Mount and Blade II Bannerlord -

September 2008 The game Mount and Blade was released for the first time, and when we tried the game at the time, we found that it offers an experience that we have not seen in any other game, and here we literally mean the sentence. The game really offers a completely new idea on games that mixes action and role-playing with strategy games.

Then came the release of Warband in 2010, and it was a version based on the original game, but with some additions that were really important and needed by the game to live with the game for all these years while I’ve been playing it.

During this period, some official versions based on the original game were released completely, but they were substandard in our point of view, and when you try them, you feel that work on them was fast and without perfection.

But now the situation is completely different, we are in front of Mount and Blade II Bannerlord, which is a completely new game built from scratch, this, is the second and officially new part of the game Mount and Blade.

We adore the game Mount and Blade, so of course the new part was on our list of priorities, and indeed we tried the game and we were enthusiastic and happy at the same time, but did the game maintain this enthusiasm or was it frustrating? Let us know the answer from During our review of Mount and Blade Bannerlord.

The idea of the game Mount and Blade

Before we start reviewing the game, we must first explain the idea of the game because it is an idea that does not exist in many games. The game offers a giant map with a Top-Down perspective, and this map has castles, villages and kingdoms on it like any normal strategy game, and on the map, there are characters that move here and there and you have your own in a form closer to Civilization, for example.

The characters on the map belong to the kingdoms and villages in the game, each character or army does something, and you are free to roam the map and do the activity you want.

What is new in the game is the idea of fighting. When you enter a battle, the screen shifts and switches to a third- or first-person perspective as desired, to have an epic fighting experience in which you fight by yourself and with your personality. The same thing is repeated when you enter any villages or cities.

So, the game combines a strategic perspective across the sandbox map, and on this map, you can do a lot of activities, and a great combat system similar to the chivalry game.

That is why our game today does not contain a story, despite the developer’s attempt to provide a light story that helps you understand the game at the beginning, but we do not play Mount and Blade for the sake of these missions that the game offers because in this game we weave our own story.

The combat system in Mount and Blade II Bannerlord

As we mentioned, you start the game alone, but then you can recruit men and establish your own army, and during this journey you can develop the soldiers in your army.

You can use infantry, cavalry, or archers, and even every general classification contains other sub-classifications. There are infantrymen with shields and others with long spears, and we will explain the importance of this matter.

In order to win the battles in the game, you must form an integrated and coordinated army. It is not possible to rely on one type, even if this type is the most expensive and powerful cavalry in the game, because the cavalrymen can be shot down with long spears or arrows, also while penetrating enemy ranks or forts. It is good to have Soldiers with shields to avoid arrows.

Even on the battlefield, you can give many strategic orders that will help you win the battle. For example, archers can be placed in a high position revealing the battlefield, and you can pull the cavalry around the enemy and attack them from behind.

What is special about the combat system?

The combat system in Bannerlord is excellent and very cohesive, and most importantly, all its elements are important. You cannot neglect the strategic arrangement of your soldiers if you want to survive or win with minimal losses.

After a number of long hours of playing, we began to form different strategies that we used according to the enemy, because the kingdoms in the game are distinct, and each kingdom has soldiers and a different way of speaking. In front of a certain kingdom, we rely on cavalry and in a specific way as well, as we circle around the enemy and start striking at the borders without any attempt to penetrate the ranks of the enemy, and in front of another kingdom, the archers used arrows to hit the enemy’s horses, which forces the enemy to try to penetrate the ranks of the archers, and here the cavalry appears to perform its work and defend the archers and infantry.

The beautiful thing is that these strategies are not fixed. You cannot invent one fighting style and stick to it. Of course, you can do this, but your losses will be great in the battle.

At the same time, unfortunately, the beginning of the game has a slight glitch because the archers have the upper hand at this stage. At the beginning of the game, you will find yourself chasing the bandits because they are unarmored enemies and it is easy to get rid of them and get the spoils, and here we found a loophole, which is the use of arrow archers, as they are able to kill Any number of bandits before the bandits even reach them and without the need for any strategic tactic, but once your army grows and thus your goals grow, you will need to resort to war strategies.

What’s different from the first part?

The first part of the game presented the same strategic idea and controlling the soldiers, but it was very simple and ineffective in the battle. the enemy.

Money in Bannerlord

Of course, a game like this must include a strong and fun economic system. You need money to recruit soldiers, buy equipment, weapons, and food for the soldiers, and even spend on your cities, fortifying them, and developing them.

In the game, you can get money in more than one way, as we mentioned, the Sandbox game gives you absolute freedom in your choices and the way you play.

You can get money from your conquests and battles where you get booty and sell it afterwards, or you can enter a criminal path and plunder the greed of the safe and honest or raid the villages.

Or you can enter into a normal economic system, so you get money through trade, whether by yourself, or you create commercial caravans affiliated with you that are run by people you trust, as well as there are industrial workshops that can be purchased, and of course these workshops make financial profits every day.

And when you progress in the game and enable you to open a city and seize it, or even if you got one through politics, this city will have a daily income along with its villages.

The economic system in the game is a game on its own and you can play for hours and hours as you try to establish strong businesses and a permanent economy for your clan and army.

Of course, there are many daily expenses, such as soldiers’ wages or guarding in the city, so you must ensure that there is a surplus of money daily so that the morale of your army does not drop and the soldiers begin to leave you alone.

Bannerlord Politics

The game is full of non-playable characters, but you can interact with them. We have princes and kings of kingdoms in the game, and we have countless characters in villages, cities and castles, whether merchants, gang leaders or workshop owners.

On your journey, you can interact with these characters and perform tasks for them, but this interaction will result in the anger of some, for example, if you allied with one of the princes and helped him in his war campaigns, the other kingdom will be angry with you, and here begins a very interesting journey of forming friendships and enmities as well.

After a period of time has passed within the game, you will find that you have a very large list of friends who want to serve you in any problem you face, and many enemies as well, so do not expect a response from them.

Politics when joining a kingdom

The game opens up more and deeper political options for you when you join one of the kingdoms in the game or even establish your own kingdom, which is what happens when you open a city in your favor.

At this point, you will be able to contribute to the issuance of legislation for the kingdom in general, such as raising or lowering taxes, or even declaring war or asking for peace with one of the kingdoms.

And all these decisions affect the rest of the actions of the characters in the game. The decision to declare war on a kingdom, for example, means that the other kingdom will begin to mobilize its forces, and here we will see battles consisting of literally thousands of soldiers in a majestic scene.

In general, the political system in the game is much better than the first part, and it is considered the most updated part in the game, so what we mentioned is the husks only because literally every part that we mentioned in this review needs a full article to explain it completely, as this game includes tons of details that we do not see in games AAA.

Battles to open cities

As we mentioned, the game contains a group of kingdoms, and each kingdom has its own cities and castles. Cities are larger than castles and have more important activities and advantages, but castles are also good and important.

Therefore, it is very good to have a castle or city on your journey in Mount and Blade, or whoever is above you may establish your kingdom and seize all the castles in the game.

Bannerlord has tried to greatly develop the battles of castles and cities, for example it added new defensive tools such as the catapult, as well as the attacking forces now have towers, ladders and more tools whose capabilities and types differ according to the level of engineering in your army.

Unfortunately, despite all this expansion and details, the game ran into a problem, which is the design of the castles and cities themselves. The design is a little bad, as it is too large and spacious, and there is more than one wall at more than one level, and at first it will be distracting, especially if you are a defender and not an attacker.

In the first battle to defend one of the cities belonging to the kingdom, we found ourselves lost. We could not reach the battle at all. We got out of stairs and climbed others, and we do not know how to reach the battle, and this is completely opposite to the first part, which presented wonderful and epic city battles that do not need this complexity.

Assuming roles in Mount and Blade II Bannerlord

This time the game offers a completely different skill tree than the first part, now we have a large skill tree that includes many things, whether combat skills or leadership skills, or crafts such as medicine, engineering, trade and blacksmithing.

What is different here is the way to deal with these skills. The higher the level of the character, the more points that can be used to raise the level of learning for one of the skills, and focus with us on raising the level of learning.

Here, you do not take points to spend, for example, on trade, to become a good trader. Rather, in order to become a good trader, you must carry out commercial operations, and the points you spent will help you learn faster.

As you learn and advance in a particular skill, you will unlock sub-abilities for this skill, and you can choose between two abilities each time, which opens up a very long and huge skill tree in front of you.

The tree is genius and very cohesive and eliminates the defect in the first part, because the first part, after a period of time in the game has passed, you find that you have unlocked all the skills and your character has become invincible, while in Bannerlord, the size of the giant tree and the method of acquiring skills and unlocking sub-abilities forces the player to focus on Certain skills to unlock and you can’t unlock all skills like the first part.

Bannerlord helpers

Similar to the first part, you can include distinguished characters in your army, and these characters are found in large cities, and each character has certain skills and abilities, for example, there are characters who are good in trade and others who are good in medicine or engineering, while there are characters who are skilled in fighting only.

These characters can be included in your army by entering into a simple conversation that ends with including them in the army if you want in exchange for an amount of money.

In Bannerlord, these characters have a very important role, as you can appoint them in your cities, or you can even use them as princes for your kingdom, so that each one of them has his own army, cities, and castles.

These characters represent the clan you are trying to build, so they have the same skill tree as your character and you interact with them as one of them level up, making Bannerlord an excellent role-playing game.

How has the final version of the game improved relative to Early Access?

The final version of the game modified and overcame many of the problems that were present in the game when it was released as an early access version, and the first of these improvements came in performance.

The performance of the game has improved greatly, and now you can play smoothly and without cutting frames, although the game is not without it, especially when entering and wandering around cities.

The economy has also been set in the game, as the early access version was suffering from this matter, as the player was getting unlimited and abundant money, and you can buy the whole game easily, now the economic system is very disciplined and represents a challenge in the game.

The same thing was repeated with the power of the kingdoms and the political relations between them, now there is no strong kingdom that quickly takes all the other kingdoms and destroys the game, but the game will remain with you for hundreds of hours and all the kingdoms are present and existing.

The game has been excellently polished and polished through many updates until it reached this form, and we are waiting for more updates that add more ideas in the game because this game can become the best in history if some ideas are added and we hope that these new ideas will be in the form of Updates, not DLC additions, the game needs ideas here and there to update and expand it, especially as it deserves.

What has been mentioned is not all of the game

All of the aforementioned is not the whole game and its elements. Rather, the game includes many other activities. For example, there is the activity of blacksmithing, which needs an article on its own to talk about and explain it. There are also relationship activities within the game, where you can have children and marry, or even mediate the marriage of one of your clan’s sons with a royal offspring from one of the kingdoms. In order to increase your prestige in this world.

The game is literally a world of activities that takes you away and immerses you in it for hundreds of hours. The game is indescribably time-consuming. Throughout the game, you will be busy with something. You may be busy increasing your financial profits, developing your army and soldiers, or even supporting your political relations.

Cartoons and music

We think after all that we mentioned about the gameplay, there is no need to talk about this aspect of the game. Who cares about graphics and music after all these activities?

But in any case, the game comes with very good graphics, comfortable for the eye, but it harms you, but only when we are at a distance, for example, the features of the characters are good and acceptable, but when you approach them, you will find them strange and a bit scary.

As for the music, it is excellent and varies according to the situation. The music of war is different from the time of peace, and here we felt happy that the developer took care of this aspect, whether graphics or music, because many do not know the game and may judge it from its appearance without trying it.

Conclusion

Mount and Blade Bannerlord is an excellent continuation of the first part of the game, the game includes many activities that will take you to a wonderful world with a lot of details and activities.

But the developer must continue to support and improve this game, the idea of starting to develop a third part now is very bad, first length this part and reach the best possible version of it and then you can move to the third part of this wonderful game.