POLL: Your reviews of the COMPLETED FINAL Bannerlord

Have you posted a Steam review?

  • Yes, it's positive and I'm not changing it

    Votes: 42 21.0%
  • Yes, It's positive and I'm changing it to negative

    Votes: 7 3.5%
  • Yes, it's negative and I'm not changing it

    Votes: 55 27.5%
  • Yes, it's negative and I'm changing it to positive

    Votes: 3 1.5%
  • No, but I will post a positive review

    Votes: 18 9.0%
  • No, but I will post a negative review

    Votes: 19 9.5%
  • No, and I will not post a review

    Votes: 23 11.5%
  • I like turtles

    Votes: 25 12.5%
  • For some obscene reason, I DON'T like turtles

    Votes: 8 4.0%

  • Total voters
    200

Users who are viewing this thread

bonerstorm

Genghis Khan't
Sergeant
It's been a few months since I last visited the forum and asked whether the current release of BL was playable (it wasn't - but the vassal switching bug has apparently been patched). Now I'm back only to find out that this release will be the last one! We're finally going to have a full release - in a matter of weeks!

It appears those of us cynically betting that TW would release an unfinished product in 2022 rather than delay the opportunity to grab cash from console sales were right.

Unless October's release is a miracle, it's a safe bet that we won't get: working spears, working sieges, working combat AI, working armor, working personality traits, working criminal empire, working economy, working diplomacy, feasts, intrigue quests... skill progression that doesn't have ultra-MMO grind like killing literally 2 million peasants to level Roguery to 250...

And - because of hardcoded stuff - mods won't even be able to fix most of that.

Erm... I haven't checked in a while... does Bannerlord still not even have banners?

My challenge to you all is simple: Is Bannerlord as it stands now the complete game you envisioned it to be when you paid money for it?

Don't review based on your HOPE for the game. We all had hopes when EA started two and a half years ago. Don't review based on the DLC that might be developed - you can individually review those later. Review the game that we have now.

Any which way, write a Steam review that accurately captures your feelings. Because the ONLY way that your opinion matters is if it is reflected in that review score come the official release.
 
Positive and leaving it positive.

Most people laugh at those negative reviews with 120+ hours played and I'd rather not have 3000+ hours next to a thumbs down, as if I'm some kinda digital crackhead who can't help but boot up a game he hates.
 
Last edited:
And - because of hardcoded stuff
If you have any examples of this "hardcoded stuff" I would be happy to take note of them to bring up in a dedicated meeting. We have done numerous changes over the course of EA to make the game systems even more moddable, directly at the request of modders.
Erm... I haven't checked in a while... does Bannerlord still not even have banners?
Will be there in the next patch as seen at Gamescom.
 
I'm usually too lazy to write reviews (which have to be extensive, comprehensive and differentiating to be at least slightly useful), I didn't and I will not.

I would describe the game as very lacking in many important core mechanics (combat AI, campaign AI, diplomacy, fief management, skilling of companions, relations to NPCs, to name some), it's main fault being M+B, so boring like Warband on the longer run, but frequently also an ingenious composition of features and partly a pleasure to play, at least for some time. It is very moddable even for dabblers like me, a great base for mods of gifted modders, and I can make it playable and enjoyable to a certain degree.

I would give anybody the recommendation to buy, except you take promises in business for real and feel your life destroyed in case they weren't. The time you play the game until you notice that you don't like the game is longer and more fun than many appreciated other games offer as pure playing time. :wink:
 
Developers are totally fine with the current state of multiplayer, which if I was an outsider with no prior knowledge and played it on someone else's PC with no context, I would still assume that it's an early Alpha, or indeed a tech demo. Not a finished product (and I'm just talking about the gameplay itself, not the servers). Singleplayer is still a dysfunctional barebones experience that, to me, still can't be played without a moderately sized modlist to give it enough flesh to be playable. 12 years of development+pre-development, and over a hundred employees, with as much of a dedicated playerbase and forum userbase that this series has; the end results are so lacking that if I wasn't here from the beginning watching this trainwreck in slow motion, I genuinely wouldn't believe that it would be possible. And yet here we are.

I don't post reviews for early access games, which is why I haven't posted one yet. But given the development of this game has been one to two steps forward and one to two steps backward for years now, there is zero chance that whatever TaleWorlds has in the pipeline for the last major update will truly change anything. So I know that I will be giving this a negative review.
 
If you have any examples of this "hardcoded stuff" I would be happy to take note of them to bring up in a dedicated meeting. We have done numerous changes over the course of EA to make the game systems even more moddable, directly at the request of modders.

All I ask is a system for minor factions. A way for the player to join one of them and be able to conquer Calradia with their own units!
Just give us the system and we modders can develop and add the units! PLEASE!

The rest is necessarily a task that you have to worry about in the next patches:
- Diplomacy.
- Improve campaign and battle AI.
- Functional spears.
 
I'm still keeping mine at negative because the vanilla game is still barebones which is what I am reviewing (and half of the features promised are not even going to be on the full release and might never be).Once there are mods that fix the vanilla game then I will change it to positive because then the game can actually be playable, but that's just my perspective. I really dislike vanilla.
 
I have not posted a review yet. But it will likely be positive. Since the positives outweigh the negatives in my opinion.

Bannerlord is a great game already, and has a ton of potential. I find myself being able to play it vanilla, without mods. Something I didn't do much with Warband.
 
Posted a negative review in Oct 2020 because Multiplayer was a ****show and there had been nearly no developments on it.

Now, there have been a few patches and there is a bit more content (more != enough), but the overall situation is worse than back then. Oh well.
 
If you have any examples of this "hardcoded stuff" I would be happy to take note of them to bring up in a dedicated meeting. We have done numerous changes over the course of EA to make the game systems even more moddable, directly at the request of modders.
Thanks! I haven't played since January, so I really hope that I'm wrong about the stuff I'm about to say...

I'm a medieval combat nerd, roleplaying nerd and economics nerd... so the three things I care most about are working spears in shieldwalls, working personality traits and a working economy.
  1. AI: I'm given to understand that nearly all the unit/formation/campaign AI is hardcoded, so for instance - while tweaks can be made to make spears less useless - it's impossible to make spearmen use their spears in combat when they have any other weapon. Last I checked, Realistic Battle Mod can only stop spearmen from switching to swords by removing swords from inventory entirely. @Philozoraptor and @Terco_Viejo please don't hesitate to chime in about formation AI too - I'm not knowledgeable enough about reasons why we can't have working shieldwalls.
  2. Traits: As far as I know, there was only one modder with a mod to fix personality traits, who is now MIA. He was able to balance some aspects of the system and provide a game log notification when you gained/lost personality, but was completely unable to do anything with Valor - which is apparently only lost by sacrificing troops and gained by winning battles while vastly outnumbered (impossible to do without cheese on realistic settings?). It is apparently absolutely impossible to level Calculating/Impulsive without convincing something like 50 clans to switch your faction as that is the only thing that modifies it.
    1. To be fair... I'm not sure how much this is moddable since nobody currently is modding it.
    2. I would really like lord NPC AI to be affected by their personality traits (cruel lords raiding etc.) but that would also fall under AI hardcoding.
  3. Economics: I don't know if this is a factor of hardcoding at all or just lack of interest, honestly, but the last time I looked into Bannerlord economics the demand curve collapsed once a town reached 6-7 days of supply - which made town economy very fragile to supply shocks and made trade only consistently profitable in low volumes. I suggested tweaking the multiplier to stabilize at 15-30 days supply. The multiplier that governs price equilibrium - I believe - was hardcoded. As far as I know, the only current mod that affects economy is Banner Kings - which does a ton of other stuff, but doesn't impact the price curve directly.
Bonus: I'd like feasts, which are apparently impossible to mod because of AI hardcoding.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top Bottom