~~~ Good ~~~ Interesting combat mechanics | Improvements over base M&B | Great sound | Many hours of entertainment ~~~ Bad ~~~ No real campaign | Lots of grind | AI isn't very smart
This game will not dissapoint you can recruit peasants and be a simple mercenary band or you could gather an army and show all the other lords who is the true ruler by slaughtering their peasants and sacking their villages all whilst taking their castles for your own and living in their homes while they watch their lives works be taken before their eyes. So long story short 5/5 would recommend
This is not a game that tells a mythic tale or puts you at the center of the universe (at least, not until you depose everyone else who is blocking your path there,) this is a game of being a random dirty peasant in a mockup of the Middle Ages, and trying to make your own path.
Along the way, you will learn how to fight in a free-form third-person combat game which has interesting controls to make beating down the other dirty peasants and sometimes mud-caked knights in still somewhat shiny armor a real challenge and thrill. No warcries that stun, or whirlwind slashes that mow down enemies by the dozen, you'll find a real challenge in fighting two or three enemies with even decent equipment at a time. Eventually, you gain a following of fighters, and upgrade them from dirty peasants to your own cadre of knights and elite warriors.
Take procedural missions, like bandit hunting, caravan escort, jailbreaks of nobles with hefty ransoms, or just oppressing the bloody peasants. Buy trade goods and sell them for a profit, or buy industries and start manufacturing for extra gold on the side. Swear allegiance to a king, or form your own flag. Conquer some territory, and then manage the villages. Lure disaffected nobles to your side, and then have to give them fiefs of their own to pacify them.
Pretty soon, you're going head-to-head with other kings for supremacy of the land, and eventually, you, too, might crown yourself emperor of all the land!
... Or just toil in obscurity, get rich, and buy a nice plot of land to relax upon while the wars you profited from keep roiling on without you...