Mount & Blade: Warband

Mount & Blade Warband, the Game of Thrones of video games. Originally released in 2008. Mount and Blade's sequel was announced in 2009 and released the following year. In Mount and Blade you are... you. You start out in a land known as Calradia and six factions fighting each other for control over Calradia. You are attacked in a village and a simple merchant asks for your help, you can deny him and go on your way or you can say yes. This is just the beginning of what you can do in this game.
I have poured many hours of my life into this game and in this review I will be covering, Graphics, Gameplay, Story, Music and Mods.

Graphics:
I'm going to be honest, Warband is not the most visually stunning game out there. It's graphics are not pushing your system to the limits but this can be fixed with mods. The game needs to handle hundreds of warriors not to mention the horses that they might ride on. The graphics are at their worst when your character is not wearing any armor as the body is not exactly well made. I don't know why you would be looking underneath their lordly armour you pervert but you won't be pleased with what it looks like. The textures of the weapons and armour are excellent and look beautiful given the right mods.
I'm not exactly a big fan of the graphics in this game but they aren't that bad and you get quite used to them.
6/10

Gameplay:
The gameplay in this game is brilliant. I call it the game of thrones of video games because it's politics. You can become a lord, a commoner, a merchant anything you like because it's your destiny to chose. It reminds me a little of the Dungeons and Dragons games, Neverwinter, Baldurs Gate etc. The open endlessness of this game is mind blowing and to top that off somebody thought the game was lacking enough political game play so they made a diplomacy mod that breathes even more life into this game. The combat of this game is great with crossbows and bows being very powerful should you have the skill but with the con of slow reloads (Crossbow) and gravity physics requireing you to judge your shot. The sword to sword combat is quite the learning curve as you aren't just fighting AI's that are about as smart as rock but they too know how to parry, block and attack. Combat from horse is very good as well but it's difficult to master as you can gain a % of extra or less damage being dealt depending on how fast you or the enemy is going. The game also places a real value on money as just about everything is expensive to buy.
10/10

Story:
In this game you make your story, you are in charge of your destiny you could be serving under a king for most of your adventure and then suddenly decide to start a civil war for the lulz or you could become your own independent kingdom and take on the rest of Calradia. The quests are fairly generic but can get really difficult should you not know what you're doing and almost all quests have a time limit to do i.e. a group of bandits are invading the village so you must train the peasants to fight in 18 days etc. I'm not even sure if this game does have a plot line.
It's your destiny make it yourself you lazy bum!
5/10

Music:
The music of this game is wonderful, it makes you feel very majestic. The music that you hear as you siege a castle or city is wonderful. Nothing makes me feel better than to attack a band of bandits and listen to the brass instruments tooting away. The music fits the game and I feel they hit the nail on the head with getting the medieval theme and adding the music too it. Theres nothing I would really change and the only thing I can gripe on is that sometimes the game forgets to play the music and it doesn't loop I don't know if this is a probelm with my copy or its just a bug or sloppy programming
8/10

Mods:
The mods of this game, god they are fantastic. You cannot play this game and not download A Clash of Kings, Diplomacy or Gekokujo. The mods are so large and in 60 hours of playing each of them you might only have played just a smidgen of what they have to offer. The modifications are brilliant. If you get bored of playing vanilla Warband and want to play in one of your favorite fantasy worlds like A song of Fire and Ice then A Clash of Kings is for you. If you want to play in fuedal songoku era Japan Gekokujo is a must. Each mod expands on Warband and makes it 100000 times better.
10/10

39/50
A must have for any person who wants a really good game with replayability to the maximum and its as cheap as dirt.
​