7/10

Overview

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is the fifth game in the Mount & Blade series published by TaleWorlds Entertainment and co-published by Prime Matter. Taking place 210 years before Mount & Blade: Warband on the continent of Calradia. The Mount & Blade series is know for its brutal, realistic, dark medieval warfare.

Bannerlord is both a single/multi-player strategy/action role-playing game that very much fits as a sandbox simulator. The player can choose what they want to do at any time rather then being stuck to any single path. With 8 different factions to choose from, each with their own unique historical combat styles you are sure to love one of them.

How to play Bannerlord?

Do you want to travel town to town making your living as a peaceful trader with caravans? Become a blacksmith? Maybe you’d like to swear your allegiance to a currently ruling kingdom and wage war on their enemies or just forget it all and start your own kingdom striving to conquer all of Calradia. Any type of play style is allowed here in the world of Calradia.

Bannerlord is split into two different distinct sections. One being the first/third person Combat and the other being the top down view of the overworld map for world movement and management of your fiefs and armies.

Combat Breakdown

Bannerlord does not let down when it comes to the combat. Improving on its last title Warband, the combat has not changed much, but some simple improvements to the character animations, terrain generator, and siege mechanics. It has everything you could want from a medieval warfare simulator. The player controls their own character with complete freedom. With being able to render up to a thousand men at once the battles can get pretty chaotic. You can slay a enemy off their horse just to mount it yourself and continue on in battle or you can just stand on a hill shooting arrows down at your opponents as they climb up to try to topple your army.

There are 4 different directions to attack and defend from. You can swing from the left, overhead,right ,or you can thrust depending on your weapon type. You do not even need a shield to defend yourself. You can parry a attack without taking damage if you time your block in the direction the opponent is attacking from. Your weapon damage is also determined by several factors. The weapons themselves have static damage depending on if it was a swing or thrust. Other factors that affect damage is the speed of your player , the armor the enemy is wearing, the location of hit on the body and what part of your weapon hits. If the blade of your axe hits a enemy it will do more damage then if the top of the axe hits. Every weapon and armor also has weight that affects your players movement speed.

You can also give several commands to your troops while on the battlefield to lead to more tactical battles. Command your archers to sit on the hill firing down at all that approach while commanding your infantry to hold a shield wall at the bottom of the hill preventing any foot soldiers from getting to your back lane, or order your calvary to follow you as you conduct hit and run skirmishes to thin out your opponents army.

Overworld map

The overworld map is where your probably spend the majority of your time while playing Bannerlord. On this screen you can manage your troops,your player stats,quests, your inventory, your kingdom, and call other lords of your kingdom to you to form a army.

The overworld map is also how you move around the world map. Time only moves when your party is moving or doing a activity like helping to train peasants for villages unless your waiting in place or holding the space key on the keyboard. While at the overworld map by simply clicking some where on screen your character’s party will start moving towards that location on the map. A new improvement that Warband did not have that is in Bannerlord is the fact you can increase the speed of passing time by two times by clicking the double arrows near the bottom of the screen. (note everything will move at two times the normal pace)

As you travel around Calradia you can recruit troops from villages or cities and as you experience combat you can upgrade your troops into stronger more durable men which will be needed to go up against other lords

One quality of life improvement I would like to highlight is the fact the path-finding skill has been removed. There are some party speed increase perks you can get under the scouting skill but the majority of your overworld party speed is based on how many calvary you have in your army, how many foot soldiers without horses are in your army, the quality of the spare horses in your inventory, and your weight capacity which can be increased either through perks or having donkeys, horses, or camels in your inventory.

Management

With Bannerlord being basically a simulator you have a decent amount of stuff to manage throughout the game. From loot and gear filling up your inventory, to building improvements on your fiefs. Troops need to be feed, daily wages need to be paid. You can upgrade your troops and gear out and command companions. You can even get married or accept marriage proposals to members of your clan.

Relations is a important mechanic within Bannerlord. As you travel around Calradia completing tasks for villages or lords your relations with each specific person will increase but if you fail to complete a task or you attack another party your relations will decrease making them less likely of you convincing them doing something you ask for, such as trying to convert the lord to your faction or simply affecting your courting attempts.

The Flaws

As of right now I have over 900 hours played on Bannerlord. I bought it the day it was released for beta knowing I would love it due to playing warband alot. Despite that I think overall Bannerlord is a very amazing game. It does have some very big flaws that just can’t be overlooked.

One of the first things you may notice is the fact the AI tactics could really use some improvements still. While dramatically improved from Warbands AI its still has downfalls. Most of the time I can simply sit back with a army of archers and pick off the calvary as they approach first. Then move up towards their infantry and leave my archers a bit away to not draw aggression, just to ride by myself to the otherside of the enemies army. Doing this makes the enemies army all turn around and face me ignoring the army of archers firing behind them.

Bannerlord is just simply riddled with bugs. While alot of bugs have been patched since Bannerlords beta it still has plenty. From some visual clippings, to big ones like I have personally come across while playing. Sometimes the ruling lords of the faction you are sworn to will simply come over to a fief you are siegeing and take over the siege. Then nothing happens. The siege button greys out and and the army will just sit there until they either run out of cohesion or the player leaves the siege.

It gets worse through. At one point I was inside of a castle that I had just seiged and taken back. The enemys army was right behind me when I took the town. So I wait there in the castle and the enemy seieged the castle I was in. After a few in game hours went by I decided to break out of the castle. When I did this I thought I’d lose the castle shortly after considering I was the only defense in the castle. I traveled all the way to the other side of Calradia to check on another town. When I got there I relasized I still had not lost the castle and it was still being seiged. The enemies army stayed there just seigeing the castle until I made peace with their kingdom. I also found you can save and reload and it also fixes this bug. Kind of game breaking through if I can just take their fiefs while they are stuck seigeing a castle.

Another downfall of Bannerlord is that you will find yourself mostly all the time calling all the lords you can to your army to wage war against other kingdoms due to the fact the AI will normally just attack whatever is closest rather then having any strategies.

Conclusion

Overall I am very happy with my purchase of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. I have gotten many hours of game play out of it. The game has been on the steam store since march 27th,2020. It official released on Xbox, Playstation,and Microsoft Windows as of October 25th,2022. Today is September 20th,2023, almost one year after the offical release. The game has seen many changes and improvements over that time. I hope to see many of the issues that currently plaque the game fixed in the near future.

If your a enjoyer of the medieval period or semi-deep tactical rpgs there are few games that capture the feeling quite like Bannerlord. Some people may just find the sandbox aspect of the game the most appealing aspect.

Note –

Bannerlord has both single player and multi-player. The article mainly address the single player aspects of this game.