Mount & Blade Warband review: a sandbox wet dream

Nowadays most media coverage is focused on console games and titles released by big name publishers. It's not surprising, then, that many gamers completely missed the release of a PC game published by a small independent Turkish developer: Mount & Blade: Warband.

It was back in 2001 when Armağan Yavuz and his wife started to work on the original Mount & Blade in their own garage. During the following nine years the game has grown into a niche with an extremely dedicated fanbase, not to mention a very creative modding community.
The studio (Taleworlds Interactive) grew as well, while still remaining pretty compact, and the help of an actual publisher, the small but very productive wargame publisher Paradox Interactive improved the production values, leading to the release of Mount & Blade: Warband at the end of march, this year.

Mount & Blade: Warband is a mix between a RPG and a strategy game, but is also unique in many ways, so it's not easy to make it fit comfortably in a single category.

The game is set in an alternative continent named Calradia, but that's as far as the "fantasy" goes. This is the first thing that makes it unique. There is no magic, no enchanted swords, no elves, no monsters and no orcs. The setting is a gritty and realistic middle age where the only form of power lies in steel, gold and the relationship with the nobles of the land.

The continent is populated and ruled by six realms: The chivalric Swadia, the norse-like Kingdom of the Nords, the Slavic-inspired Vaegirs, the mountain-dwelling Rhodoks, the mongol-like Kergit Khanate and the rich Sarranid Sultanate, that resembles an Arabic realm. Each of those powerful factions has it's own culture, architecture, rulers and it's unique troops, creating a rich and varied universe to play in.

The story is absolutely essential, if not non-existent. You're a random dude (or dudette), and you have to make ends meet in this world. Besides a very compact initial quests that will teach you the basics, you're on your own. This is what I meant in the title: Mount & Blade Warband is basically the wet dream of every sandbox fan.
There's no overall storyline to bind you. You can be a trader, a bandit, a mercenary, a tournament champion, become a vassal for one of the realms or create your own. You can decide that you don't like one of the rulers and lead a rebellion to put a different claimant on the throne. You create and shape your own legend according to your taste and without any restriction.

Whatever role you chose, you're still not bound to it. Tired of being the vassal of a king? You can renounce your oath (and any fiefs you've been assigned, of course), and swear allegiance to another faction. The claimant you put on the throne is no more of your liking? You can rebel and create your own empire, starting a quest to conquer and unify all of Calradia.
Trading is getting boring? You can start hunting other caravans to rob them of all their goods, or travel from city to city looking for quests and missions to earn money and glory.
You can even fit multiple roles at the same time, playing as a mighty general in time of war, and as a caravan master when there's peace, or a myriad of other combination's.

The world itself is living and breathing dynamically around you. Every faction has, besides it's king, twenty feudal lords with their own personality and quirks. Some are honorable and will remain faithful to their king unless the situation is really dire, some others will switch faction according to the balance of power several times during the game. Some will even join you as your vassals if you manage to become king yourself.
All of them will move in the world according to their own interests and missions, fighting in wars and tournaments, courting ladies, administering their lands, and interacting with you on several levels.

There are also several ladies, wives, daughters and sisters to the lords, that normally do what noble ladies did in the middle ages. They attend feasts, act as gossip hubs, and can be courted for love or politics. All of the characters are related by a quite complex family system, that will play quite the role in the game. You can marry a lady to enter the good graces of the lords she's related to, or have to persuade in several ways a particularly stubborn lord if you want to marry his daughter that you happen to like more than the rest.

Obviously, if your character is a female, she can court (or be courted) and marry one of the lords themselves. This is only one of the differences that characterize the game as a female Warband leader. It's the middle ages, and women aren't exactly treated as equal, so the game is openly more challenging if played as a lady.
While this might for sure stir some feminist hearts out there, it's quite realistic, and the disadvantage isn't so overwhelming to make it frustrating or less fun. On the other hand, managing to raise to power despite the difficulties of being born with boobs tends to be quite rewarding.

The political game is actually frighteningly complex, especially considering the sheer number of actors in play. Kingdoms will go to war with each other according to or independently from your actions, will gain and lose territory, and the newly acquired fiefs will be given to one of the lords or to you, if you managed to earn the respect of your king and your peers.
When you're a king yourself you'll have to weigh the relations between the lords under your rule carefully. Assigning a fief to the wrong lord can upset the others, while giving it to the right one can increase the respect you receive from your subjects considerably. Often there won't the a "right" or a "wrong" choice, but you'll have to tread carefully to keep a balance between your vassals, making sure that the ones you upset with a decision will be happy about the next, without starting to harbor desires of rebellion.

The same can be said about the world's economy, that is completely dynamic and governed by supply and demand. Caravans will move from city to city and will dynamically alter available goods and prices, making thriving as a trader quite a challenging and interesting enterprise.

What I'm referring to as "fiefs" are basically the hundreds of cities, castles and villages scattered on the continent of Calradia, and that act as quest hubs, military bases and markets. Every single one will have it's own peculiar look and it's permanent inhabitants. No village or city in Calradia looks the same as the others, and the same goes for all castles. This is obviously quite important even during sieges, as every castle and city has a different setup for walls, towers and access points. Each siege has it's unique tactical quirks that a good general will have to learn and exploit.

The heart and soul of Mount & Blade Warband is, obviously, your Warband itself, that will evolve from a ragtag mercenary company to a full fledged army counting hundreds of individual soldiers. In the most advanced stage of my latest play through I had about 220 soldiers under my direct command, without counting the garrisons of my fiefs and the troops under my vassals.

Your own character is the center of your army. He will progress in the usual RPG way, with levels and skills, becoming more and more powerful. You will be able to buy new pieces of armor, weapons and warhorses that will raise your combat effectiveness. Obviously you will also be able to fully customize his appearance with a complex slider system that loosely reminds that of Oblivion.
There are no classes in M&B Warband, and while a few decisions on your character background will have a marginal impact on your initial skills and stats, you will be completely free to chose the way you want to skill up. You might decide to invest everything you can in strength, agility and combat skills in order to create a powerful hero able to cut a bloody path in the middle of an enemy army, or to shape him as a great leader that will be able to field more soldiers at the same time, or an archer that can stand back and chose his targets by killing just the most powerful enemy commanders and units. The possibilities and combination's are near endless.

Besides you, the most important part of your warband are your heroes. There are sixteen of them scattered around Calradia, and you can recruit some or all of them. Each of them has his or her own unique looks, personality and story and they progress in the same way as your character. You can freely give each of them a role, thanks to the "party skills" system. Basically some of the skills like tactics, surgery and quite a few others can be delegated to your heroes, letting you invest on other skills. This will turn them into specialists that will benefit the whole party, for instance by healing your men faster after a battle, or saving some from death, turning a mortal wound in one that will just require some rest, or again lowering the prices in marketplaces and so forth.
Of course your heroes can also grow into powerful warriors in their own right, forming the elite of your army.

Again, relationships play an important role, and your heroes will interact with each other, often with conflicting personalities that will force you to juggle between them to avoid them leaving your party, or to wait until your leadership is high enough to keep them in check. If you like looting villages and slaughtering peasants, maybe it's better not to hire the most soft-hearted ones.
For sure keeping your party united and effective is a quite challenging work of balance in itself.

The lowest level of your warband are your rank and file troops. You can travel from village to village recruiting volunteers, that will provide cheap but low level infantry, or you can visit taverns, where you will be able to hire costly but higher level mercenaries.
You can pretty much hire every single unit in the game, independently from your affiliation (or lack of thereof), to create the army you like the most. You can even recruit, for instance, the peasant women that you rescued for some bandits (or the bandits themselves). Initially they will be weak, but will ultimately evolve into powerful female knights.
Every basic troop can level up, turning into a more advanced version with better equipment, and eventually specializing in areas like archery, heavy infantry or cavalry.

While this isn't the only game that allows you to lead a large army (most RTS games do) , M&B Warband is unique in the fact that you lead your army from the ground level, and every soldier (friend or foe) has an unique face and combination of armor/weapon, making them recognizable on the field. You don't see them as "units" but as individuals, with a quite impressive visual result. The engine that "creates" the soldiers is actually very advanced and it saves them between battles.
If one of your soldiers has a certain combination of equipment, a beard and a big mustache, he will retain those features until he dies or he levels up. When he levels up and evolves into a more advanced class, he'll still retain his facial features, while his equipment will change to reflect his new status.
You will lead an army of individuals as an individual yourself, which adds a lot to the immersiveness of the game. That's something that no strategy game, and ultimately no other title can offer. The fact that every soldier of your army will carry your chosen emblem on his shield (emblem that you can easily replace with a self-drawn one with a bit of Photoshop skill) makes your army feel even more unique and "yours".

While exploring the continent of Calradia, you will move your character on a 3D world map, in real time. Time, though, will only progress when you're actually moving, so while you're stationary the game will automatically be paused in order to let you consider your next moves. Whenever you enter a city, town or castle, the game will change to a full 3D third person view (you can also switch to first person) with only your character, allowing you to explore the settlements and interact with the NPCs, accepting quests and so forth.

Whenever you encounter an enemy army/warband (whether it's an enemy lord with his retinue or a band of outlaws) the game will generate a randomized map based on the features you were traveling into, including mountains forests, hills and rivers, and the battle will begin. Again, the visual will be in full 3D, with the ability to switch dynamically between first and third person view. You can set the number of troops included in each battle in the game's options, in order to best fit the processing and graphical power of your PC. While the game allows natively for up 150 soldiers on a single battlefield (which is already quite a lot), there are third party tools to easily change that to up to 1000. Personally I run with 400 with no big slowdowns on an average machine, which makes for extremely entertaining and massive battles.

The combat might remind Oblivion at first sight, but it's actually much more complex and fun. Combining the direction of the movement of your mouse with the pressure of the left button will allow you to strike in four different directions. Left strike/slash, right strike, overhead strike and thrust (only with weapons that actually allow thrusting, it'd be nonsensical to thrust with an axe for instance). Right clicking will instead block with the shield. When you're not using a shield, you'll have to manually chose the direction of your block, moving the mouse in the same direction from which the strike is coming. But this is not all: physical interaction between weapons and shields is fully simulated, so striking and blocking is not limited to the above mechanics. It's possible to block an enemy weapon with timing and skill, by striking it with your own as you prepare your own slash. The shield also offers passive protection, so if an enemy hits your shield, the blow will be bounce off regardless if you're actively trying to block or not.
This means that a shield carried on your shoulders will protect your back even if you're not using it.

Shields come in different sizes. Obviously a bigger shield offers a larger area of protection, but will also be slower to use.
While using a shield is the easiest way to defend against enemy blows, it prevents you from using two handed weapons. In addition to that, blocking too many blows (especially from axes) will cause your shield to break, becoming unusable and forcing you to block manually with your weapon if you want to survive.

Different weapons also have a different reach. With a longer weapons you can hit opponents farther away, but you will be disadvantaged if they manage to close in on you. Your weapon will in fact hit for it's full damage only near to it's maximum reach, inflicting less and less damage the nearer your opponent is. If an enemy is too near it's entirely possible that a long weapon won't inflict any damage at all, since you lack the room to actually swing it against him, adding a further tactical level to the combat system, as you have to chose the weapon with the right reach to fit your personal fighting style and the situation.
For instance, during a siege it's better to wield a short axe than a longsword, especially if you plan to be on the forefront of an attack, because you will find yourself pressed closely against the enemy, unable to swing a longer weapon.

Add to this a quite realistic ranged weapon system that includes several kinds of bows, crossbows and thrown weapons (darts, axes and javelins), the ability to perform feints and to kick your opponent, and there's no doubt that Mount & Blade features the most extensive, realistic, complex and eventually rewarding weapon-based melee combat system I've ever seen in a video game.
Seeing a duel between two master swordsmen in Mount & Blade is an impressive show. You can get a more effective taste of the basics of the M&B warbaband combat system by watching this video on youtube by Reapy.

From a game named "Mount & Blade" you can obviously expect a complex and satisfying mounted combat system. While riding an horse you can access all the moves described above, and you can also deliver the most devastating attack available in the game, the couched lance.
As you ride on fairly level ground you will gain speed, and if you have a lance you will be able to couch it under your arm, in order to steady it for an attack in a straight line. Anyone hit by such an attack will be instantly killed.
Obviously this kind of attacks is quite situational, given that it requires level terrain, a lot of space and good timing. It also requires the physical conditions for it to work. If your target is on horseback and moving fast away from you, your couched lance will inflict much less damage or none at all, since the strength of such an attack is entirely based on the difference in speed between lancer and target.

When facing mounted enemies you can also chose to realistically kill the horse (which is a bigger and easier target), and then deal with the unhorsed opponent later, or let your soldiers deal with him. We can only hope that the virtual animal-huggers at PETA won't ever take notice of Mount & Blade: Warband, because it's sure as death and taxes that a game in which killing horses is not only allowed, but actually advisable and rewarded would cause them to get their panties all bunched up. Aiming for the horses has been a real military tactic since when mounted combat was conceived in ancient times up to world war 2, so I guess rising a big stink about it would only show a big degree of silliness, but would anyone be surprised if that actually happened?

If you thought that playing FPS shooters was challenging, forcing you to execute precise and well timed movements in order to hit your targets, you might want to think again. The challenge given by simply aiming and firing a rifle is nothing compared to the complex "art" of sword fighting implemented in Mount & Blade: Warband. Let's not even talk when you're riding an horse and you're trying to effectively hit someone that's riding one as well.

Don't worry, though, while the system is definitely challenging to master, the game provides some aids in order to lower the level of difficulty for the ones that prefer a more relaxed gameplay. The system in itself, moreover, is quite intuitive, pretty much natural to execute once you learn the basics, making for an extremely enjoyable and rewarding experience.

Being thrown into a Mount & Blade: Warband field battle is something no other game prepared you to. FPS/TPS games and Oblivion-like RPGs have a much smaller scope, and are normally much more "Orderly". A field battle is something entirely different. You are in the middle of hundreds of warriors hacking at each other, with arrows flying around you from every direction, with only your shield and your situational awareness separating you from certain death.

On top of it you have to give orders to your troops, preventing them from dispersing on the battlefield while running after routed enemies, and generally keeping a tight grip on the situation. It's messy, as a medieval battle should be, but also extremely fun and exhilarating.

Sieges are even more chaotic. As an attacker you'll have to climb a narrow ladder towards a breach in the wall, or use a siege tower in order to reach the defenders, with clouds of arrows slamming against your shield and a porcupine of spears and blades aimed to your face from above. It's quite intimidating at first, and sometimes you'll find yourself quite surprised at the fact your survived (if you did survive, obviously, thing that's definitely not granted). As a defender you'll have to valiantly stand on the breach, hacking away at the seemingly endless waves of enemies trying to overwhelm you and your soldiers, for an equally intimidating experience of virtual carnage.

Of course you can also chose a more laid back approach, standing back with a ranged weapon picking out enemies from afar, while your soldiers bear the brunt of the melee. But that tends to cause more losses, given that your soldiers will normally be less armored and resilient than you.

Ultimately, battles in M&B Warband are between the most exhilarating and epic experiences I ever played on a video game. While RTS games like the Total War series did simulate engagements of massive proportions, you always find yourself quite detached from the scene. In M&B Warband you're there on the field, at the head of your troops and surrounded by the enemy. You're not just a deus ex machina moving nameless units, and this contributes enormously to the sensation of immersion.

As you ride at the head of several tens of knights towards a wall of pikes you'll feel like Theoden in The Return of the King. Standing in the middle of the breach fending off hundreds of attackers in a sea of blood (and there's quite a lot of blood in the game. As the killing progresses, your weapons and armor will progressively be painted red) will make you feel like Balian defending Jerusalem in the finale of Kingdom of Heaven. It's not easy to describe it with words, as a simple write-up will always be underwhelming compared to the actual experience.

There are also smaller engagements, as you may be ambushed by bandits as you enter a city, or maybe you will disguise as a staff-wielding beggar to infiltrate an enemy castle and release a prisoner (Robin Hood definitely inspired this one).

There are also tournaments and jousts to partake in. Every city you can visit has it's own unique style of tournament, with different sets of weapons and rules. Sometimes you will be pitched in a battle royale against several opponents, sometimes you will have to fight in team-based engagements, other times you might find yourself in one on one duels with horse and lance.
Given the smaller scope of tournaments compared to bigger battles, and to the fact that you'll have to fight with different weapons, they tend to be quite fun, and a good way to add further variation to and already extremely rich gameplay.

One of the most fun elements is that your companions will join tournaments as well, and you'll often find yourself fighting against them. Nobles and kings of the realm in which the tournament is held will also often join, allowing you to beat the crap out of that annoying lord that really doesn't want to let you marry his daughter.

As you grow in power as a vassal of a king you will eventually receive towns, cities or castle to administer, giving you sources of revenue to maintain bigger armies, and getting you more deeply involved in the political game. Seeing your banner flying from the wall of a major city is definitely a quite empowering sensation that will make you feel like you're actually gaining more influence on the world of Calradia.

Eventually you might end up creating your own kingdom, and that's when the political game will hit you in all it's complexity. You'll find yourself approaching the various lords in order to gain their support and their armies to your cause, sending your heroes as emissaries to the other kings to offer truces and ask for their acceptance as a fellow ruler.
Whether you'll play the imperialistic ruler focused on expanding your borders at the expense of the others, or the conservative king that will try to keep a good relationship with his neighbors (or a mix of the two) is your choice, and it's a very fun and interesting one, bringing a whole new level of strategy to an already rich game.

The game's graphics are a bit hit and miss. It's pretty obvious that some textures (especially for the lowest tier troops, even if the upcoming patch is going to replace many of those with new ones) have been ported directly from the original Mount & Blade, and their quality definitely isn't top notch, also some of the animations are a bit clumsy. That's more or less what you would expect from an independent developer with an art team that counts only four people. Considering that, as you can see from the pictures included in this review and from this extensive flickr gallery, the visuals of the game definitely perform more than decently, especially considering that the engine needs to show hundreds of soldiers (and their horses) of the screen without causing a meltdown in your video card.

That said, the game really shines in some details, like the modelling of castles and villages, that aren't just beautiful to see, but also show the level of research done by Taleworlds to create their living and breathing medieval world.

Their attention to detail shows in the little things. Something that always bothers me, for instance, is that in most fantasy/medieval games, when not used shields seem to be randomly glued to a warrior's back, often badly placed because the model is not exactly designed to be placed there (Dragon Age Origins is a good example of this). In Mount & Blade Warband shields have a cord that goes around a warrior's chest to hold them in place.
Small details like this are scattered everywhere in the game, and show that a small developer with limited resources can often put more attention in designing their games, than bigger ones with budgets many times larger.

This said, again, while the polygon count had to be necessarily kept down, and some sub-par textures can easily be spotted on some soldiers, large battles are quite the spectacular sight.

The soundtrack is more or less what you would expect from a game like this. You definitely won’t hear the Berlin Philharmonic, but the music tracks do a pretty good job at underlining the middle ages atmosphere. They tend to become a bit repetitive after a while, but that's mostly due to the game's incredible longevity. Even the best soundtrack of the world would become boring after 200 hours of gameplay.

Combat sounds work pretty well. I found the clashing between swords especially pleasing to hear, alongside the impact of arrows and bolts on your shield.
Combined with the spot-on animation that accompanies it, you'll often find yourself sinking your head between your shoulders during sieges, while tens of arrows are flying your way and battering on your shield.

There's also a lot of shouting, quite realistically. Maybe even a little too much, and during the most crowded battle scenes and sieges you'll very possibly find yourself toning the volume down to avoid waking up your neighbors.

Unfortunately there's no speech besides a few taunts when you encounter some bandits. All dialogue is displayed the old fashioned way, with good old text that you'll have to read. Again, this is unfortunately the toll you have to pay with low-budget independent projects like this one. It doesn't really bother old gamers like me, but younger ones used to the fully voiced script of newer games might find themselves a little disoriented.

One of the biggest selling points of Mount & Blade: Warband is it's longevity. Going from the very start of the game to the complete conquest of the world can easily last you 150-200 hours, and the re-playability value is extremely high. There are so many things to do that you'll probably find yourself creating several characters, allying with different factions, making different choices and so forth. I don't think it's far-fetched to say that M&B: Warband has the potential to grant the player thousands of hours of entertainment, and I mean just with single player dynamic campaign.

On top of that M&B: Warband has two elements that increase it's replayability even further: Mods and multiplayer.

Most of the game is stored in "modules", that include most of the parameters, the graphics, and the elements that you see when you play. This makes modding and tweaking the game quite easy, and generated a very active and creative modding community. The original Mount & Blade, based on the same structure, already has hundreds of mods that completely change the game and it's settings, letting you range from World War 2 to the Napoleonic Wars or fantasy settings. That modding community is gradually moving to Warband, and there are already quite a few very interesting modules out there, with many more in the works.

Multiplayer is a new element in Warband, and allows you to play in several game modes that range from team battles to sieges against human players. The servers vary in size, and the biggest ones have room for up to two hundreds players, letting you experience the thrill of extremely big battles even in a multiplayer environment.
There even are "user created" multiplayer events like formation battles, in which players fight in massive organized battles that tend to be extremely fun and quite realistic.

That said, one of the biggest selling points of M&B: Warband's multiplayer is the combat system. Given how much skill and strategy are involved in the complex system of attacks and blocks, dueling against other human players tends to be an extremely thrilling and exhilarating experience, that no shooter game can really offer. As I said before seeing two skilled players trade blows in this game is a quite unique experience in the field of gaming.

Add this to the longevity of the single player mode, and you'll find yourself spending less than 30 dollars for a game that can easily keep you hooked for a few years.

Unfortunately a few flaws can be found in the game's presentation and UI.
The text scroll during battles is definitely oversized, with the "killspam" messages often overtaking a sizable part of the screen and looking extremely clumsy. Luckily this can be modded, and the problem is easily solved by reducing the size of the font.
Still, I'm quite surprised that the developer didn't put an option in the game itself to change this, because the default font seriously looks quite bad. You can easily see the difference by looking at my flickr gallery, where the earlier pictures have the default font, while the ones coming after them have the modded font. It's an easy mod to apply, but that's something we shouldn't need to mod, really.
Friendly troops are normally differentiated from the enemy by an icon over their head displaying your banner (or the banner of their lord, in the case of joint battles). This is quite an immersion killer, and an experienced player will learn to distinguish his troops without external help. Luckily this can be completely deactivated in the options menu, but I can't help but think that there could be better ways to distinguish friendly troops without recurring to such an invasive method.

A last quite glaring flaw is hidden in the random map generator, that works well as long as you're fighting on a plain or on rolling hills. The problem becomes apparent when you chose a mountain area as the stage of your battles. The difference of elevation between the peaks of the mountains and the lowest areas tend to be too extreme, creating overly rough terrain with extremely steep slopes that have little to do with realism and tend to ruin the fun of the battle. Think the uncharted planets of the first Mass Effect on steroids and you'll have an idea of what I mean. Cruising on those with the Mako was a pain, and crossing the mountainous areas of Mount & Blade: Warband on horseback is equally a pain.
Obviously the problem can be avoided by avoiding such areas, but sometimes it isn't possible, turning the subsequent battle in a chore.

Mount & Blade: Warband is not a perfect game, as it often suffers from the low budget and the undersized development team, but it's still a completely unique experience, something that you can find nowhere else in the gaming market. It also offers more gameplay than most games out there, even and especially those high-budget games that get most of the media attention.
If you're tired of elves, magic and orcs, if you like the middle ages, if you love sandbox games, if you're looking for the most entertaining and challenging melee combat system in gaming, or for some of the most epic battles to ever grace a computer screen, then you owe it to yourself to give Mount & Blade: Warband a try.
The easiest way to get it is on steam. Seriously, it's worth every penny.