First off, I don't understand all of the five star ratings people are handing out. I don't know if it's just me, but this game is pretty buggy. It crashes on me. Not soo often that it's unplayable, but it is annoying. Once when I was fighting in the arena, I was up against a guy that had a bunch of javelins stuck in his shield that were thrown at him, and when he got close to me the game started counting all the stuck javelins as attacks on me that I couldn't block. The combat also feels a lot clunkier than in the first mount & blade game. They made combat on horseback harder, it's very difficult to direct your attacks while still being able to focus where you're looking. When you're trying to couch your lance you can't adjust your view to look down it. If you try the lance just swings over to the other side of your horse. It does help if you switch to first person view, but it's a pain to keep changing view. I think that there's just an inherent flaw in using the same controls for directing your sight also for choosing the direction of your attack. I do like all of the new stuff that they added to the game, like businesses, but combat isn't half as fun as it was in the first. Overall, it's still a pretty solid game that you can really sink some time into. It's just not as good as I was hoping it would be.
