Mount & Blade: Warband

Pretty much the best game ever. I rarely suffer from game addiction but this game lead to 3 hours sleeping in the weekends and all. To think my initial impressions watching the game on youtube seemed uninspiring, with a featureless overland map. Turns out its a game above all games. Combat is repetitive but fascinating. You can focus your main character on management and leadership skills or combat. Still unaccustomed to combat, after 3 years I am still barely able to strike anything with a sword on horseback. However the management aspect and looting is always fun. You love combat, and you love looting. Found micromanagement of my companions fun. After 6 months I started getting into multiplayer and modding. Multiplayer is fun when you see large groups with maybe 100-150 individuals on two sides or maybe smaller parties. Also there are some pretty good mods that change gameplay and are quite complete. 11/10 game.

An Elite-like medieval RPG. I'd never heard of this game until the GOG promo for the original. After playing for the weekend, I came straight back and bought Warband, for which I highly recommend the Floris Expanded mod. True, old-school open world. No requirements, no constraints. Do whatever you want. Pity about the graphics, (a bit primitive), but a great combat system and incredible fun. A wide range of mods means great replay value too. Easily get hundreds of hours out of this game.

For a long time, I didn't think much of computer games. I don't know why, but they had just always failed to capture my interest. That is, until I discovered Mount & Blade Warband. After some friends happened to show it to me a few weeks ago, I was immediately captivated by it and have remained so ever since. The combat, definitely the game's selling point, is exhilarating and highly kinetic. While the learning curve is steep, the challenge of it makes each hard-earned kill all the more rewarding. Sound effects have real oomph, be it the fleshy thwack of your blade slicing through your enemy's mail coat, the clang of steel on steel, or the clip-clop of your galloping charger's hooves. The single-player battling and kingdom-building are complex and engaging enough to hold your attention for many hours. Within the (very wide) confines of the game's mechanics, you can do whatever you want and be whoever you want. There isn't much of a plot, and most characters are paper-thin, but I still find the whole package thoroughly enjoyable. I must admit I haven't really tried my hand at the multiplayer component yet, partly because my (brief) initial experiences there were of being repeatedly trounced – newcomers be warned! The game does a good job visually. Equipment, clothing, and horses are all well designed. The settings, though a bit repetitive, are believable. Helmets and swords glisten appropriately in the sun as you ride into battle. Ultimately, it's the little things that make the game for me, such as the streaks of blood that appear when you are wounded in a fight, the extensive options for customising your appearance, and the lovely pencil/charcoal drawings on menus and loading screens, to name just a few. Such details show that the developers really care. In short, I can't recommend this game highly enough. It is the most fun I've had in a long time, with any activity. Money well spent, to be sure. Just prepare to be robbed of many (blissful) hours of your life.

I've played ridicoulous amounts of this game, so let's get that off my chest right away, but I can definitely see how someone would only want to spend a few minutes with the game before getting furious with it and uninstalling. First off, the graphics are pretty bad. This game isn't new by any stretch of the imagination. The A.I. is pretty bad to start off with but it can be turned up in the options menu which I advise everyone to do as soon as they get the game.The game also has no story or direction whatsoever but you are still herded in the same general direction if you want to advance in the game, however, the way you accomplish this is strictly up to you. Should you remain a simple mercenary and fight until you have the best gear and the most well trained troops and slowly work your way up? Should you join a faction only to put it at war with several others and then rebel and slowly eat away at the lands that you had just sworn yourself too? Possibilities are... there but nowhere near endless. However, where this game truly shines is with mods. This game is second only to the Elder Scrolls series is the amount of mods it offers and many of them change the gameplay very drastically or very minutely to the point that you can customize the game to play exactly as you want it. Just a few I recommend are: The Prophesy of Pendor, Native Expansion, Floris Expanded or Gameplay, Silverstag, Gekokoju, Diplomacy or Pre-battle Orders and Deployment (PBOD). All of these are very well rounded mods that add a lot to the gameplay and I highly recommend Native Expansion for those that like the feel of the base game but feel like it could use something extra. All of this said though, it is not a game to just jump in and play. It can be brutally hard and in some cases, nearly impossible if you choose bad beginning stats or have a large force get wiped out. All in all, it's a game I highly recommend, but only to those dedicated enough to put time and effort into it.

Really love this game, the latest patch fixed some issues and now we can play the best version on pc!