Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword

Stories about my game sessions are more interesting than the gameplay itself. Example: 1) agree to escort trade caravan deep into the territory of a hostile country; 2) fight 4 units that just patrolled the land to prevent bandits attacks; 3) encounter you friend, who became your enemy because of you swear to serve the other king; 4) flee from his army, because he's a duke and you just a commander of a bunch of mercenaries; 5) obviously lost some of the units, nobody attacks the caravan; 6) get lectured by one of the mercenaries for fleeing from battle; 7) get lectured by some of the vassals of your king for fleeing from battle; 8) finish the escort 3 days till it's expired (repetition of 2 paragraph); 9) being ambushed deep into friendly's territory by the squad from the third kingdom, have literally no units to fight or flee; 10) finished service while being imprisoned; 11) profit.

Going from Warband, where a suit of armor can protect you, to the exposure of Fire and Sword makes it seem like two completely different games. Fire and Sword is also tougher to make a friend of nations. There are some bugs, but the excellence of the game seem like freckles on a loved one.

The original Mount & Blade was a masterpiece. A mix of role-playing, action and strategy, it was proof positive that a AAA budget was not necessary to create a world class game, as long as the overall idea was right. In theory, this idea could be applied to any settlement and be the source of an infinite number of great DLCs. The era of the Golden Liberty, the Dominium Mari Baltici and the problems with the Cossacks really did look attractive. Well, theoretically. It is impossible to completely change the settlement without changing the gameplay. It didn't work. In the original M&B, if a player is killed on the battlefield, the battle automatically fails, which means a lot of losses. The whole battle can still be won, but that particular skirmish becomes a failure. In theory, this is not a problem, as sudden deaths are rather rare - a random arrow is not strong enough to pierce a knight's armour. This situation will change when a gunpowder weapon appears on the battlefield. In Fire & Sword, it is literally possible to be shot by an enemy sniper at the start of every battle. This means getting defeated in almost every skirmish and losing most of your army. The fun just disappears. The original M&B did not have a plot of any particular kind. For many, this was a drawback, but I found it somehow appealing. I like to think that M&B resembles Sid Meier's Civilization. If there is no main quest, then it becomes a game of the imagination, just as it is in a board game. A player has to find the meaning of his or her actions on their own. In the case of M&B, the player takes on the role of an average knight who is struggling to gain honour and develop his domain. Very historically accurate, actually. This, in my opinion, is the atmosphere of M&B. Fire&Sword, however, has a plot and a main quest. The references to the novels of Henryk Sienkiewicz are really funny... but I just couldn't enjoy them because of the botched gameplay.

This is my favorite MB game. One reason alone, Captain coop. Hack and slash with friends defending your squad through wave after wave of enemies. There are few games that incorporate strategy with action and rpg elements and to date this is the pinnacle of that genre.

The positive reviews are accurate. The issues I am having (I am sure that I am forgetting them all). - managing combat is terrible. You start with you troops charging towards enemy in very disorganized way. Organizing takes too much time and the combat interface/management clunky. I end up surrounded by my own troops unable to move or off to nowhere if I start to move. 75% of the time, I halt my troops and go into combat by myself and only after a bit of combat tell rest to charge. - Party management is terrible too. You can either look at their equipment 1 at the time or their stats (which are extensive). Trying to reorganize equipment between party members is terrible + without taking notes I have hard time knowing which equipment should be given to whom - Dialogs /interactions. Again, wh do I have to do so many clicks to enter castle or town? Why there are so many useless dialogs? As one interacts with inventory/characters/Trading and more a lot, even 1-2 extra clicks makes that painful - Tutorial is almost useless. I got helpers that end up dong all the combat as I was too slow to join it - Skirmish - there is skirmish but control over troops and such during such skirmish is poor and is different then normal combat . I was trying to use it to get used to game mechanics during combat and got some experience but limited in scope. There are still tons of things that I don't know how to do in the game. I got OK with firearms but I am still terrible with melee combat (there is a quest for training villagers and most of the time I lose those fights) - Manual is not very good. I got some info from it but not that much and there are tons of things I don't know how to do. As this is not very popular game, there is only some info about things on internet. I actually like the game, just the management of everything is painful. I am still unable to stop playing it but I wish I never bought this game