Be Excellent To Each Other

Anyone playing this? I'm trying the demo that lets you progress up to level 7 and it's ace fun. The first Mount & Blade's demo didn't really click with me, I found it a bit too difficult, but for some reason I'm doing a lot better in this. I have a party of 8 including a thief - she's ace with throwing daggers - and a couple of mercenary horsemen. Basically for those who don't know (and I remember a fair few of you do) it's a medieval sandbox game much like Pirates, where you gallop around a map raiding villages or protecting them, beating up bandits or indulging in slave trading and all sorts of heroic/evil horseplay. You can - excellently - eventually become King. Combat is amongst the best I've seen in a game. I'm really enjoying the archery!

The graphics are outdated true, you won't get much through tweaking and tinkering JC! But they do the job well and it all feels very fluid and atmospheric. Good sound too. My only problem is I'm not sure what I'm ready for yet. I'm asking a lady if she wants me to aid her quest for the throne and she's warning me it may have dangers, but I've no idea of how big those dangers will be. I have about 1000 gold and a dinky squad, not sure I'm ready for the big leagues yet.

It's so refreshing to play a game free of orcs or elves or any of that lot. More realistic medieval games programmers, and hurry!

Demo here:

http://www.gamershell.com/news_93650.html

Website here:

http://www.taleworlds.com/main.aspx

Mount and Blade is acebest. I'm not paying for multiplayer, though, especially full price. If they'd spent all this time and effort on fixing the massively broken and rubbish aspects of the game (though they don't kill the game dead - the combat is the whole point, and it's worth buying just for that) instead of stapling more probably broken parts on, I'd have thought about it.

For one who's only just really started, what are the broken bits? Forewarned is forearmed and all that.

One thing I'll say for the expansion (okay, upgrade) demo is that it's slipped me far more easily into the world than the older model. I actually have a vague idea what I'm to do, now.

Really regretting not getting this in the Steam sale.

Cheer up Dimmers, there's the more advanced Warband out. Unless that WAS in the Steam sale - erk.

It were on special a month or so ago, ar.

M&B is great. I was thinking of getting warband purely for the MP.

Also Pete, I would consider "the broken bits" to be the whole mission/status system. You can't raise up and become your own king, etc. Also, there are many skills that are just useless. Especially for your comrades. And then there's the comedy one-ladder sieges. But there are loads of mods that improve on these problems in many ways.

But the original combat is great! I don't think any mod can improve on that.

Oh, there's nothing game-breaking. It's just that a lot of the 'new' things (which are now a couple of years old, but you can probably tell which are which) are very poorly implemented, to the point where they basically don't work. Some of the side missions (never agree to persuade anyone of anything, as it's a totally useless skill and even when maxed, rarely works) are clearly thrown in just so they can list them as a feature. The 'martial' thing will sometimes change five times a day, cancelling and restarting you on unwinnable quests every other day. A more powerful force will attack you, and then when the battle starts, sit on a hill two miles away doing nothing, but if you try to leave it counts as 'surrender'. Surrendering is 100% pointless in every situation, as you lose everything anyway (there's no point in playing on after losing a fight after a bunch of levels, either, as it's all but impossible to claw your way back to where you were).

The sieges... don't even start me on the sieges. They can still be great fun, but more often than not they're just a frustrating joke.

And then there's the strategic AI, which apparently makes all its decisions entirely at random, and on the rare occasions when it wins an assault, immediately abandons its new stronghold.

The fact that I say all this just off the top of my head, but I still consider it a brilliant, tremendously entertaining game, speaks volumes about how great the combat is. No magic, no spoddy 'dice rolls', no fucking elves, and mercifully few embarassingly nobby 'period' bits of dialogue (although the 'defending a lady's honour' line makes me want to punch myself). Even the stats and levels matter relatively little, as even with an average weapon and a low level, you can take on a better opponent one-on-one if your timing's good enough. And conversely, even if you've been playing for aeons, dropping your guard in a fight with a bloke with a pitchfork could be all it takes to lose.

Mount & Blade is the only game I'd considering upgrading this PC to play properly. When I first bought into the game (I liked their 'buy it cheap while we finish it off and get free upgrades') my PC could cope ok with it, but now I have to turn off pretty much all of the fancy effects.

I'd love to see a Wii version though.

Mount and Thingface is the first game I load up whenever I upgrade a PC. I couldn't care much less about the graphics (I'm still quite happy with the directx 7 stuff, not least as it means you can fit more in) - I just want to see how many people I can run on screen at once. The first time I succesfully ran a 150 Vs 150 battle without too much choppiness was like a religious experience without the lies and hypocrisy.

That is the reason why yourself and Mr Pete are the gentlemanly PC gamers that ground me from rage. Instead of the graphics obsessed elite.

WHAT ABOUT ME?

Do you have Orcs and Elves?

Bought this in the Steam sale. God, I love it. My feisty yet criminally evil-bonkers lady is galloping around in her stupid hat razing villages to the ground and plundering them of their goods. Now and again I bump into a Count of the foreign land, and I have at them with a big pole with a bit of metal on the end, on horseback. I'm slowly getting better at charging with a lance, though it's tricky stuff. I'm up to level 5 now and enjoying the pitched battles immensely. I've got 53 troops but have no idea when I'm ready to take on castles. I want one of my own. Boo.

"YAAAARGH!" etc.

I've not played M&B for a while, possibly because I know it will mean I'm up all night for a week. The trouble I've had with it is that I never stick with a game long enough to get into the military campaigns (aside from as a lackey, which is mostly a pain in the arse).

Still, I do enjoy showing up with my crossbow and trusty band of 50 headsplitters to defend a castle against 300 scumbags after the king/lords have left it completely undefended. Again.


Also, you raze villages? Shame on you, sir, shame! My faithful Stabbers of The Enemy's Big Stupid Face wouldn't stand for that kind of thing.

The Europe 1200 mod has apparently just been released for Warband. It mods the game to the geography and factions of (duh) medieval Europe and was properly awesome for the orginal M&B.