Bannerlord: First Impressions

Mount & Blade: Warband is one of the first games I ever wrote about on this blog. It was a little rough around the edges, but a game I thoroughly enjoyed to play. And I guess I can now say the same about its sequel (which is actually a prequel, chronologically speaking) – Mount & Blade: Bannerlord – which, after eight or so years of development, has finally released, albeit in Early Access.

The Early Access release had me a little concerned. The last thing I wanted was another DayZ situation, in which a game that’s gone through various stages of development hell is dumped on Steam using the EA tag in order to excuse the shoddy state of the product. Thankfully, that doesn’t appear to be the case with Bannerlord.

The game certainly isn’t finished, and it certainly has its fair share of bugs and issues, but the majority of the planned content is already available and the game, even in this early state, is very fun to play. And in a very positive sign for the future of Bannerlord, patches have been released nearly every day since launch which have already fixed or begun to fix the most pressing issues.

I can only talk about my experience with Bannerlord, but player experience will vary. I’ve not had a single crash in 40 hours of play, but I’ve seen other players report frequent crashes. I’ve also seen people report issues of save corruption but, once again, it’s not an issue I’ve encountered. That’s something to keep in mind – my experience, as far as performance and technical stability goes – has been pretty positive, but that’s not been the case for every player and it may not be for you.

Bannerlord begins with a decent (as far as options go) character creator, although it’s hard not to create a character who doesn’t look like a walking corpse with dead eyes – they really do need to work on those faces. Once you’ve chosen a ‘history’ for your character (that determines your initial player stats) you’re put into a short tutorial section that will introduce you to the basics of combat, recruitment and movement on the world map.

It’s short and it’s limited, but it’s good enough to get you started. That said, Bannerlord is in desperate need of more tutorial systems. It doesn’t necessarily need more tutorial quests or dialogue – a comprehensive set of UI tool tips would be most welcome, for example, because even after 40 hours of play, I’m still figuring out and learning about various aspects of character skills, settlement management and battle tactics that the game just doesn’t explain or reveal.

Visually, Bannerlord looks pretty good. I mean, it’s not exactly on par with other recent games, but it’s good enough and some of the battle animation quality is great. The battle audio is also fantastic and where the game really shines. The battles are wonderfully immersive and, with the option to support up to 1000 models per battle, can be incredibly tense, thrilling and chaotic to experience when two equally sized and equipped armies clash on the field.

Troop AI can be a little dodgy. Enemy armies don’t always play to the strengths of their troop types or the local terrain. And if you ever fall during battle, the odds are that your soldiers will begin behaving like complete idiots and turn what should have been an easy victory into a very costly one. I guess the loss of a commander would naturally result in a loss of troop cohesion, but it’s like they totally forget how to fight at all.

Sieges in Bannerlord are great – when they work properly, that is. They’ve had a pretty major overhaul compared to Warband, with new battering rams, towers and field artillery all constructed on the campaign map prior to the siege and usable once it begins. Storming a castle or a town has never been so much fun – although after 40 hours of play I’ve never been in a position where I’ve gotten to defend a settlement, which is a little disappointing.

The main problem with sieges in Bannerlord is that they’re one of, if not the most, buggy and inconsistent part of the game in its current state. Sometimes troops just get stuck on ladders, unable to climb up or down. Sometimes they’ll wheel a siege tower up to a wall, but then forget how to use it. The performance on some siege maps gets pretty choppy, to say the least. The AI also has problems with the narrow walls and I’ve seen dozens of troops fall to their death because they all got stuck trying to squeeze along a small walkway.

The campaign side of the game plays pretty much just like Warband did – you recruit your troops, level them up and you can choose to join an existing faction or break off and create your own. There’s more options with regard to settlement management and internal faction politics, but a lot of these systems still clearly need work. I’d love to be able to transfer troops between garrisons, for example, without having to manually go and ‘collect’ them myself.

The thing I want more than anything though, is a proper notifications system. Right now, the game does a terrible job of conveying important world events to the player – if a faction declares war, or signs a peace agreement, for example. Or, even more importantly, if one of your towns or castles comes under siege.

The ‘event log’ in the game does inform you of various things, but it moves pretty rapidly and doesn’t always highlight the key information you need. They do seem to be improving this – I’ve seen more ‘pop up’ type notifications appear after recent patches – but it’s something they need to keep working on.

Overall, Bannerlord has been great fun to play, even in this Early Access state. The patches seem to be coming quickly and making real fixes and improvements to the game, but there’s still quite a long way to go. If you’re a fan of Warband I’d say it’s worth picking up right now, but be aware that you may encounter issues and that the game is still a little rough around the edges. Then again, if you’re a fan of Warband, you’re probably going to be okay with that.