Mount & Blade: Warband

This game is good on its own, but it can be turned greate by mods. Modding sceen is amazing. You can sink a hundreds of hours into this game.

Bottom Line: Recommended ONLY to those who already have knowledge of M&B’s distinctive combat mechanics. Wasted hours of my life trying not to hate this game because people **** rave so much about it. What no one mentions is the combat is **** ludicrous. You fight with your mouse and move with your direction keys. If you just said “Wait, what?” Yes. That is exactly the experience. Then even if you get into a little rhythm of sway-click-sway-click sway or you decide **** it and opt for always punch in the direction you are fighting you still have to reckon with your character’s slow reaction time. No amount of clicking will result in a swing at the opponent until your character has had a chance to rest a bit while holding the weapon dramatically. Oh, and the camera is always moving. Not crazy about first person games? Not sure you like third person camera angle? Well here is the worst of all possible worlds. You cannot zoom out to a respectable view and have the camera stay there. Oh no. That would be much too simple and not at all realistic. Much better to regularly back right the **** off camera so you can be pummeled into unconsciousness but retain your dignity. Everyone knows the great duels of the middle ages always began with “Mountest thee upon thine ball of the beach and face me! Let us roll into combat and glor-whooa!” Seriously. What the ****? I will say I was pleasantly surprised by the respectable character creation options. The opportunity to play “my character” in a new universe is the only reason I kept trying to like the game. It's possible players who would like to experience an old-timey action/strategy goal-playing-game in a familiar setting but with different combat mechanics may find M&B to their taste.

I purchased this game solely for the online experience. I really did not care about the sinlge player, so this review does not conisder that element of the game. I cannot play a match for more than five minutes before being kicked. Half the servers outright say I'm banned. This started literally the day I got game. It never worked right for me. Apparently I'm not the only one with this issue, as the forum here on GOG shows that several other people have this issue as well. No one knows what to do. Supposedly it's a GOG thing, and the Steam versions work fine, I've gathered from a Reddit post. I reached out to the devs several times and got absolutely no response. They received the message because the automated email response said they received the message, so either they're no longer supporting this game, or they're just ignoring my complaint. Thankfully I got this on sale and only flat out wasted $5 instead of the full $20. I did try out the sinlge player mode, and it works fine, but it's not really something I'm interested in. If I were to factor that into the review, it'd be higher, but the thing is I won't tolerate a game not working entirely. If a feature is broken and doesn't function properly, then you can't charge people with them thinking they'll get the full experience. The lack of the support from the devs shows they don't care enough about their players to care. Since I cannot get the online multiplayer mode to work at all, here on GOG, and I purcahsed this game FOR the multiplayer, then this is a 1 star rating. Fix the online.

Actual fact. Nothing better.

Great game, untill you go into your first horseback fight. Except horseback fighting it is a very nice game.