The claustrophobic press of frenzied melee attacks, whistling missiles, and ferocious cavalry charges are often represented in games, but rarely as personally as in the Mount & Blade series. There is none. Having experienced what a commander at eye level on the battlefield must have had to try to maneuver his troops, or be forced to fight desperately among the corpses for quivers and new shields. I rarely feel that I am. This is the charm of Mount & Blade 2: Bannerlord, surpassing all the holes, bugs, and overwhelming strategy and role-playing mechanics you have to struggle to get here. Arriving on the battlefield makes this low-fantasy medieval simulation unparalleled.
Bannerlord drops you into the shoes of a capable and temporarily impoverished wannabe in a sandbox world based in late antiquity complete with stand-ins for a fragmented Roman Empire. , mercenaries, and warring societies with engaging scenarios, each with a unique historically-based way of fighting. By contrast, Bannerlord’s main story is very thin, but revolves around finding the remains of an ancient, iconic banner and using it to end an empire, or take the banner and bring it to pieces. Decide whether to reintegrate the territories that have been transformed.
It qualifies as a sandbox because how you rise to power is largely up to you, whether you’re lucky in business, becoming a famous mercenary, or working for one of the eight kingdoms. From there, you can either conquer the country of your choice in the name of it, or throw it out the window and start your own faction. That said, the actual kingdom management strategy is weak, with shallow mechanics and lackluster AI. It’s just an excuse to raise a big army and crush them. You do so by piloting in the strategy layer of the Overworld and then engaging in hybrid-action, real-time strategy battles in which you directly control only yourself, but can issue commands to AI-driven forces.
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That description paints a picture of a living, vibrant world where kingdoms and nobles have grand goals and overarching relationships. The world of Bannerlord is busy enough, with traders, bands of robbers, bands of warriors, and caravans of peasants scurrying between settlements like ants, but all of this actually exists because they raid their enemies. , just to loot, loot and burn. Characters from diverse settlements and even noble clans are empty relationship bars for you to earn bonuses.
If Bannerlord wasn’t riddled with simple bugs, much of its anemia would have been a forgivable luxury. Quests related to factions you don’t belong to will be triggered. Perks from leveling up, building buildings, or enacting kingdom laws are sometimes… utterly ineffective. Multiplayer is rife with network and server errors. Perhaps most prevalent are graphical glitches, which are numerous, but mostly include gaps in weapon models and a series of clippings, and a more widespread lack of attention to detail. Seriously: Empress Ragaia, one of the eight most important NPCs in the world, consistently cuts her chin out of her chainmail coif. What the heck is that?
boredom and a sword
The meat here is the battle. His massive clashes of 1,000 soldiers in the field, at least he is unmatched by the scale and level of simulation Bannerlord has attempted. The overworld map is very transparent and not a real-world simulation, but the battles at least try to stick to historically plausible outcomes, so swinging the sword often feels hopeless and real. A handful of enemies of decent skill can quickly overwhelm you, no matter how powerful you are as a single combatant. You’re not a battlefield god who cuts down dozens of enemies in one go.
On its interpersonal level, Bannerlord’s combat is fun. Chaotic and confusing at first, he soon began to understand the interplay of the four attack angles, parry, block, and weapon types. All attacks have a velocity that is measured relative to the speed of the target, subtracting or adding damage relative to it, and tracking where it hits to determine how well armored it is. Track relative weapon and shield positions, allowing you to counterattack enemies and hit nearby objects. Weapon weight, elevation, swing length, and even which part of the weapon hits the enemy all play a role. Hitting someone with an ax handle, for example, does much less damage than hitting someone on the head.
Learning all of these details and tweaking the difficulty to your liking is what makes Bannerlord combat so great. Desperately aiming attacks, picking targets, and outmaneuvering opponents is a pulse-pounding absorption that’s quite different from the more intense combat of over-the-top action games. This is most noticeable in multiplayer, where you can test your skills. For some, that’s really what the game is all about, because the fighting-game-like interaction of weapon options builds depth.
Ah, when it comes to large-scale battles with AI and other players, you throw your character’s personal skills out the window. Your quick blade might be of great use in the arena, but if you’re crushed by dozens of other close quarters combat, you won’t be able to dodge enemy attacks easily, and a wide swing of your sword will slash your allies’ spears. Attacking hilts can be as easy as catching them… directly at your opponent. A chaotic clash of shield walls, or a mixed scrum of running cavalry battles, is Bannerlord’s absolute peak.
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Playing online, Bannerlord’s Captain Mode pits two teams of six against each other, with each player commanding his own squad of soldiers. The metagame to play here is wild with Bannerlord’s powerful command and troop diversity.
Organizing and commanding soldiers is a key point. Figuring out how to use terrain, altitude, formations, etc. on many highly varied battlefields is a very good pre-battle puzzle. His 100-strong block of infantry is fine in open fields, but terrible for sieges, for example. I divided my infantry into pike formations when I breached enemy walls, with their long-range weapons while my heavily armored and shielded troops stormed intact walls via siege towers. It takes a bit of learning, but thankfully it slows down time when you show the order menu during combat (not in multiplayer, of course) and allows you to order and place your orders before enacting your plans. You will be given valuable time to consider.
Combine all of these considerations with the variety of troops to collect and maintain, and you’re almost guaranteed to find a playstyle that suits you. Heavy Germanic infantry shield wall? Knight’s Thundering Charge? Hit-and-run strength of light cavalry? All of these are viable options in Bannerlord simply because they try hard to emulate the ideas of medieval combat. Put them in the hands of other players online and you’ll curse the guy who invented the shield wall, the crossbow, or my new nemesis.
I hope the same attention to detail has been shown elsewhere, especially in the Overworld aspect of the campaign. The economics of arbitrage trading and the need to have systems of laws and privileges for factions to vote A more focused sandbox that doesn’t feel like it would help better highlight that delicious battle instead of filling each instance of outstanding cool. Under an hour of grinding to make it happen fight with
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Much like many of the NPCs’ eerie, lifeless eyes and their stark animations, the world of Bannerlord never feels alive. You can talk to people, do fetch or kill quests, play empty minigames to convince yourself of things, play tabrat, but it’s all about finding your way to the next battle Playing as a trader simulation or political strategy game is shallow, repetitive and offers little reward. NPCs have no deep motives and have a very limited pool of terrible dialogue.Even if the relationship meter says you’re best friends or bitter enemies, there’s no real weight behind it.Very text. For the base game, Bannerlord lacks interesting text.
In short, it’s good that combat is fun: everything that isn’t combat is just a touch of color in the end before you get caught in a brawl somewhere or decide to start a new war .
In that sense, Bannerlord’s closest analogy is undoubtedly space sims. In the big world you can do a lot of things, but in that world detail is traded for scale. Repetition quickly turns everything into somewhat bland nothing. And there’s a lot of repetition: advancing skills and kingdoms in Bannerlord requires a tremendous amount of grind, and the same bandit lair map to raid or NPC’s castle to recapture. The same task must be repeated until you beg for mercy. The clans have lost many times.
That’s what’s really holding you back from the very simple strategy layer. Coordinating the actions of the Braindead AI without him amassing it into one army can make other lords in the faction resent each time they amass one of his for themselves . Which is more important for your purpose.
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Even in its simplest form, there are 100 obvious things missing in this world.Can’t you send messengers to AI characters or factions to ask for things? Hasn’t anyone invented boats in this whole world? Additionally, some of the stuff out there is boring. A popular PC mod automates commercial trades, while another adds a wealth of defensive options, so you can fight off bandits in one war or recapture the same castle twice. You don’t have to spend hours on
It’s pretty much how you interact with the world, so come back to combat, which can auto-resolve when two armies collide. This is good for skipping overpowering trails, but in real combat he’s worthless for two reasons. (pretty standard consequences of taking shortcuts like this), and secondly, opting out of most of the fighting makes Bannerlord his bad version of medieval strategy games like Crusader Kings and Total War. Just make it
Without a wealth of features, the sandbox can quickly seem like a desert, and Bannerlord’s overworld becomes barren after 10 or 15 hours of play. 10 or 15 hours is less than half the time required to complete the campaign, so from 40 to him try 70 hours. Even after you’ve seen everything there is to see, you’ll still be playing it over and over again. There is very little variety to distinguish one time from the next. Whether or not you’re still having fun depends on how well you role-play and how much you enjoy fighting.
But Bannerlord has one big advantage. Play sessions can be very short. All of these bite-sized battles, epic battles, mini-games, and quests fit into his one hour of sitting which is immensely satisfying. It’s a paradox to say it’s a very long short game, but Bannerlord clears its game design hurdles admirably.
