Mount & Blade: Warband

M&B Warband is a medieval sandbox game set in the fictional land of Calradia, with its six often-warring factions. You start off by choosing your character's background which will influence starting stats (with a few extra points to add to spots of your choice), then name, appearance, and starting province. Then... well, it's up to you. There are many choices as to what to do in the world: join a faction and aid it in conquering Calradia, strike it out on your own and claim it for yourself, be a trader (finding the best prices in town, buying low and selling high elsewhere, and setting up enterprises in towns), being a nuisance and raiding towns and robbing caravans, help a claimant rise to the throne, get married for political gain (or love, hah). None of these choices are mutually exclusive; you could do all of them or none of them, your choice. Whatever you do choose, you'll most likely want to build the size and strength of your warband. The game never mechanically ends unless you want it to, so you can take your time and explore all the options. (As a side note, it's not all battling like in the screenshots, there's an overworld map and text screens and such). Then, after you've spent all the time you want in singleplayer, there's still a strong multiplayer community to go and have fun with, being a part of huge battles of all people, with different modes. You're interested, but there's something not quiiite right? The game's many mods can help with that. Diplomacy not deep enough for you? There's the aptly named Diplomacy mod. Graphics and/or gameplay aspects not nice enough for ya? Mods can fix that. Want to play a basically whole new game? There are total conversion mods. All in all, if you enjoy the only storyline being the one you make in your mind (except for a starting quest you can ignore) then you can have a great time, probably putting hundreds of hours in and never getting bored.

I originally bought this game, back when it was still in beta. I bought the 'second edition' Warband, as well, full price. I am extremely stingy with my money, considering few games worth the price most charge nowadays when fresh. This is one of the few I consider well worth the full price, let alone the ultra low price charged on GOG. The game is given major legs with the extensive mod community that has produced all manner of expansions. I have for instance been playing the mod, 'Prophesy of Pendor', virtually non-stop for the last two months. This is a game I first bought six years ago!

This is the singular greatest Medieval Sim ever made, from the Battles to marriage to building your own kingdom, its amazing. but with mods... well its five stars for a reason.

A lot of people will say that this is a fantastic single player game with so many different scenarios and creativity due to the popular mods out there. What people don't really talk about however is the amazing multi-player experience that exists through popular mods. I am a very competitive player by nature and appreciate games where skill is involved and respected. To have a game that can challenge me skill wise and on a different platform than an FPS or Fighting system was revolutionary for me. I have maybe 3 hours playing the single player mode on this but have easily spent over 5000 hours playing the C-RPG multiplayer mod for warband. Being able to build a character with certain attributes that complimented my playing style compared to the other thousand builds out there really helps create a very balanced and unique multiplayer experience. More importantly however is that you gain gold by playing which can be hused to buy hundreds of weapons and armor to truly customize your characters appearance and stats. Whether being an incredibly agile sword dancer or a big slow brute with tons of HP and Damage dealing potential, every duel in a battle server is unique. What makes this better is when you throw the clan system into play in the battle server where up to 100 vs 100 characters can fight it out create very interesting dynamics of team work or solo play with your respective guild. I'm sure I will never find a similar experience for the rest of my life in a multiplayer game. I just pray that bannerlord creates a similar system in place for players like myself that love medieval fighting in a skilled multiplayer setting.