjustments coming at you they stop mattering. After a couple years in I can see this guy hates me or this guy really loves me and I have no idea why I tried to be equally nice to both.

I'm in a kingdom now I have like 2k influence for my clan, that's more than than some but the top two clans are just insane. The number one guy has like 90k influence. Number two is at 70k. I'm not saying that's good or bad gamewise, but damn. These guys passed laws that favor the top over my dissent and I'll never catch up. I get like 200 influence and I see these guys go up by 2k. I guess I'll stick around until I can gather some more territory if these guys throw me some more crumbs. Otherwise it's my own kingdom time. I kinda wanted to work from the inside here but these guys protect their own and I'm the outsider. I like all that. These are choices TW never gave me outside of stilted scripted events. I'm making my own political destiny here. I wish there were more choices how to interact with the other lords though.

Anyways, that's all for now. Not gonna get too deep here yet since EA is just breaking and changing stuff every day, but I really like this concept and I like what I see so far. I'm really positive on the game even though it's mostly all complaints above because sparse praise is the best praise imo :smile:

What a great review bro. You nailed each and every point in such a rational analysis. Loved your points about the Lord bothering with useless mini-logistics stuff like lowlife loot pieces (not that any special or royal artifacts of factions that can affect the balance of the game exist, low life generic pieces is all we have). Or just anyone recruiting from your own damn fiefs with no repercussions. Or the castle upgrades being useless clicking addons. Or how copy paste of previous MB games is the unrewarding and tedious relationship building system, no significant improvements there (or in quests in general). As for ambush yeah there should be some element of surprise. But the game was never build with roads and paths in mind and the map is more decorative. Meaning that if you see a hill or pit, it doesn't have a strategic use of that terrain in battle, it's just there for variety. As for how you speak to others doesn't matter. Dialogues is what made games like Vampire bloodlines masquarades, deus ex or fallout so popular. Here cunning and banter play no significant role that could add replayability and fun. And it should, cause its an integral part of the game. Great review overall.
 
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it's one of the best things ever, but it also sucks worse than any game I've played before, both at the same time. Here, have my first reactions for your mega thread.
 
Thirst of all I'll say that you did an awesome game, and I'm really enjoying it in SP, great replayability, great perfomance but have some issues and I'm sure it will be better and better.

1. I didn't found any ways to improve relations to headsmen (village, town guys) except doing quests. Some of them are never providing me with quests. I think that we need some other ways too (trade, gifts, influence dumps, killing roaming bandits but not only hideouts and saving peasants around etc)

2. As a king I would like to adopt a policy to encourage local village militia to patrol wide area and hunt bandits (must pay x influence per village per day for it). Local bandits isn't king's problems you know, I'm doing some Important kingdom stuff and have no time hunting dirty looters! :smile: My vassals are busy too conquering Calradia.

3. As a party/army leader I wish to choose the way how to clear bandits hideout! I have 500 troops tier 5-6 elite army, conquered cities and castles already, bandits are surrounded and... wait, we need attack these 90 bandits at night with 9 troops! Wise decision (sarcasm) :smile:) And yes I did 70 sea raiders hideout on maximum difficulty with 0 loses, so I know how to play and abuse some game mechanics.

4. Swinging polearms on horseback. Please remove swing ability for polearms on horseback. It is too strong due to swing radius and speed bonus and looking weird. Trust me, if you'll try to swing this long thing and hit some guy on decent riding speed you'll break your arm or your polearm, or you'll fall from horse, or you horse will fall with you (actually i broken my arm a few years ago and know how it is simple to do).

5. AI lords are very poor in their army composition. But they are recovering almost instantly, because of this I guess. I'm usually releasing lords after battle for more challenge.

6. AI lords are escaping from prison too fast if you wish to keep them in jail.

7. Declaration of peace is too cheap and any lord can answer for whole kingdom. You declare war take that you want and declare peace instantly. As for me is more realistic that you need to talk with a ruler only to declare peace. And raise peace declaration cost significantly depends of how war is going on.

8. Persuasion of vassals is too easy. It should take into account your strength, your fiefs, distance from lord's fiefs etc. In one of my first playthroughs i conquered a first castle and got immediate response of army of 800 leaded with powerful owner of Epicrotea and some other fiefs. I tried to persuade and bam, success! I got 5 rank clan as vassal and destroyed all other enemies. Before that I was just a small tier 3 clan king with only 2 parties of my wife and companion. In real life medieval this wouldn't happen, I'm sure. No save abuse done from me.

9. Cavalry is too powerful for 1 unit capacity. Usually riders are well equipped and can kill ON FOOT any same tier infantry 1v1 without any problems. I suggest to increase army capacity of mounted units to 2 (1 for rider and 1 for warhorse). Companion riders and lords are fine for 1 capacity even with horse

10. Not polearm melee AI cavalry just don't know how to hit. They misses every time. Can hit only stationary footmen and I'm not sure about this too. Just useless. Lancer and ranged cavalry are very good though.

P.S. Sorry for my poor English
 
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What single-player?
Calling it "early access" is a blatant lie.
We're beta-testing some quite basic features and given no access to a good and important chunk of the gameplay elements.
In an early access game you should be able to play an actual game start to finish. There are some really basic things that aren't in the game and the features that are in the game are so unfinished, half-baked and unpolished it's clear they thought instead of hiring a proper QA team they'd just slap an EA sticker on it and have us pay to do their work for them. Simple.
 
What single-player?
Calling it "early access" is a blatant lie.
Agreed. It's so far from finished and lacking so much that it barely qualifies as a game, certainly not a full one. However, people have been lapping it up (just take a look at the rabid fanboyism in the Steam reviews/score) so I can't even say there are wrong to have done what they did - it's clearly working. People are way too forgiving "because EA".
 
For everyone who complains about EA, QA team etc. Are someone forced you to buy this unfinished product? As for me I like to participate in creating this game and I hope to play it for a long time. And I hope that it will be better also because of my feedback. I know that it is unfinished game and have a lot of issues.
If you didn't bought the game, I have 0 questions. Just wait some time or not buy if you don't like it in current state or at all.
 
I was absolutely amazed at the quality of the work done so far. It gave me a strong impression of being an ambitious and long-term project.
The art is singularly beautiful. The scenery, the campaign world, the battlefields, the villages, the keeps and the cities seem to have been made with great care and attention to detail.
Sometimes I order the cavalry to follow me while I circle around the enemy for a while just to delight in hearing the hooves hitting the ground.

Although the campaign and missions appear to be at an early stage of development, there are many signs of ambitious plans and I have been very satisfied with the frequency and quality of the patches.

Everything about Bannerlord makes it seem a long-term project of passion.
 
This is not my usual kind of game, I'm more into Farming Simulator, Train Sim World, Transport Fever, that kind of thing, but due to the current lockdown I decided to buy Bannerlord after watching Party Elite and Colonel Failure videos on Youtube (both play the game in totally different ways!)

I am now completely addicted to Bannerlord! I have 52 hours in it so far, and am on my fourth character after restarting several times as I learn't more about the game. I found the learning curve to be just right for me although I am terrible at actual combat, so the "Send troops" option is a lifesaver.

I also love the fact that my actions have consequences throughout the world. Whilst fighting for the Aserai I attacked and looted an enemy caravan without realising we had just made peace. Now the Aserai have disowned me and I'm public enemy number one in the Northern Empire. So I hired myself out to the Battanians and made a shed load of money, but now my current quest is to regain the trust of my Sultan and be accepted back into his ranks.

My PC just reaches minimum requirements so massive battles with lots of troops does slow it down immensely but I expected that. However, I haven't found any bugs that I've noticed.

This is an utterly absorbing game that has put TSW and FS19 not just on the backburner, but completely off the stove at the moment!

BoxTunnel, aka Thaqir al Hamra, once lauded in the halls of the Aserai but now outcast.
 
Nice game. I've played 105 hours but reached the point where I'll have to come back in a few months and see if things are getting fixed.
Computer spec: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, RTX2080Ti 16Gb RAM + ssd drives
Today had to alt+tab and close after, in a siege with 700 people, the fps dropped.. and dropped.. until it was 1fps then less. That was with all visual effects off, sound at 64, and everything turned down to medium quality. This must be a 1.3.0 thing because I didn't have this problem before so I'm sure they'll get round to optimising.

Sieges (as attacker) are very poor. This has been noted in various places but I'll just reiterate:
Siege towers are broken, nobody uses 2 of the 3 ladders and they go single file up the middle ladder a few at a time and get killed whilst the others wait at the bottom in a nice queue. Then a few more go up and get killed, rinse repeat. Sometimes they'll get bored waiting and meander off to the single ladder queue or just generally mill about in the open no matter what orders you give them.
Normal ladders - same problem where they just file up slowly and get picked off at the top.
Battering ram - they break down the outer door and then either stand there or run off to wait in a queue for a ladder. Very rarely they proceed to batter open the inner door. On the occasions I have done that myself with a sword (takes a while) they'll sometimes wander in but mostly not - much preferring the ladder queue. The enemy AI will sit behind the inner door in a nice polite square and won't engage you when you finally break through.
FPS drops... and drops... and drops.

Battles
There really isn't much strategy you can employ beyond choosing at what point to enter your units into battle and a quick positioning at the start of the battle. As you cannot single out a 'section' of the enemy army you get quite used to your entire army chasing their one horse archer while ignoring the 100 other enemy approaching. Obviously you can exploit the same on their side and just ride round their archers who will all turn to try and attack you whilst several hundred of your men steam into them from behind. Graphically very nice but no depth. DON'T auto resolve any battles or expect 10 looters to kill 3-6 of your 100 top tier cavalry

All other issues are small niggles but don't get in the way of the game. Perks not working, balance issues etc. Bandit hideouts have a mod so you don't have to do the attack, kill a few, retreat, attack again, kill a few more, etc or ride round for days on end hoping for everyone to leave the hideout.

Overall I've had a lot of fun with this game but at the moment I wouldn't recommend it, even in early access. Usually early access is for adding features later on - not ignoring features that are broken or performance issues to give us 'better ears in character design'. There is a lot of potential here and I'm sure in the next 6-12 months it will be playable beyond getting your kingdom.
 
Rather disappointed. I bought the first M&B while it was in early access and clocked in an unmentionable number of hours. I also played several Viking Conquest campaigns,a mod I feel was very well designed.

I like the new graphics, but I feel the mechanics of Bannerlord are incoherent and try to go in several conflicting directions at once. I'm no stranger to early access. I followed several E.A. games, like, for example, Grim Dawn. That one was very incomplete at first and had some serious bugs, but it built on an existing concept (Titan Quest) and refined it with a very clear progression.

Bannerlord, on the other hand, seems to discard or ignore a lot of the good things developed in M&B and its mods, substitute some obscure and broken rules, reintroduce some annoying features that had been toned down (In early M&B, NPCs had seemingly laser-guided rocket-propelled throwing weapons... And it's back) .
The armor/ hitpoint/ damage balance has been changed in a quite unconvincing way. Progression is obscure, not really working and does not feel like progression at all.
The crafting system is completely broken and feels rather alien to the rest of the game. It allows you to make absurd amounts of money from simply exploiting the weapon prices, which are tied to DPS, so that converting a thrusting weapon to a cutting one can net you more than 50k gold. And in the end, it does not really allow you to produce something really useful and has an ungodly amount of cosmetic parts that are unlocked randomly, preventing you from getting useful parts before hitting the cap. Plus, your proficiency and the difficulty of the item play almost no role. It goes with the overall feeling of almost no feeling of progression, which seems to me a cardinal sin for an RPG.

Bannerlord tries to be too many things at once, I think. It feels like a kind of Frankenstein monster of mismatched badly designed parts with no clear focus.
Original M&B had several flaws, but its design was coherent and worked well. But it was just a couple of devs making all the decisions. This feels like it's designed by committee without a clear overall picture, which is probably the case.
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First Reaction / First purchase of a Taleworlds game:
I am relatively new to the game Bannerlords and did not play the previous version "I". Since I saw on Steam the big hype and the variety of positive recessions and I am anyway a medieval / strategy game fan, so I wanted to try it myself.

Queasy was the price of 45-49,99 € for an Early Access version game already, but since the purchase I'm only playing this game :smile:

It is a great game, which at the moment still has some bugs/mistakes but probably known for the start of the game and can cope with it. In itself from the game system it reminds me a bit of the free-to-play game "Conquerors Blade"; where you also play on a gigantic map in a massive multiplayer game. (Graphically you could still do something there better)

I'm missing:
What I currently lack (besides many other features and fixes) is building a warehouse/camp. Since you are occasionally/frequently on the large map, you should have the opportunity to build a camp. In this camp you could stay early and also introduce a "Camp-Enter"; mode, where you can simply spend some time with your soldiers / companions, talk to you and use general, social features. Celebrate parties, practice together with the troupe (fighting training). During the stay in thecamp, however, one is freely vulnerable to all and thus susceptible to willful looters and others :smile:

Optical display:
It often becomes confusing when thousands of information pop up at the bottom left, which hero/lord (and more) by whom was captured, what is attacked/besieged, who has escaped from a captivity. Here it would make sense if you have a setting-feature where you sample. You can set that you can only display the information regarding your own kingdom/clan. (UI-friendly)

Battles:
What I would like to see here is a command function that allows "shield" carriers to stand in front of the troops that do not carry shields. It is very annoying when you have 25 with shields and 25 without in a troop selection, then these are somehow placed in a formation. Tactically smart it would be, if the troops with shield automatically forming the front "infront of troops without shields" - If you select the shield formation. Also an increased number of tactical formations would be desirable (turtle formation / a formation that allows to move the troops permanently in a circle around one's own hero) = troops form a circle around one's own hero and move with the hero if he moves (a kind of rush to help if one is in distress)

Militia system:
If you are besieging a fortress/castle (large city), you can see in advance which units are positioned there. This should be changed to the following -> Unless one has acquired a certain "relationship"with influential people in the fortress/castle/large city, the defending units in the overview should be marked with a "?" so that you can not immediately consider whether a battle is worthwhile. (More realistic). Also, if one has acquired a very good relationship with the inhabitants of a fortress/castle/large city, the possibility should be given that one can start a revolt in the fortress/castle/large city itself. This would then proceed in such a way that the own population takes up arms and initiates an uprising = If one attacks during an instigated revolt, the population joins the attacker and supports his attempt to conquer.

Animations:
The city life could be made more friendly - better. Lively and more animations of the population when entering a city. ( Maybe take a look at Assasin's Creed's city life for inspiration :smile: )

Animations in general combat should also be revised. There are already mods that make animations look "real", but I would like the developer team to change it. ( More collisions of two weapons)

Otherwise a very good Game and I hope that the proceeds from the purchases will be carefully used in the development of the game, so that we will hear more from Bannerlords 2 in the near future:wink:

Greetings from Germany and sorry for the possibly incomprehensible English:razz:
(I am aware that fixing current bugs may be a priority)
 
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