I will try my best to do so, but I'm afraid I will hurt a lot of feelings in doing so.
The average Steam user is as follows: fifteen to twenty-five years old. Male. Wealthy background. American or european. Doesn't work or has an extremely relaxing and low-intensity job, doesn't have to worry about much. Has zero sense for objective value, the attention span of a hamster and lives for instant gratification. Has an extremely high tolerance for low quality products, misinformation and downright fraud (see the morons still defending Star Citizen) while also defending these practices because it's what the "cool kids" do. Will unashamedly buy 250 games a year and play 15% of them for 1 to 20 hours without even touching the others. Will notice there's some clout through criticism (but more through being a contrarian towards whoever seems to be more articulate and intelligent than he is) surrounding a product and enjoy defending it like some kind of old-school internet forum troll. Also has an average IQ of 85 and uses Twitter and Tik Tok everyday.
You can imagine why their positive reviews would overwhelm our negative ones. We are critic of something because we care and we... frankly, mostly know better - as clearly shown by how easily a lot of people amongst us can write extremely good constructive criticism without telling others to sod off, create wonderful mods and, if allowed, actively make an average game much better without asking for anything in return but a good gaming experience.
TL;DR=Moderately intelligent to extremely intelligent people with limited time on their hands don't particularly like the direction Bannerlord has been going towards. People with the attention span of a hamster who are probably entertained by farting and fidget spinners will love the game... probably just to be contrarians.
Go ahead and sue me, that's what I think.
Little edit: Take note how most negative reviews seem written by literate people while most positive reviews are, basically: "bUtTeRlOrD" and other stupid memes.
Agree with you.
I'm not very positive but I've spent more than 1000 hours already, so I'm probably a bit less patient with what I find wrong.
European, almost 50 y.o. (was playing Diablo in my "youth"...
) means also I've seen how industry is a mess / a pain for all that it touches (other debate, irrelevant here lol).
I have not finished yet the game nor know the inheritance (when your character dies).
About my IQ, not me to judge lol
Agree with the eager for gratification.
The game has a very good potential, and plenty of good possibilities and mecanisms, interesting features.
But their are some inconstancies, and among, while some are minor, some others are major and critical.
Minor inconstancies for example :
- why do your caravans do not avoid to trade within ennemy territories, for their own safety (this is, let us say just annoying).
- Lords with "good" traits (which is an excellent feature i.m.o.) will attack defenceless civils (villagers, caravans), still, this is, let us again say, just annoying. Such acts should be done by cruel, merciless characters. I think that would be more logic, and would avoid us, once we have a fief or two, to constantly have to chase minor idiots who spend their time raiding villages, instead of helping the Kingdom they work for with the war.
The critical defaults, unfortunately are about battles and combat, which is (one of) the main game feature :
- high life expectancy for a single ennemy unit surrounded by 20 of yours, just because they will interfer with each other and prevent themselves to kill the one, with possibility that "the one" kills one or several of yours : stupid
- by the way I died several times on the battlefield such as following lol : I was on foot, hitting an ennemy like 4-5 times, but each time, one of my silly cavs was passing next to me, (1)missing the guy I was targeting lol, and (2)preventing me from dealing the hit, and it looks like the ennemy was not experiencing that major annoyment, so after several blows, I was down, thanks to my mule riders (it could have been some allied infantry too), and very very frustrated, because I was not so bad with two handed weapon
- battles in several rounds (ok we know it is because game would hardly manage 2500 units at the same time, so it is a technical problem that we all are aware of, but the current way this is treated is not suitable); maybe chaining several battles without reinforcements wouldn't be ideal, but at least, battles would happen with a finished number of soldiers. At the moment, to avoid useless / stupid casualties (it is because I'm sentimental, and thus, I take care of my men lol), we have to take in count those spawning reinforcements, which kills - imo - any strategic matter of the battle.
- orders would not suffer to be added the ability to target some type of units (too many losses due to ennemy archers with high life expectancy just because they are never targeted (neither by the cavalry, nor by our archers, who seem to target closest..., on the contrary of ennemy archers, who seem a bit more intelligent)
- as already said, sieges.
- I won't do an exhaustive list, and all has already been said anyway
So I've spent a bit time reading opinions on Steam, and indeed, in some of the positive ones, people have obviously not played a lot. It's mainly when we start to operate huge armies that it starts to hurt
