I've definitely had my money's worth with more than 170 hours invested into various playthroughs. Bottom line: Should you play Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord?ĭo I believe you should give Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord a try? If you're a fan of this type of game, absolutely.
We've looked at some of the best Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord mods and I'm expecting many more to come. The incredibly talented community has already worked on some tweaks and fixes to the gameplay, as well as complete overhaul packages that transform Calradia into the Roman Empire.
That's before the extensive modding tools have been released by TaleWorlds, which is even more incredible. There are so many mods available that the game is currently sat as the 13th most modded game on Nexus Mods. More than 2,000 mods have already been released for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, which is already more than Warband.
Speaking of which, the modding community is already out in full force. And that's really Bannerlord in a nutshell - there is a great foundation, but little substance. Your people will never ask anything of you, nor will you need to visit them unless at war for defense. Managing your settlements and castles is a quick endeavor it takes a few seconds to select something to construct, but there are few additional gameplay mechanics on top of that. There's no real reason to stay in your own fief. Sure, you need to recruit new troops to replenish your party numbers, but aside from that, it's a case of running around between settlements.
There's still plenty of planned Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord features for developer TaleWorlds Entertainment to crack on with, too.īut compared to Warband, here's what we're missing in Bannerlord right now:įeasting is a big one since there's not a whole lot to do during peacetime. Hopefully, the banner creation system will be overhauled too. Rebellions can now occur where cities or factions can revolt against their ruler.Īdditional functionality is planned to expand on the basic feature set, including education for children, more advanced battle terrain generation, as well as actual banners you and your troops can take into battle. Conversations now happen in a more efficient way where the entire scene surrounding a character doesn't need to be loaded. However, we've seen the addition of a birth and death system, allowing actual named characters to die in battle (or from other causes) much like the thousands of unnamed troops that fall on a daily basis. Bannerlord improves on its predecessor technically, but it's difficult to actually point out major features that are unique. For one, there's not much new here compared to Warband. The to-do list was (and still is) extensive. TaleWorlds had to focus on making the game playable before tackling anything else.Ĭompared to Warband, there's not really much new. We documented some of the more serious issues early on, and a large portion of them have since been addressed. Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord launched in a terrible state with more technical problems than one could keep up with.