That's why some of the biggest critiques of the game are that there are features from Warband that are missing in Bannerlord.
That's half of the critiques. There are plenty of other major critiques that are made here constantly.
The game isn't bad, its hard to argue that
Bannerlord is as of 1.7.2
definitely a bad game. It has good visuals and art assets, good underlying engine and simulation and something approaching good combat systems,
but it straight up fails at being FUN at what it's meant to be (a hybrid slasher/RPG lite/grand strat lite/tactics game).
It's
no fun as a slasher because armour is so incredibly unrealistically weak - as if it were made of cardboard - that
the player cannot engage in slasher battles for more than a couple minutes before being shot to death from approximately 5 stray arrows, plus enemies that should be tough are really easy to cheese to death with one hit from your glaive or a couple from a ranged weapon. And many other issues with combat if you ask any MP veteran.
It's
no fun as a grand strat because votes and politics and relations and traits are largely meaningless, AI cannot commit to anything or successfully finish a siege now, and every faction will now almost immediately declare peace when a war tries to start meaning
nothing notable ever happens on the world map, so the player's political or strategic skill have little relevance. And when you do actually defeat a kingdom they don't even die, they just raid you forever with free armies and demand tribute. And unlike any other grand strat game you can't send messages and must do almost all communication in person and chase down every prospective deal yourself even as the king, while trying to wage war at the same time because your commanders are too dumb to do it themselves. It is a frustrating, repetitive experience.
It's
no fun as an RPG because quest design is largely simplistic fetchquests, the world does not feel alive or immersive, there is almost no reason to walk inside cities, there are few compelling characters and companions are just mayor bots, traits do little, story is largely confined to encyclopaedias instead of through gameplay, the main quest becomes awful halfway, the few quests that are good don't have much reason to do them, the combat skills are almost worthless because you can one shot anything with a glaive anyway, the tactics skill discourages use of tactics, the engineering skill has little to no effect, trade and medicine are a slow grind, so players will end up pumping everything into the same handful of skills every playthrough because
the game does not facilitate roleplaying.
It's
not fun as a tactics game because the aforementioned armour problems plus poor melee AI make every fight end in around 3 minutes with archers and horse archers the obvious best way to win every battle, plus Khan's Guard are even more stupidly broken being the best horse archer *and* best melee unit, plus melee cavalry charges being ineffective and every army composition feeling very similar and spearmen sucking and morale mechanics not allowing the player to turn the tide of battle; ultimately,
the player will actively perform worse if they try to use interesting tactics that are anything other than "sit archers on a hill with a small infantry screen and wait" or "bring 50 Khan's Guard and circle enemy".
And the real tragedy is that these issues are mainly caused by just a small number of bugs or imbalances that have a huge disproportionate influence on the fun of the game. It could be decent otherwise, but because of these issues,
playing Bannerlord is not fun.
It just isn't the sequel to Warband that the hardcore Warband community wanted.
It's both. It is an unfun game that has *also* regressed from Warband in multiple different areas.