User blog:GameReviewsSteam/Game Review: Mount & Blade 1



Hello, this is a review this is going to be of Mount & Blade for the PC now to tell you the truth I wouldn't have known about this game if it weren't for Steam and for some videos on YouTube that's all of it and I'm really into medieval stuff so I figured why not check it out so I download the demo and found out that is freaking awesome this game is a role-playing game but with a really solid combat system and plenty of stuff to do interestingly enough the game starts up and comes up with a splash screen which I'd expect but it tells you to select a module now that the game only comes with one it's entitled native and that's what I'm playing here but the game has so easily modded that I've seen mods that do Star Wars, Wild West, Napoleonic Wars, to Cavemen in the BCE and there's some that just modified native like I've got one that's entitled timeless kingdoms it just changes pretty much everything around and uses most of the same locations and stuff from hate it anyway now while the character customization engine itself is relatively primitive.

It does have a pretty decent amount offer flexibility you can change like for instance the eyebrows I can raise them or lower them I could change the beard the hairstyle the hair color and change you can wear so you can be young or old but its whatever. It's very limited as to what you can do in native but with the mods I've seen there many that just blow that away and give you tons more options as compared to more modern games the graphics are pretty primitive there's some textures that look really good but most of them about average for say a game made back in the 2008 that isn't so much a problem because the game is on such a massive scale that you won't really be looking at the textures that much and because what really happens is it comes down to performance and you can have hundreds of units on screen and once if you really want to and I mean with my system which is 3.5 gigahertz Athlon processor and 16 gigs ram.

I'm running at absolute maximum getting about frames a 100 - 110 fps average so this game is designed to run on mid to low end systems very well and it does that job extremely well and I've even seen a graphics mod that makes it like the well the Ironman's rival Oblivion in terms of pretty grass trees and stuff like that the character models are obviously not anywhere near as good but anyway now coming into this I didn't expect the sound effects to be very good but I was proven wrong most of them are actually very solid you get the idea bows twanging the swords clashing and stuff like that but some of the sound effects like swords hitting against shields are a little bit wimpy most of them are very good you really get a good feel for slashing straight through a person which is very entertaining somehow but anyway the music is also pretty good especially for an indie game because normally they have really crappy music you know Middies and stuff like that but this has good orchestral stuff going on there's a lot of like dramatic music battles kind of mood music when you're in the map screen when it comes down to in this game is the gameplay itself and some people may look at this and say oh it looks like crap.

=Combat and Game Mechanics= I must say the learning curve was immense and compared to the newer "warband" of Mount & Blade, the combat on this game just feels wrong in comparison. But it was eally really addictive. The combat system is actually very fluid it doesn't look like it if you were to watch gameplay of it probably but the all the sword slashes all the like pull arm attacks and everything are all controlled by the mouse and the way you turn the mouse actually dictates what type of attack you're doing now the bows crossbows and throwing objects like you can get throwing axes and javelins rocks actually but the they all work like a you hold the button down and it brings it to your shoulder and with bows the longer you hold the button down the worse your accuracy actually gets which is actually really cool effect now obviously it would be much less accurate from horseback but you can use your horse archery skill to counter that now one of the things that got me really excited when I played this game with the fact that you can have armies at most RPGs you can have a party of maybe about five or six guys or some newer ones you have like three but in this one you can have armies of about you know five hundred more than that then they all upgrade of course because they gain experience along with your character you can actually get hero units that will upgrade to but you can customize their skills and equipment sets and they actually have little story lines as they go through I had one character who actually left me after a while because she didn't like the way I was doing things but anyway the armies can go absolutely insane on both ends of the spectrum both yours and the enemies and the enemies will often overwhelm you in terms of numbers but if you're tactical and you're pretty good fighter then you will probably come out on top if you're lucky of course but sieges are really fun because you just take the city and pound it into submission basically the mod age of machinery adds trebuchets and catapults and stuff like that.

[[File:Aom2.jpg|thumb|left|702px|Image from : https://www.moddb.com/mods/age-of-machinery

highly suggest you check it out to add to the base game]]

But unfortunately in the base game all you can do is use siege ladders and siege towers now obviously that's not quite as fun as blowing up the walls with a catapult but it's still really interesting to have combat on such a massive scale like you know though sometimes when I've charged the castle it makes me well it reminds me of Monty Python and the Holy Grail when they charge at the French castle but anyway but the sheer amount of stuff you can do the replay value the mods I can do nothing but recommend this game to people especially if they're into RPGs or indie games or any of that so I give it a solid:

7/10 and the more advanced version Warband will most likely get a higher rating and its own review.