MOUNT&BLADE
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What On Earth, Saruman/BioPlague/Lord Merrill/Murkwurdigeliebe/Android Knight 47/God/Person With Names? What is Mount&Blade, Why Does it Have A Retarded Title With No Spaces and Are You Single?

What on earth, indeed! Ok. Imagine a medieval game. Imagine medieval fantasy settings. Automatically you think of knights, priests, paladins, mages, magic, potions and a bunch of other shit that's blown-out-of-proportion to catch your pathetic, short attention span-riddled mind. Or that is not real.

Mount&Blade is a medieval game. Except... it's a pretty realistic and awesome medieval game. Perhaps the biggest thing about Mount&Blade is the fact that it has cavalry. Cavalry was one of the most important things in 'medieval times' and yet it is underscored in almost every game you've ever played concerning the Dark Ages. The closest you probably get is to horses such as mounts but lets not go into World of Virgincraft.

There are many types of horses, their features are different (speed-involved, armor-involved, maneuverability-involved, etc.) and there are many types of riders that one can collect. Some use archers, some use lances some use long swords and some just run your ass over.

But that's just one facet of Mount&Blade that catches you from the get-go since the game is in fact named, Mount&Blade. Why it's named so is because the game was developed by two Turkish people (now by a lot more) and I'm going to go ahead and guess that in Turkey, they don't have space bars.

That's irrelevant really; everything else is spelled correctly, spaced correctly and works magnificently.

Getting back to the game: Mount&Blade is cavalry involved. Good Hosts or Party's (the thing you command and build from scratch) have plenty of cavalry-based units. But that's not all you can get. It is a medieval game and what would a medieval game be without knights, archers, crossbowmen or various bandits and mercenaries that you can recruit to your side?

For instance, I rarely work on cavalry. I'll explain how Mount&Blade works in a nutshell. It's open-ended, for one. But there are quests (some ridiculous, some tedious and some genuinely enjoyable) and there are some very obvious objectives. If you want to truly experience the lands you'll be exploring, you need to pick a side - there are two in .808 and several in .890 but we'll get to versions later on. Then you're pretty much kill-on-sight to half the map and you better be careful when traveling there.

You appear on the map and you travel to various cities. To best describe the map in .808, it's a bit like Civilization IV's map. But this is just the map - when you actually battle it's different. For the purposes of showing you, here are some screens:​

Here is Lord Merrill in the World Map of version 0.808
- Expanded Version
- Coming Upon A Battle in the World Map



Here is Lord Merrill in the World Map of version 0.890.
- Expanded Version
- The World Map Zoomed Out


Lord Merrill(Left) gets ready to speak to Ramun(Right), the Slave Trader, in the town of Zendar
- Expanded Version


An interesting thing in Mount&Blade is the ability to see tracks - as you gain levels/experience, you can spend points in tracking which increases the information tracks give (how many, who they actually are, how long ago they were here).


Purchasing things is a blast. No, really.
- Expanded Version


World Map in 0.890. There are more factions and thus the coloring is different and the textures are much better, hence the extra 40mbs in download differences.​

That's just the world-map, riding in it and visiting towns. We haven't even got to the battles, which take place in their own little contained screens. Think of joining a game of Halo and dropping down into the world. Both factions start at opposite sides (or varying angles to throw you off). There can only be two sides, and depending on how many characters you allow to spawn, it's usually 20 v 20 on lower comps and can be up to 100 or 500 v 100 or 500 on good ones. Only two sides can exist but multiple armies may band together. For instance, I play for the Swadians. Say a Swadian Caravan is ambushed by the Sea Raiders. I can join in and help the Swadian Caravan attack the Sea Raiders. At the same time, if I don't get there in time, Pirate Raiders can assist Sea Raiders, Steepe Bandits can assist the Sea Raiders and Pirate Raiders, Swadian Scouts can join the Caravan or neutral factions pick either side and reap the rewards.

Either way you have the option of participating or sending forth your minions and hoping you don't get slaughtered. I prefer the personal approach. Here are some screens:​

See the expanded version but here's the beginning, me on my horse, charging towards the enemies in the distance
- Expanded Version


A better look at my crew and I.
- Expanded Version
- Forth Eorlingas!
- I dismount and stalk forth, ready to do justice upon my enemies
- I kick ass and chew bubblegum. For some reason, when I print-screened, the top got replaced by that. In several pics. Oh well, that's an error and doesn't exist in the gameplay.
- Vicccctorrrry! So it was 110 people versus 9. That's besides the point.


Time to collect prisoners and recruit those they imprisoned into my fold.
Expanded Version


The spoils of war are many... some good, some bad.
Expanded Version​

Basically, the game is 100% fucking awesome. Battles require strategy against stronger opponents. Do you hold your position? Do you mount or dismount? Do you charge? You can order cavalry, archers and infantry to do separate things. Order the archers to hold the position, order the cavalry to charge forth and the infantry to mount as soon as they unhorse some bitches.

Personally, I like using a bow and I like horse archers. They rain death on everyone. But the game is open-ended in that you can be a heavily armored mother fucker with a lance on a war horse with 50 armor that couch-lances people to death or a swift, light armored archer who prefers commanding and picking off foes from afar. Or you can be both or any variations in between. Throwing daggers, throwing spears, spearmen, crossbows, rapiers, axes. There's an infinite amount of ways to play this game and be successful at it.

Just don't cheat. Cheating's for pussies and once you find out how to, you may be tempted to do it. So I won't tell you.

Oh and no, I'm not single.​

Downloading the Game and Which Version to Choose

Now, there are many options in Mount&Blade because the developers totally support modding the game. There are a plethora of mods, some greater than the game itself, some shittier than having anal sex with Snape. They are there however and there are some drawbacks to downloading the newest and freshest version which includes a lot of nifty little new things.

The newest version - 0.890/0.892 - was released just recently. As you can imagine, mods take awhile to make. The version that allows most mods to work is version 0.808, which was released awhile ago but is pretty much the same thing. The only differences are rag-doll effects and a prettier world map along with some interesting in-game play differences.

You can have both - all you have to do is download/install into two separate directories - but I'm going to assume you're too retarded to do that and give you a run down as to what mods are included on version 0.808:

The Last Days Mod - Quite possibly the most epic mod and easily surpasses the native/vanilla version in my opinion. It involves the Lord of the Rings, adds unique weaponry and influence which can be confusing at first but helps to make a nice challenge. You can play as a man of Rohan, a man of Gondor, an Elf of Lothlorien or a man of Isengard. I think you can play orc but I'm not certain and I'm tired as it is and am not going to check.

Onin no Ran - Japanese game. Pretty good. Involves some interesting in-game politics/merchant system.

Caladria at War - Community-made add-on to the open-ended gameplay of vanilla/native. More quests, more heroes to recruit and a plethora of new enemies to crush or be crushed by. Basically making the vanilla/original more epic in scope. The Turkish designers are amazing in Vanilla but the storyline is rather lackluster and this makes up for it.


IMO: Just download both and figure it out. First one download to Mount&Blade. Second one download to Mount&Blade 2. Start will recognize the newer version so just go to program files.​

The Catch

There's always one of these. Unfortunately, the game is a trial-based game. You can play till level 6 or 30 in game days. Which is quite a lot. You can purchase it for $22 dollars (like I did, only because I'm awesome) or you can use the following part to pretty much not pay for it and get around it.

System Specs, according to Wikipedia
Minimum: Pentium 766 MHz or Compatible Processor; Windows 98/ME/2000/XP; Direct3D 3D accelerator

I don't believe that, but whatever.

Downloads
Mount&Blade, Version 0.808 (76MB)
Mount&Blade, Version 0.890 (114MB)​

The URLs

-
- Wikipedia Entry on Mount&Blade
- Official Site for Mount&Blade
- Download Mount&Blade
- Unofficial Mount&Blade Site Filled With Awesome Mods
- The Greatest Mod, The Last Days (Lord of the Rings Based)
- Excellent Walkthrough for Mount&Blade​

 

Looks alright, I'll download it and have a go.

 

Hush, stupid hobbit.

 

I've tried this a few months ago. I liked the idea, setting and combat system, but the sad truth is, this game isn't finished yet. It simply lacks the main quest, a story to tie it all together.

So, after a few hours of riding around and duelling, I got bored and uninstalled the game. I'll definitely keep an eye on it, though, and come back to it when it's finished.

 

Yeah I too have tried this game few times and it's great. But as ip82 said, it gets boring after some time.

However, the best thing in this game is that once you purchase it, you get to update the game for free. And the earlier you buy it the cheaper the price is.I only hope they'd add a multiplayer feature, because online battles in this game could be massively epic.

 

Somehow, I'm surprised...

Plus, this game is pretty cool. I have tried it, but I prefer controlling one person. I don't have the skills to control an army, so I prefer just one person to keep track of (and hopefully not kill).

 

The Last Days has quests and a storyline in which there is an 'end-game' so to speak. It's a Lord of the Rings mod in which you can play for several factions of men and a faction of elves. You have to activate all four armies of Mordor in the settings (an old man asks you if you want to suffer) to win or else you just force everyone into submission around you.

The Last Days


Mods Forum -- Lots of Mods

And as I said - someone has made a mod that expands the vanilla storyline.

What on earth? How do you survive for long or even battle with only one person? I guess you can join and scavenge for other battles but learning how to command will greatly improve your chances/fun .

 

If you're a Tolkien fan, The Last Days of the Third Age is the end-all experience. It's a mod for the original Mount and Blade (sometimes there is confusion because there are two versions out: the original and the expansion, Warband, and sometimes mods are only for one of them).

The modding team that created this mod really went to unfathomable lengths to create this. Almost the whole of Middle Earth is laid out and rendered in exquisite detail. Minas Tirith, Edoras, Lothlorien, Thranduil's Hall in Mirkwood, it's unbelievable. It is disappointing that there's no Rivendell, but the map can only be so large (and it is). There's no Shire either, but I don't really care about them.

The soldiers you can bring under your command do not cease to amaze me. The detailwork with the character models are beautiful - the elves look like they should, the first time I saw a Rohirrim cavalry charge I was like "No way", the Gondor armies look awesome, the orcs and Uruk-hai look exactly like they do in Peter Jackson's trilogy.

There are some flaws. There's no overarching storyline, basically it's you hardening your troops and rising to higher rankings within the realms as you fight against the factions aligned with Sauron. The quests feel very rote after a while. Some storyline would be awesome.

It's not finished yet. The biggest feature that needs to be implemented is the ability to siege enemy strongholds.

Right now, I'm playing the Gondor faction. I began recruiting Gondor levies from the capitol, and traveling throughout the various fiefdoms like Pelargir, Lindir and Dol Amroth, undertaking missions and battling against incursions. Trying to help out the various lords, like Faramir holed up in West Osgiliath.

Now I'm gallivanting around with a very imposing host of Citadel swordsmen, archers, Ithilien rangers, Pelargir marines, Knights of Lamedon, and Swan Knights of Dol Amroth.

Raising your troops from weakling neophytes to the baddest motherfuckers on this side of the Anduin is really the heart of this game. It's because your followers are growing alongside your character and you're engineering fantastic victories with them, and there's the sheer good looks of their character models. Again, the Gondor, Rohan, Lothlorien troops just look amazing.

It really, really is the closest you can get to living out all those boyhood Lord of the Rings fantasies.

If you're a Tolkien fan, or ever were and your interest tapered off as it did for me, you owe it to yourself to play this. It will make you feel like a little child again.

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Just a note on the ingenuity of the game's whole system. It's flexible such that the worlds of classic fantasy literature can be recreated. There's a mod called A Clash of Kings for A Song of Ice and Fire that I'm downloading, and there are plenty of people with their own ideas for settings who have made mods for them. There's also some historical mods like 1257 and Brytenwalda that look very cool.