I owned the first Mount & Blade, but I never played anything but the Napoleonic mode. I never could get ahold of the combat and general clunkiness to the gameplay of the main game. Still, it had some interesting ideas. When I heard there was going to be a sequel with update graphics and controls, I kept my eye on it. It finally went on sale, so I grabbed it. This is gonna be a long review, because Bannerlord has a lot of balls in the air.

The first thing I’ll mention, as it’s obvious looking at the accompanying pictures, is I modded my game. Changing the generic made-up races with vague inspirations from history into their actual historic counterparts added a lot to my enjoyment. Being able to march in a Roman shield wall or command slingers from horseback was beyond cool. Some other mods were more quality-of-life improvements. While it’s been “fully released” now it started in early access and there’s still a lot of tweaking needing done. Realistic Battle Mod is a requirement for any playthrough. Without it, armies just sort of charge at each other as two amorphous blobs, regardless of if they are infantry, archers, or cavalry. RBM fixes the AI, changing battlefield tactics from “dogpile!” to forming lines, using cavalry charges, and keeping archers back to skirmish. Those were the two biggest mods in use, but I had some others that helped with city management, enhanced weather effects, etc. This is to say, I can’t honestly say I’m reviewing the vanilla game.

The game looks great for what I’d consider a AA game. I don’t know how much the Roman mod changed but walking around towns that look like they are straight from antiquity is something I’ve wanted in gaming for a long time. The towns of the Imperium have that classic Roman architecture while the people of the Steppe have cities covered with yurts and the North African stand-ins have cities decorated like Carthage. There’re little towns you can explore as well. They don’t differ in visual style as much as the cities. The character models are a step above The Movies PC, nothing too spectacular. The clothing however is cool. Again, you can see the diversity in cultures by what people wear and the weapons they use. The world map looks like it was ripped from a Total War game. You can see the various cities and town, all of the trade caravans and armies moving about. The world space has a range of biomes from deserts, to grassy plains, to tundras. The music is also top-notch. The main menu theme, as the kids say, “goes hard”. I spent a few minutes on the title screen just listening to it. The best description of it is it sounds like a track from Charlton Heston’s Ten Commandments. The overworld music is typical early medieval fare and the combat music is what you’d expect. During sieges an alternate version of the main theme plays that really enhances the battle. While most of the music may be expected, it’s still great.

Gameplay can be broken down into two distinct aspects of the game, there’s the overworld city management and map moving & the 3rd person combat. It’s what you’d get from mashing Total War and Skyrim together. It works mostly well. Again, I can’t stress how familiar the overworld gameplay will look to a Total War player. This stage of the game is all about management. If you have a city to your name you have to keep it defended, decide on building projects, and keep people happy. Your army also needs managed. You have to keep your army fed and paid. First starting out, this isn’t too challenging since you’re only in charge of maybe 5-15 guys. As you gain money and renown and expand your army, then you have to consider these logistics. Feeding your army off 10 bags of grain may work with a small squad but having a diversity of food for larger forces leads to morale boosts. There’s stats to juggle that determine how fast your force travels. Toting along a bunch of prisoners or farm animals slows you down, buying mounts for your footmen to use increases your speed.

Making sure you make more money than you spend is important. You can earn money several way: fighting battles nets you loot you can sell, but that’s not a steady payday, you can win bouts in the arena, an easy way to build up wealth early on, or engage in trade. While there’s no way to out and out avoid combat, you could in theory dedicate yourself to be a trader first and not engage in the warfare side. You can do the trading yourself, riding town to town to buy low and sell high or, once you get some capital, create a caravan led by one of your kinsmen. Eventually you can buy workshops like breweries or lumber yards. These are safer than caravans, no roving bandits to worry about, but you have to keep them stocked in supplies to make them profitable. I’ve not messed with the workshop system much yet. There’s also a forging system, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out how that works.

The clan system is a whole another aspect to this game. The story starts you out with a brother and two younger siblings. I had the no permadeath setting on, so I didn’t get to experience this, but your family can age, with your younger siblings joining you as recruitable characters. Your 1st character can die, and you’d play as his heir. You can strategically marry off your relatives or marry an important noble yourself, my character married the Empress’ only daughter. Unfortunately, hereditary rule is not implemented in this game yet, so my plan of becoming Emperor didn’t quite work. You can also recruit companions, non-related people who are part of your clan. They can be enlisted as sergeants in your army, in charge of your archers or footmen or set up as city governors or caravanners.

Once you join a kingdom you have to gain influence points. These are what you use to vote on your nation’s laws and persuade fellow nobles to help you. There’s also a reputation system that I haven’t entirely figured out yet. I think it comes into play more when you are the ruler and high reputation among all nobles is needed to stave off civil war. It would be nice to see the reputation system improved on, having clan leaders comment on other events you’ve taken apart of. I’m married to the Empress’ daughter, having a nobleman remark I’m a commoner trying to sleep his way to the top would be in character or perhaps a noble I fought in a war with remarks on our time during it. Most of the dialogue is very utilitarian, just “Hello. What do you want? Can you do this? Bye.” When your nation does go to war with a rival nation, you and the other nobles can join your forces together to create a grand army of 700+ units. I found it a little annoying that our kingdom would be having a successful war effort where we were about to wipe out a rival kingdom only to vote for peace. Historically, that does make some sense. Nations didn’t always wage war to completely eliminate a rival nation, but from a gameplay standpoint it leaves a sour taste in my mouth that we didn’t go all the way.

Both you and your kinsmen have skills and an upgrade tree. Some skills boost your warfare abilities, like better damage with a sword or throwing javelins further. Others like scouting allow you to move faster on the overworld and see further. Each character has their set base skills that they naturally excel at. You can add knowledge points to increase the speed a skill levels up. If they hit their knowledge limit, the skill is learned at a snail’s pace. It’s a fun system to manage and I usually specialized my companions, having one be a scout, another a healer, another good at leading cavalry, etc. When you create your character, you can choose how you grew up that leads to bonuses in certain skills. It’s a nice way to give stats a narrative hook. You can play historic dress up with all your companions, equipping them in the best armor and giving them the best weapons and fastest horses.

Now, the second aspect of gameplay, the on the ground combat. Melee combat is handled like the first game, or like a Kingdom Come Deliverance. You make attacks by swinging your mouse in different directions. You can block as well, with a sword you have to block the direction the enemy is swinging, with a shield, you just hold block. The RBM mod added a stamina bar, which was actually needed. It kept you and your enemy from just relentlessly swinging, providing no opportunity to counter. The RBM change a few other things about combat, so I don’t want to talk on it too long, because your experience may differ if you don’t use this mod, but you should. Throwing weapons work about like you’d expect. You have to lead your shots, more so with javelins than with bows. Once I found the sweet spot of how far above an enemy’s head I had to aim to make sure the javelin reached its target, I could one shot opponents in the arena. I also mentioned walking around cities and towns. Unfortunately, there’s no real reason to walk around a city besides to take a stroll. Anything you can do in the 3rd person mode while taking a stroll, like joining an arena tournament or hiring mercs from the tavern can be done quicker on the world map through menus. I’d love future updates to give us a reason to physically visit the settlements.

You aren’t just a rank and file foot soldier, okay, actually you can start out playing as a foot soldier, but eventually you become a commander of troops. This is one of my favorite aspects of the game. The command system is simple enough to allow you to make orders on the fly but gives you a healthy amount of options. You can order your men to raise shields, charge, and retreat. Set them up in a shield wall formation or a square. Each formation has its advantages and disadvantages. Initially you don’t get a battle prep stage & all your units are in one squad. Once you amass an army of at least 20 units, you start each battle with a prep screen, very much in the vein of a Total War game, allowing you to pick formation style and army layout before you deploy. Your units are now separated into squads based on their class and you can assign your companions to serve as a sergeant of that unit, so you don’t have to micromanage all your troops. When you become a commander, the game does seem to slot you into always playing melee cavalry. It makes sense, officers usually ride horses and mobility helps in getting across the battlefield to order troops around, but I’d like the ability to play as another class and still be a viable commander. The bandit hideout and siege missions were good for getting to actually fight on the ground and use my gladius.

When you do join your forces with a larger army, this game gets wild. The amount of troops on the field is limited only by your CPU power. My laptop didn’t like more than 600 total, and even then, the framerate got a little dicey in places. In situations where there are more than 600 combatants, the game staggers them in as reinforcement waves. You don’t get to command your personal troops in these armies, they are usually saved as a reserve. Before RBM, that usually meant I died early on, and the battle kept going until it was a total wipe, and I could only watch my personal squad get mowed down. It killed my enjoyment having to constantly rebuild my army. Now though, the epic battles are great. This game does a good job at recreating the scale of a Total War game, but with you being on the actual field. If you let yourself enjoy it, watching your army scurry up a siege tower and storm the walls or march in a shield wall deflecting arrows makes it all worth it. One battle I remember, it was just me and my personal army. We were fighting a small band of horse archers in the desert. They were riding around us in a Cantabrian Circle, while my army of footmen formed up a square, trying to take them down. It was an intense fight, very cinematic, but we ended up dying. Horse archers are one of the top tier units in the game. That battle taught me to diversify my small army next time.

There’s a faint main story to this game. You and your brother must avenge your parents’ death for the tutorial segment. The game does start you off with a training area to practice at and teaches you the basics fairly well. Once you complete your mission, you learn of the mystical Dragon Banner that was lost in an old war. You talk with nobles to learn its location, reassemble it, and decide if you want to use this symbolic banner to reunite the Empire that’s currently in civil war or destroy it completely. That’s where I stopped with the main story because it’s by no means a gripping tale. I think it’s meant as a gentle guide to get you to experience as much of the game as possible. I’m at a point now where I’m just waging wars for the Empress and building my renown. You also get side quests you can accept from townsfolk and villagers that help to increase your reputation with them. They are generic ones like “Deliver X amount of ____ to this city” or “Stop these bandits”. There’s also your personal journey that is paced really well. You start as a wandering mercenary with not much to your name but a few loyal men and a rusty sword. Slowly, you start to amass more men and upgrade your gear and curry favors with the nobility. I really liked the progression as I piecemealed together my Centurion armor and tried to stay an independent contractor for as long as possible.

All in all, I’d hold this game up as a great example of a antiquity/early medieval immersive sim. There’s a lot of options available to how you play, from soldier to trader to ruler, and the game is easy to pick up & play, something I think the first M&B lacked. It is a game that burns slow and rewards patient play. If it doesn’t hook you within the first hour or so, you probably won’t enjoy the next 30. There’s a lot of good bones on display here, with systems that are just fleshed out enough to be good, but not great. The fact you need a mod to make battles more dynamic & engaging shows there’s room for improvement. But being able to play a Total War battle from ground level and seeing the massive opposing army that you’re leading your army into is beyond cool. This game is textbook example of “a jack of all trades, master of none.” But it’s at least executed well.