Mount & Blade: Deluxe Edition [Review]

FULL REVIEW

Mount & Blade Deluxe Edition pack contains the original Mount & Blade campaign and its expansion pack called War Band. It is highly recommended to install the War Band expansion from the outset, as it adds certain features that make the game far more accessible that the original campaign. Even though Mount & Blade has certain features that are typically associated with contemporary role-playing games—and it has been marketed as such—this game is a different brand of RPG. At its core, Mount & Blade is reminiscent of RPG of yore like Might & Magic, and more recent games like King Arthur. As one of the Lords of the land, the player has the right to lead a band of mercenaries and the right to claim power. One the whole, Mount & Blade demands strategy, more than any kind of role-playing.

Of Men and Mice

The single-player campaign in Mount & Blade starts with a character creation process that hasn’t been seen in a while. The game asks the player a series of questions pertaining to the characters gender, lineage, early life, profession and the reason for taking up adventuring. The choice of answers to these questions not only determines the characters starting stats and gear, but also has some far-reaching consequences. For instance, if you pick a noble lineage, the other Lords of the land will more readily accept you as one of their own. On the other hand, if you choose to be a female adventurer, you will find it a lot harder to find acceptance as the Lords of the game’s feudal society do not think much of women outside their own courts. 

The game has a whole bunch of character skills that affect a characters prowess both during and outside of combat. The character progression system used is the standard RPG model— a character’s current level is determined by experience points that are in turn earned by completing quests and defeating enemies. At each level players get points that they can invest in skills and core characters traits like strength, agility, intelligence, etc. 

For any character, the game starts in the role of an adventurer with no allegiance to any King. There are six factions in the game, with a King at its helm. Each of these factions has claimed a portion of the game-world as their own. Then there are three types of location on the game-map—villages, cities and castles. Villages produce raw materials that are consumed by neighbouring cities to produce and trade goods. Trade caravans brave the treacherous roads to facilitate trade between distant cities. Castles are plain and simple defensive structures that serve little purpose other than a military outpost.  

The Kings of each Kingdom have vassals working for him who —in exchange for an oath of allegiance— are allowed to manage and collect taxes from a part of the Kingdom. Laws inevitable lead to outlaws and there are plenty of those in Mount & Blade. This group targets farmers carrying goods to cities, and trade caravans. In small numbers they are little more than annoyance; however if allowed to fester, they can seriously cripple an area’s economy. 

Choose your Destiny

Once you get a firm grasp of the game’s feudal society, you can decide on your role in it. Unfortunately, it may be a while before you fully understand the game’s system, as the game does a less than admirable job of explaining itself to the player. To avoid some of the early mistakes and frustrations, it is recommended that you do a bit of research about the game’s basic rules. [I found the game’s wiki on Wikia  as a good source of such information.]

Arguably, the ultimate goal in the game is to establish to become a King and establish your own kingdom. It will be a long time before you can even consider such a thing and most typically you will start your journey towards Kingship by working as a vassal for any of faction’s King. Once you swear your allegiance to any one of the Kings, you are rewarded with a fief to manage and collect taxes from. In exchange, you will be expected to defend the king’s land and join in conquest of conquering more land. As you win more battles and land for your King you will earn honour and renown. High honour rating means that the King is likely to reward you with custody of castles and even cities. Renown determines the maximum number of mercenaries that are willing to join your cause. Successfully completing conquests increases the player’s right to rule— which means that other Kings will be more accepting when the player declares to be a King or Queen. There is a lot of gold and glory on this path; however, it is also perilous. At any given time in the game, your faction will be at war with at least one other faction. On this path, you will be constantly balancing between managing and defending your fiefs, joining other Lords in conquest and chasing away bandits from your lands. While this ensure that there is never a dull moment, things gets a bit frantic, especially when your faction is at war with multiple factions. 

Alternatively, the player can choose to remain neutral and make life as a merchant or even a marauding outlaw. Players can make money by buying goods from one location and selling in at another for a higher price. In addition, one can also invest in business in various cities and— depending on various circumstances— bank on those businesses to be a steady source of income. On the other hand, life as an outlaw is far simpler. In this case, wealth is increased by raiding villages and ambushing trade caravans. 

Leader of men

Regardless of what you career choice is, you will not survive long in the game’s tumultuous land without a band of hardy mercenaries. There are a variety of recruitment sources like villages, city taverns, and even captured or rescued prisoners. The maximum size of the party depends on the player’s renown and leadership skills. These men will depend on the player for food and at the end of each week they expect to get paid. After gaining enough experience, party members can be upgraded by spending denars. Upgrading party members not only improves their fighting skills, but also allows them to grow into specialized units that can broadly be classified into infantry, archers and cavalry. However, each time you upgrade a party member, their weekly wage also goes up to match their skills in combat. So in order to have a sizeable group of competent fighters by your side, it is imperative to find a steady source of income. 

Apart from these mostly nameless mercenaries, the player can also hire help of other fellow-adventurers. These characters level-up just like the playing character and they can play a significant role if you aspire to be a King someday. Also, some of these NPC will have skills that benefit the entire party and sometimes just this is enough to justify their weekly wages. 

Mount & Blade

Combat system is Mount & Blade is fairly simple with the left button mapped to the left mouse button and the right mouse button can be pressed to block an incoming attack. There are other factors like direction of attack; however the game can be set to handle all that automatically. 

There are two main battle types in the game—castle sieges and ground battles. The latter is an out and out battle between two opposing armies where the survivor wins the battle. 

Castle sieges are slightly complex affairs that begin with building siege towers or ladders to climb the walls of the fortress. The second phase is all about breaching the defences and defeating any and all opposition. The third and final phase is about quelling any remaining resistance in the castle or city. Winning a siege battle means that the captures city or castle is now under the control of your faction. 

Battle on open ground is pretty straightforward in essence; however exploiting factors like terrain and different unit types are key factors in successfully winning an advantage over enemies. Player can mount a horse during such battles and choose from a variety of weapons. There is a decent range of choice of horses—from Coursers that are perfect for hit and run tactics— to the heavy War-horses that are ideal for bullying the enemy infantry and breaking their morale. Choice of weapons in the game is even greater and selecting the right type of weapon for the task is crucial for success. 

Adventure never ends

I have played Mount & Blade: Warband for tens of hours now and in game time it is barely over a year. From what I have gathered so far, the game does not really end until you voluntarily decide to retire from adventuring. There are also many other distractions in the game like prize-fighting in arenas and competing in tournament. There is so much to do in the single-player mode that I haven’t yet got around to trying the multiplayer modes of the game. The game features Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Conquest, Fight and Destroy, Battle and Seige modes that supports up to 64 players.

All things considered, this double pack of Mount & Blade packs in a lot of value with seemingly endless hours of game-play. This in itself is striking during a time when even and RPG can get away with no more than 10 hours of game-play. The game is far from flawless and as a matter of fact there are quite a few obvious issues with the game. Dialogue and questing system are very basic and highly repetitive. The overall production value is pretty low and the combat animation is chunky and borderline humorous. It is also less than easily to locate information in and about the game using some of the in-built help feature. Fortunately, Mount & Blade has a surprisingly active community that has not only done a brilliant job at compiling the game mechanics, but also developed mods that address some of the game’s issues.

Due to its shortcoming, Mount & Blade is almost guaranteed to be unappealing at first glance. However, given enough time, there is game underneath the grime that is fun and highly addictive.

Rating: 7.5/10 

Details 

Genre: Strategy, Action Role Playing Game

Studio: TaleWorlds

Publisher: Paradox Interactive

Platforms:   Microsoft Windows

Price: Rs. 999