I have played the series from early access of original mount&blade. Between that and warband I have over 2000 hours of game time. I have played Bannerlord since release for about 700 hours.
The main feeling I have with Bannerlord is that is it everything I wanted from it. The big battles are awesome, the world map feels much bigger and better, the dynamic trade and economy also feel really good.
My biggest problems with the game are that the progression is really wonky and and everything feels really gamey.
Progression: The start of new campaing is extremely annoying. It is very easy to go bankrupt since you dont have money to buy horses and it is very hard to catch looters since they move about the same speed. After getting enough money to buy some horses and have about 10 soldiers the game starts feeling really easy. I can catch and crush most bandits and selling the loot brings a lot of money. It is really easy to have 50 mostly elite troops after getting to clan tier 2, join a kingdom as mercenary then kill some caravans and the money problems go away for the rest of playtrough. When getting to tier 3 it is really easy to have almost full party of best troops and then killing enemy lord parties is really easy. After getting enough renown/fiefs it is really easy to get a massive army and just siege every town/castle and destroy factions in a couple of wars.
The relations with other lords is really strange since it is usually extremely easy to have everybody just love you. There seem to be way more ways to make other lord like you than dislike you. With lategame influence gains it is easy to just vote for people who dont like you to have 100 relations with every clan. I think the relations should be balanced so that getting positive relation with 1 clan would almost always give the same negative relation with the clan they dont like. That way there would be some kind of system of choosing sides within faction.
My suggestions to make this feel better:
- Somehow limit how easy it is to get the best troops of any faction. This can be by increasing xp requirements (only for player). I think there could be a hard or soft limit of how many best troops you can have. This can be done by making other faction troops more expensive to upgrade or more expensive to upkeep or have some kind of morale problem. I think the horse system is really good at limiting the amount of cavalry you can have in early game. Maybe there could be similiar system for other troops, you would have to first by fian champion gear set for 2000 before you can upgrade troop to that rank. If the troop then dies you have a change to get that set back. If you.
- Medicine is really overpowered for the player. If you manage to find a hero with 125 medicine, it is really easy to almost never lose troops. I think there should be some kind of limitations for this. First of all it is really stupid that you allways know right away if somebody is dead or not. Secondly there should be a choice after the battle to move slower and try to save wounded soldiers or move fast and risk losing them. Thirdly I think there should be resource called "medicine" which is used every time a soldier is healed.
- Companions are just bad. I never read their dialog and they are just carriers of their skills. In warband companions had some personality in them since they hated/liked other companions and gave some lore for the places they were from. I think with the current system it would be better to just be able to hire a "healer" or "engineer" with higher cost but no other personality than this current system
- I think the economy could be scaled better if having more money would result in your troops demanding more money for their work.
The main feeling I have with Bannerlord is that is it everything I wanted from it. The big battles are awesome, the world map feels much bigger and better, the dynamic trade and economy also feel really good.
My biggest problems with the game are that the progression is really wonky and and everything feels really gamey.
Progression: The start of new campaing is extremely annoying. It is very easy to go bankrupt since you dont have money to buy horses and it is very hard to catch looters since they move about the same speed. After getting enough money to buy some horses and have about 10 soldiers the game starts feeling really easy. I can catch and crush most bandits and selling the loot brings a lot of money. It is really easy to have 50 mostly elite troops after getting to clan tier 2, join a kingdom as mercenary then kill some caravans and the money problems go away for the rest of playtrough. When getting to tier 3 it is really easy to have almost full party of best troops and then killing enemy lord parties is really easy. After getting enough renown/fiefs it is really easy to get a massive army and just siege every town/castle and destroy factions in a couple of wars.
The relations with other lords is really strange since it is usually extremely easy to have everybody just love you. There seem to be way more ways to make other lord like you than dislike you. With lategame influence gains it is easy to just vote for people who dont like you to have 100 relations with every clan. I think the relations should be balanced so that getting positive relation with 1 clan would almost always give the same negative relation with the clan they dont like. That way there would be some kind of system of choosing sides within faction.
My suggestions to make this feel better:
- Somehow limit how easy it is to get the best troops of any faction. This can be by increasing xp requirements (only for player). I think there could be a hard or soft limit of how many best troops you can have. This can be done by making other faction troops more expensive to upgrade or more expensive to upkeep or have some kind of morale problem. I think the horse system is really good at limiting the amount of cavalry you can have in early game. Maybe there could be similiar system for other troops, you would have to first by fian champion gear set for 2000 before you can upgrade troop to that rank. If the troop then dies you have a change to get that set back. If you.
- Medicine is really overpowered for the player. If you manage to find a hero with 125 medicine, it is really easy to almost never lose troops. I think there should be some kind of limitations for this. First of all it is really stupid that you allways know right away if somebody is dead or not. Secondly there should be a choice after the battle to move slower and try to save wounded soldiers or move fast and risk losing them. Thirdly I think there should be resource called "medicine" which is used every time a soldier is healed.
- Companions are just bad. I never read their dialog and they are just carriers of their skills. In warband companions had some personality in them since they hated/liked other companions and gave some lore for the places they were from. I think with the current system it would be better to just be able to hire a "healer" or "engineer" with higher cost but no other personality than this current system
- I think the economy could be scaled better if having more money would result in your troops demanding more money for their work.