Mount and blade warband
DemonAbyss10
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Joined: 23 Aug 2007
Age: 36
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,492
Location: The Poconos, Pennsylvania
have both warband and the original
now I gotta find the "A song of Ice and Fire" mod for the first one, I used to have it though :/
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Ambivalence
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Joined: 8 Nov 2008
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Yep. I can't directly compare it to vanilla M&B because I haven't played M&B for a long while, but it's certainly come a long way since the old days. ^^ I'm not interested in the multiplayer side of things at all, so haven't tried them. Singleplayer is as difficult as I remember, so I've got everything turned to easy mode settings for the present. A great bonus for me is that it can be played simultaneously with Dwarf Fortress, as DF can be left to run unattended while I go introduce Sea Raiders to a war axe.
Likes: big campaign map, being able to hold castles and towns, the whole idea of having characters who move around with their own motivations and aren't just standing in one place wanting you to bring them the severed bodyparts of local creatures.
Combat is good (and very hard on proper difficulty), combat formations (being able to order a bunch of crossbow guys to hold a point is cool when they automatically line up and orient themselves and generally behave quite sensibly), I like the whole feel of mounted combat and the new animations for striking are good. Tournaments in different styles are good. Most of the factions are interesting, though Rhodoks and Nords are hampered by the total absence of cavalry and it's a shame that there isn't another "knightly" faction - Swadians are standing in for the chivalry of all Western Europe and there's easily room for very different styles within that area.
Meh: the visuals are outdated and the ability to paper-doll characters is limited compared to many games these days. That said, the towns and castles are good now that they're all different layouts and architecture. The Sarranids are unbalanced, suffering the usual "we've got to introduce cool new characters with slightly more power than the existing ones" syndrome that plagues gaming.
I distrust mods on principle for much the same reason, so I generally don't use them. I know people love M&B mods, though.
The stats system is a bit naff, it was never very good and it hasn't changed at all.
The troop upgrade system has some fairly pointless dead-end troops, which is a shame; it'd be better if everyone were useful in some way, but even some of the top-tier ones struggle to be useful.
Sieges are alright, but they could be much better if there were more offensive and defensive equipment. Every one is a charge-up-the-ramp/tower hackfest, with no opportunity for attackers or defenders to use any more cautious tactics.
Dislikes: hilly maps remain extremely annoying.
They still haven't done anything about the silly cattle driving quests. There are several types of mission that people want to give you on the game map that are just too boring to be worth doing.
The various "attack a X lair" missions are rubbish. Oh, right, sure, I'll lead an attack on this enemy stronghold with five men against fifty, and the enemies will magically appear from thin air behind us when we do. And we'll leave our horses behind because "we can't ride there" which is pretty damn stupid when you see the layout of some of the camps. As Calvera would say, "Stoopid!"
The village and castle upgrades are uninteresting, and one of them (the mill) is brokenly useless, as it gives only a tiny one-off benefit. What's it supposed to be, they use all the money I invest for a special party to celebrate the new mill makes them happy, and then they don't actually bother milling anything?
The pathfinding AI is problematic in some places, even after the recent fixes.
And other things. Overall, I enjoy the game, and it's certainly addictive - it's got that Civ/UFO vibe to it where it rapidly presents you a succession of things to do, and you're too busy to notice the time going by - , but I'm not sure how long it'll hold my attention, and there are still a lot of things which detract from the experience. They seem to be quite actively fixing bugs, which is good, but there are a lot of basic mechanics of the game that could do with being radically altered, and I don't think that's likely to happen. (That might be a little unfair, but I'm contrasting it mentally with DF, a similar game in some ways where basic stuff like the attribute and combat systems have just been massively overhauled for the better.)
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I've been playing since the original was at beta 0.710 or something. It's cool seeing how far the games have come since then. Multiplayer is great. It's the only noncoop multiplayer I do at the moment. The only problem is that Khergits seem over powered on just about every map not set in a town.
DemonAbyss10
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Location: The Poconos, Pennsylvania
I remember a fan-patch on the original that was a good attempt at a rebalance of the nations.
I do think warbands AI is alot better than the old one, since if lost far more than I used to.
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Yes, I do have a DeviantArt, it is at.... http://demonabyss10.deviantart.com/