This new adventure is better than the original, but it's still far from what is supposed to be a Shadowrun experience. It feels linear and I don't think it has several endings (uninstalled the game before half of the story, was sick of the combat arenas). We are still limited to combat arenas over and over again. Very few puzzles, negotiations, diplomacy, bargaining, arguments, flirt, no stealth to avoid combat, etc. What happened to the term SHADOWrunning? In this game it feels more like gunsblazinrunning. All is about killing stuff, and it's quite redundant after a while... but not as much as the first story. So I don't call this a role-playing game, but a tactical combat game with a story. Calling this a rpg is a mistake, there is little to no role-play in it, most of things are imposed onto you, you have almost no freedom of choice. it is still palyable, but only buy if you like tactical combat over and over again, because there ain't much to it than that, especially in the first story that came with the original game.
The tactical battle aspect of the game is awesome! This is the first game to use horseback riding and fighting in a believable way. It's fun, tough and filled with adrenaline and fear of getting K.O.'ed. With modern computers, I think they should up the individuals on the map to 500, I doubt that it will affect performance much, especially if you exploit multi-core techonology. That combined with good RAM would make it possible. The strategic part is ok. Getting your hand on a city or fort/castle the first few times is tricky, but once you have seen the game flaws of attacks on cities and strongholds, they're a bit easier. Defending them while exploiting the game flaws is even easier! I think they should make real castle/city assault, because right now, you have one hole in a wall and everyone rushes there and that is not realistic and causes lots of bugs and silliness. Cities and castles cannot be starved out by besieging them, you are REQUIRED to attack each place. The economic part sucks. Warband is the crappiest of all M&B when it comes to trading. Only three or four commodities are worth trading. Prices vary little. There is no consumption on the part of the cities or strongholds. So the economic aspect of the game is absent. Something they should work on. I think Warband is a good tactical combat game, but that's it. I prefer the original game (the one that was worked on before Paradox put its hand on it) and Fire and Sword. Only buy if you want the collection, otherwise skip to Fire and Sword or Mount and Blade 2.
