I have Bannerlord on my Wishlist since 2010. After waiting 10+ years to get it released it was finally out and it had a TON of BUGS and bad reviews so I was like, hell I'll wait another year to get it polished and purchased it. Did that and bought it last week, now 80 hours in the game, here is my honest review:
Pros:
- The game is a better graphics mod than Warband, yet most female character faces can give you nightmares. They are really that ugly and creepy looking.
- Large scale battles but even with my 4000$ PC, I coundn't play with unlimited corpses as the game was starting to stutter for 5-30 seconds every couple of seconds and it took 20 minutes of fast forward combat resolution after I died to get a 1000vs800 siege to finish and I won with 10 people standing, which was epic BUT the stutter and the constant freezes made me so furious.
- Combat is pretty realistic and if you play with realistic damage, you feel fragile and powerless as you should in a big scale battle, not like the usual RAMBO-like RPGS, where you go in an slaughter thousands of men.
- It is Mount and Blade.
That's that.
Cons.
- I feel nobody from the devs played the game more than 20 hours in a single sandbox playthrough as if they did they would find out that the game has no purpose after 5 hours in.
- Smithing is OP, just craft 2h-swords = GOLD CHEAT = Easy game, just because I wanted to RP a smith merchant and roam around selling my wares, I was able to afford literally everything in the game and made that playthrough dull and had to start over.
- There is no diplomacy (you need a mod, that should have been in the game all along), If you "GO" for the end game, you find yourself getting attacked by literally everybody without time to recover your troops or protect your kingdom. While most AI kingdoms only fight 1 to 2 opponents at a time and are happy with an occasional peace treaty.
- Addition to the previous point is that if you SOMEHOW manage to get 1 kingdom to get a peace treaty signed, they break it in 5 minutes by declaring war again.
- You will get your villages constantly raided regardless if you are in an AI kingdom or your own kingdom once you are at war, so you will literally have to stand around and look after your people.
- The only viable option if you want to chase down people with a larger army is BATTARIAN, every other nation is a wheelchair and you will have to either go ALL IN CAV or trap other parties in particular terrain traps on the map.
- Once your clan hits level 4, the game is repetitive, if you are not participating in a war, you have nothing to do other than killing looters and raiders.
- Clearing raider hideouts is really a waste of time I don't get the feeling of seeing less looters or raiders in the region. Looters and raiders should be more of a threat rather than annoyance. You should be rewarded for making the region safer, seeing less looters in it, get more prosperity, happier villagers, etc.
- The renown grind is a pain in the ... Should be a default multiplier on how GRINDY you want your game to be as GRINDY is not fun, STRUGLING at the start, having almost no money next to your name, gear, companions, skills, etc, that is FUN, grinding 0.6 renown is not, having in mind I want to participate in my battles even if they are one sided, I'm not here to skip SIM battles and get my 150 T6 troops get casualties vs 20 looters, but I have to to get morale up, influence, renown, so I have to fight the looters in the meantime and literally everything (units) in red to progress.
- There should be more political stuff in the game, like pacts of non aggression, alliance pacts, trade agreements so caravans can visit certain areas, ask for aid, ask for breaking of agreements, ask a particular ai kingdom to attack another ai kingdom, bot of which you are not a member off.
- Prisoners are meaningless - execute (some rep penalty), or 2-5k... B-O-R-I-N-G. I have the KING/QUEEN of the opposite faction which my OWN personal kingdom is at war with, I want to talk with them and offer them FREEDOM for Peace or SOMETHING, ANTHING, but "I was told not to speak with you" DAFAQ? Get the Axe...You are in my custody I DECIDE who you talk with.
- Imprisoning troops in garrisons, what is the purpose of this? Shouldn't these guys be allowed to convert or get recruited while in my custody there!? Pointless feature, might as well trade them in to the broker
- Siege combat on the world map... This is hilarious I don't get the point really... The only things that matter are the towers that have the AI STUCK on the ladders and the door ram which is often destroyed by a good hit with a catapult. The attacker trebuchet and catapults almost feel as if they don't do anything.
- The game has no endgame, the mid game starts to feel repetitive, you will have more fun starting over and over again than making a longer playthrough.
Bottom line is, excuses, excuses, you can make excuses all you want for the studio being small, on a tight budget, the game is in Alpha... MAN THEY CHARGE FULL PRICE FOR A DEMO MOD OF WARBAND REMASTERED!?!?!?
The modding community has some real updates on their hands that actually do a better job than the actual devs... Most of which are a one man project, meaning either nobody in TaleWorlds is coding or that 1 guy is better, HIRE HIS FACE and lets get some work done... Currently the almost meaningless updates that you release are interfering with the MODS that actually make a difference, THUS ACTUAL GAME UPDATES ARE BAD FOR THE GAME?!?!? I know right...
When you make a difference and finish the game, I will update the review, until then, either play modded or don't bother.
I just hope the above is not treated as a whine or crying or flaming or hating thread. This is more of a disappointed fan review than anything else. Take it for what it is, I'm up for debate on any of the above. I do hope TaleWorlds take this as constructive criticism and act on improving the end game which is non existent...
Pros:
- The game is a better graphics mod than Warband, yet most female character faces can give you nightmares. They are really that ugly and creepy looking.
- Large scale battles but even with my 4000$ PC, I coundn't play with unlimited corpses as the game was starting to stutter for 5-30 seconds every couple of seconds and it took 20 minutes of fast forward combat resolution after I died to get a 1000vs800 siege to finish and I won with 10 people standing, which was epic BUT the stutter and the constant freezes made me so furious.
- Combat is pretty realistic and if you play with realistic damage, you feel fragile and powerless as you should in a big scale battle, not like the usual RAMBO-like RPGS, where you go in an slaughter thousands of men.
- It is Mount and Blade.
That's that.
Cons.
- I feel nobody from the devs played the game more than 20 hours in a single sandbox playthrough as if they did they would find out that the game has no purpose after 5 hours in.
- Smithing is OP, just craft 2h-swords = GOLD CHEAT = Easy game, just because I wanted to RP a smith merchant and roam around selling my wares, I was able to afford literally everything in the game and made that playthrough dull and had to start over.
- There is no diplomacy (you need a mod, that should have been in the game all along), If you "GO" for the end game, you find yourself getting attacked by literally everybody without time to recover your troops or protect your kingdom. While most AI kingdoms only fight 1 to 2 opponents at a time and are happy with an occasional peace treaty.
- Addition to the previous point is that if you SOMEHOW manage to get 1 kingdom to get a peace treaty signed, they break it in 5 minutes by declaring war again.
- You will get your villages constantly raided regardless if you are in an AI kingdom or your own kingdom once you are at war, so you will literally have to stand around and look after your people.
- The only viable option if you want to chase down people with a larger army is BATTARIAN, every other nation is a wheelchair and you will have to either go ALL IN CAV or trap other parties in particular terrain traps on the map.
- Once your clan hits level 4, the game is repetitive, if you are not participating in a war, you have nothing to do other than killing looters and raiders.
- Clearing raider hideouts is really a waste of time I don't get the feeling of seeing less looters or raiders in the region. Looters and raiders should be more of a threat rather than annoyance. You should be rewarded for making the region safer, seeing less looters in it, get more prosperity, happier villagers, etc.
- The renown grind is a pain in the ... Should be a default multiplier on how GRINDY you want your game to be as GRINDY is not fun, STRUGLING at the start, having almost no money next to your name, gear, companions, skills, etc, that is FUN, grinding 0.6 renown is not, having in mind I want to participate in my battles even if they are one sided, I'm not here to skip SIM battles and get my 150 T6 troops get casualties vs 20 looters, but I have to to get morale up, influence, renown, so I have to fight the looters in the meantime and literally everything (units) in red to progress.
- There should be more political stuff in the game, like pacts of non aggression, alliance pacts, trade agreements so caravans can visit certain areas, ask for aid, ask for breaking of agreements, ask a particular ai kingdom to attack another ai kingdom, bot of which you are not a member off.
- Prisoners are meaningless - execute (some rep penalty), or 2-5k... B-O-R-I-N-G. I have the KING/QUEEN of the opposite faction which my OWN personal kingdom is at war with, I want to talk with them and offer them FREEDOM for Peace or SOMETHING, ANTHING, but "I was told not to speak with you" DAFAQ? Get the Axe...You are in my custody I DECIDE who you talk with.
- Imprisoning troops in garrisons, what is the purpose of this? Shouldn't these guys be allowed to convert or get recruited while in my custody there!? Pointless feature, might as well trade them in to the broker
- Siege combat on the world map... This is hilarious I don't get the point really... The only things that matter are the towers that have the AI STUCK on the ladders and the door ram which is often destroyed by a good hit with a catapult. The attacker trebuchet and catapults almost feel as if they don't do anything.
- The game has no endgame, the mid game starts to feel repetitive, you will have more fun starting over and over again than making a longer playthrough.
Bottom line is, excuses, excuses, you can make excuses all you want for the studio being small, on a tight budget, the game is in Alpha... MAN THEY CHARGE FULL PRICE FOR A DEMO MOD OF WARBAND REMASTERED!?!?!?
The modding community has some real updates on their hands that actually do a better job than the actual devs... Most of which are a one man project, meaning either nobody in TaleWorlds is coding or that 1 guy is better, HIRE HIS FACE and lets get some work done... Currently the almost meaningless updates that you release are interfering with the MODS that actually make a difference, THUS ACTUAL GAME UPDATES ARE BAD FOR THE GAME?!?!? I know right...
When you make a difference and finish the game, I will update the review, until then, either play modded or don't bother.
I just hope the above is not treated as a whine or crying or flaming or hating thread. This is more of a disappointed fan review than anything else. Take it for what it is, I'm up for debate on any of the above. I do hope TaleWorlds take this as constructive criticism and act on improving the end game which is non existent...