Mount & Blade - Medieval Action RPG for PC | Open-World Adventure, Strategy & Combat Game | Perfect for History Enthusiasts & Fantasy Gamers

If anyone has not purchased this game because of the low price (I paid $12 several years ago, now you can get it new for under $9), thinking it can't be any good, you should give it a try. It is by far the most replayable action/shooter/rpg game I have ever played.It is the only game I have that has realistic horses. Riding in other games makes you feel like you are on a mechanical horse with wheels. In M&B your character moves up and down as you go, giving a realistic sensation of riding. There are at least three separate gaits; walk, trot, and gallop.Ranged combat is as good as in any game I've played. Being mounted means you are not limited to one or two shots before the enemy closes. Melee combat is better than in any other game I've played. You can attack from four directions by moving the mouse as you left click. You can use an overhead chop, a forward thrust, or a forehand or backhand slash. Using the right mouse you can parry each of the four directional attacks or block if you have a shield. Realistically, some weapons are limited in the attacks allowed. You can't use a forward thrust with a mace, for example. Each weapon has a specific length, not just short, medium and long, like most games. The length really makes a difference. If you switch to a longer or shorter weapon you will have to adjust your approach when attacking. If the computer opponent attacks at the same time as yourself, his blow lands, yours doesn't. (ties go to the AI) You can't just stand there and left click as fast as possible like a lot of games. Damage done includes bonuses for speed and head shots. The only things that would have made it better would be a fatigue factor, the ability to duck (you can jump)and look over your shoulder, and weapon breakages.No more crawling around dungeons. The battlefields are large and open. The terrain in the 3D areas corresponds to where you were on the world map when you encountered the enemy force. It could be open fields, hills, woods, etc. A single battle can easily last over 30 minutes.In the big cities there are arenas where you can enter melee free-for-alls or sometimes tournaments. Both are non-lethal to your character and a lot of fun. In the tournaments you go through a series of rounds (assuming you survive) and they are always different. There might be 2 teams of 6, 4 teams of 3, etc. You never know what sort of weapon you'll have either. You might be mounted with a lance or on foot with an axe and shield, etc.When I purchased the game I knew there were mods available but at first didn't look into them. I'm not real tech savvy and anyway I only have a dial-up connection so there was no way I was going to try downloading a 100-300 MB mod. Then some time ago I discovered my local library didn't mind if I plugged a USB flash drive into their computers (with high speed connections). Since then I have downloaded over two dozen mods from [...] Many are in compressed form but there was even a link on the website for a free zip utility. ([...]) It works great. All the mods are free also and you don't have to register to download them.You don't have to overwrite files or anything to install the mods. Mount & Blade was designed with modding in mind. When you start the game there is a drop-down menu which shows all the mods you have installed. They don't interfere with each other and each one can have its own saved game(s). Admittedly all the games are similar in that they use the same system but there is still a different feel when you go from the original medieval with horses and swords to say the Napoleonic era with muskets or a Martian science fiction mod with rocket sleds, ray guns and two-headed aliens. There are mods for just about any era you can think of: ancient Greece or Japan, the old west, 1930's China, a post Apocalypse wasteland, or Star Wars. Some of the mods have even added troop formation commands and kingdom management features.I know many people have complained about the lack of a main quest. Some mods have even added that, although most of the quests are generic. To me that is a plus. There are many games I've played that weren't anywhere near as fun as M&B but I felt I had to continue just to finish the game since I had already invested so much time into it. There is no such feeling with M&B. If you get tired of a game just switch to another mod. Since they use the same system it is easy to switch back and forth. Mount and Blade is sort of like real life - its not about the destination, its about the journey.This game is actually very fun and addictive when you first install and play it. The horse mounted combat is by far the best aspect of the game. Everything else seems underdeveloped or just plain missing. There is no plot, the voice acting is non-existent or horrible. All of the quests are tedious and annoying, and you get the same annoying quests over and over and over again, and unlike most games where you are rewarded for completing quests, the quests in this game are actually inconvenient and expensive for you to do. Most of the time the quests only reward you with "honor" or a better reputation with someone, but in the process you spend most of what little money you have since most quests require you to spend a bunch of your own money to complete. Ironically, the "honor" and reputation you work so hard to gain, doesn't even seem to affect the game anyways. My last game I just completely ignored all the honor and reputation quests and I am doing just fine without them. While the combat system takes some getting used to (it seems very hard at first) once you get the hang of it, you will leave a path of death and destruction in your wake, and have fun doing so. One of the best, if not the best feature of this game is that it is highly modable, and there are several interesting and fun mods that can easily be installed and played due to the games smart module system. The biggest weakness of the game is that it is just so undeveloped in some areas, it has so much room for improvement. Just a simple thing like typing up different possible responses and quest descriptions from the NPCs, but instead every NPC gives the exact same quests, with the exact same text / dialogue. Just a tiny bit if creativity and time to type a few extra paragraphs worth of text could have made this one facet 10x better. Just hiring a few people to do voice overs here and there would have added something to the game, even un-trained voice actors would have been better than nothing. In the end you may end up feeling as I did, that this game has so much potential, but it hasn't been fully realized yet. Perhaps sometime in the future someone will take the time to make this game the way it should be! In the end I had to take away 2 stars for the huge amount of things that are obviously missing or underdeveloped, and seem so easy to have done. I mean seriously give me a [...] budget, and 1 week, and I can, by myself, add a huge amount of improvements in the way of text, voice overs, etc...and yet after all the time and effort they spent on certain aspects of the game, they couldn't handle this simple amount of work / expense. To summarize:The good:* A unique RPG game different than the usual wizard and dragon stuff, based on medieval style combat with horses.* Horse combat! It's fun! Jousting! Horse Archery!* Lot's of cool mods!* Cool castle / city sieges! (needs lots of work, but still can be fun)* Lot's of cool weapons to enjoy destroying your foes with! (and mods add even more cool weapons!!)Not so good:* So many underdeveloped aspects of the game such as quests, text dialogue, voice acting, lack of a storyline...* While the graphics are perfectly functional, they are not even close to top notch for the time this game was released.* the sound is the bare minimal, maybe even less than that.* There are bugs with the combat system, many times a weapon can go right through an enemy target and not do any damage, but it is not so bad that it breaks the game, as you can just attribute it to a normal "close miss".* The AI is stupid as hell. When you first start playing the game, the AI will whoop you because you are not used to the combat system + you have crappy gear + your weapon skills are low level (speed and accuracy improves as your weapon skills raise via leveling). But as soon as those three things you have fixed with time, you realize the AI is exceedingly stupid. But what the AI lacks for in intelligence it will make up for by outnumbering you, high level archers will basically be "aimbots" that never miss, and no matter how high your weapon skills are, the AI (top tier units / bosses) always seems to swing swords 2x as fast as you can....and run 2x as fast as you can.* After playing for a few days or maybe a few weeks, you will realize the game is exceedingly repetitive and it will then quickly start to bore you, you will install mods probably to breathe new life into it, but then in another few days again it will bore you to tears. (but it is very fun for the first few days).4 stars for fun factor, because the horse combat can be so fun you forget about all the other issues / problems.3 stars overall because there are so many deficiencies, I have to deduct at least 2 stars. 1 star deduction would not cover the huge amount of underdeveloped or missing things. But if you somehow missed this one when it was released, it is still a must try game, despite it's deficiencies.A lot of fighting, but still always the same.You can get tired with the style and it is very repetitive...