Reinforcing @MadVader's analogy further. I never cared about what a game looks myself so Warband being uglier is irrelevant to me (I also find it debatable as others have said).IGN Review
and
Warband had better character, but it looked absolute dog****.
Now, Warband cant update its graphics but Bannerlord can update its character.
Regarding ladders:
I am also not sure how you can say that one is "better" than the other. Difficult to have that kind of conversation when there's no objective metric to evaluate that. I like Warband way better but that's, like, my opinion man.