Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

And still they manage to rush-release it. This game is unfinished, they gave up. Get the classic M&B Warband instead, if you do not have it already. It, at least, is a complete game for the fraction of the price of Bannerlord, and it has a wealth of cool mods available for it as well.

Quests and sieges can get repetitive but it's still a brilliant game with many hours of fun.

needs More content otherwise great game. Needs Spyinging Trade routes etc. But this wont be coming. maybe in the next game. Make it smaller and more like shadow of war more mainstream without losing the big battles essence. I dunno I want the franchise to grow.

I love the typical M&B gameplay and openness, much more if we add the infinite modding possibilities for this series, but there are some reasons to criticize vanilla Bannerlord and even more, sadly, GOG or any other alternative non-Steam version. I moved almost entirely to gaming through GOG as main platform, but this is an incomplete, inferior version of Bannerlord. Firstly, focusing on vanilla experience, Bannerlord is a mediocre M&B at best, even more considering its long development. Action combat was minimally improved and obviously the change was even bigger graphically, but on the other hand Bannerlord was simplified in all other contexts with worse rpg mechanics and social interactions in general than Warband: Minimal individual npc personality and relations, clans replacing individual lords as main social focus, far less dialogue options, less diverse quests, even more generic companions than older games, no feasts, worse implementation of skill system, no camping and resting outside (and consequently also lacking related surprise attacks) etc. The game gameplay feels less diverse, less unique than older games which says a lot considering how basic were older games in those contexts. If that's enough to grant a 3/5 score to the game despite still being a "fun enough" game in vanilla, GOG-Bannerlord or any non-steam version are even worse in regard modding: Players have only access to a single updated version of the game, breaking hundreds of old mods and what is even worse there is not support for official modding creation tools outside Steam (+ lack of support for alternative unofficial tools mostly working on older versions of the game). I asked for a refund the game and I lost a lot of respect for TaleWorlds.

they should add more mechanics but overall good game