Well, let me put it this way. I started off enthusiastic. My
lowest expectation was that Bannerlord was going to be as good as M&B: Warband, plus with better graphics and better sieges that would make it worth the AAA purchase cost. That seemed like a really easy thing to accomplish for a large team with good funding and government backing.
The graphics are definitely better which is nice. The sieges have more gameplay variety, though they are also buggy. But as for being as good as Warband?
Bannerlord is actually missing lots of features from Warband, a game made 10 years ago by a much smaller dev team. The game has gone backwards.
Worse, Taleworlds' official PR people
will not even confirm whether these features are returning. To me, that says very worrying things about future development.
If going backwards from the prequel wasn't enough, obviously there are plenty of other major issues which have persisted for a long time.
- Sieges have lots of things wrong with them, for example: troops won't climb up a siege ladder, or won't use siege towers properly, making them pointless to build. Troops often will destroy the first gate to a castle but ignore the second one.
- There is only a very small amount of field battle maps available.
- Performance is very bad during sieges due to AI pathing issues.
- Armor has barely any effect on reducing damage at all, and troops do not defend themselves in battles, so even the largest battles in the game end very quickly, before there are any opportunities to execute tactics. This has the side effect of archers being overpowered.
- Morale doesn't work like they said it would in the developer blog. You can't use it to gain the advantage during battle, only to rout enemies once you've already clearly won.
- Spear-using troop AI, especially for cavalry, doesn't work correctly, making them quite weak. You can't get troops to brace spears in singleplayer (yet, to be fair this is an announced priority of theirs I am fairly confident will make it in).
- The different faction armies all feel quite similar in practice, mostly being able to field the same troops with just minor differences. Only a couple of factions have distinct strengths and weaknesses (for example, Battania can field every type of unit other factions can, and despite being Celtic-inspired, it has the most cavalry in its armies of any faction in the game!).
- The game lacks tactical depth (the four above points are major contributing reasons).
- War is declared for basically no reason (at least nothing visible to the player), unlike Warband where causes were always given: "we have declared war to reclaim lost territory," "we have declared war to curb the strength of this large faction", etc.
- The game's economy simulation is quite broken-- for example, high-level armor never spawns because all cities are too poor to produce it.
- Castles kind of have no useful function, and just drain your money when you own them. Food supply is such a big issue that it is difficult to garrison your cities and towns because you troops will all starve.
- The new smithing mechanic is unsatisfying and even Armagan has said it needs a rework.
- The Khuzait faction is overpowered due to getting horses for free, and having a very strong cultural bonus that lets their armies move even faster on the world map. The Sturgia faction is underpowered due to having its territory in a very spread out, vulnerable position that is cut in half so it's difficult to move armies across. Battania, which is supposed to be an underdog in the lore, is also overpowered.
- Crime, Rebellion, and Dynastic mechanics, the three main advertised new features, still aren't functional. Out of these, rebellion mechanics and dynastic mechanics have been making slow but noticeable progress at least.
Taleworlds' lack of communication, lack of progress, and lack of planning and organization which is obvious to the whole community at this point, has turned me bitter. Over the last 8 months, we have all watched the game make incredibly slow progress in a period of time where other 100-person studios would have been able to make an entire game. They've actually said they're unable to give us a roadmap of long term goals (
only short-term, small-scope stuff) because "it's too difficult to communicate with everyone in different departments", since apparently they have no long term goals and just work on whatever they feel like, when it suits them. A tiny handful of people at the company seem to be doing all the work while other employees focus on important features like letting you go to the barber.
Here is the progress of note the game has made in the last 8 months:
In its current state, I would not recommend buying the game. Not just because it's an incomplete and repetitive Early Access, but because at this rate of progress, I am doubting the game will even be as good as Warband by the time it comes out of EA.
