Here's my opinion:
My first impressions with Mount and Blade: with Fire and Sword, initially made by a different company called Sich studio, seems to be mixed, I don't like it but I don't hate it. It is a port from the first M&B game. While it is a change of pace from the normal sandbox to be a story-driven sandbox based of the novel "With Fire and Sword" by Henryk Sienkiewicz, while haven't read the book or got a copy, but I I'm going to assume that it doesn't have multiple endings, like this game. While we're on not being true to the source material, I am unable to choose a female avatar with no information given in the manual, I'm going to assume it is for historical accuracy despite there have been female combatants leading armies and joining wars throughout history be it cross-dressing as men or not, sometimes only discovered after death and therefore, due to values at the time, had to be covered up. The fact that it is based off a fictional story that used historical figures from what I can gather due to the information available to me, I believe that is called historical FICTION in America, and yet it gives you the option to play an alternate ending thus giving you an option to NOT follow the story in the intended way, yet omitting a female gender seems rather alarming to me.
No longer can you just carve your path into the enemy army, you have to change your tactics due to muskets and pistols. This is not a game where you can be one-man army, you have to use tactics. It maybe difficult but I'm sure people may get the hang of it, someday. Apparently You can also become a ruler of the commonwealth after completing the story, most likely, however I am not sure due to the fact I don't have an interest in the story right now. The loading times seem to take a long time for some reason.
Sich studio originally made this and while not bad, it's not good either, Let's hope that Taleworlds can fix their mess. A lot could be improved if this standalone "expansion" is to live up to the name expansion. To use an example X3: reunion and X3: Terran Conflict, X3 TC, from what I gather from information is a standalone expansion of X3:R and it expanded upon X3:R while removing itself from the story-driven sandbox to go to sandbox. That is the definition of expansion I believe, to expand upon. Story driven sandboxes can be good if done correctly, like for example the X series from Egosoft; save for the last one which it turned into a full fledged sandbox game, so a story driven sandbox can and has been (multiple times in fact) done before.
Possibly when I have gained an interest, I will do an in-depth review, but until then, my opinion remains the same, I don't like it but I don't hate it either.