Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Review

After two years of Early Access on Steam, finally we have in our hands the final version of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlordwhich also reaches consoles. To the saga Mount & Blade reaped the success since the launch of its first titlein the already distant 2008. This first installment has been nurtured for years of expansion with various settings. Turkish studio Taleworlds managed to find a formula that has dazzled thousands of players worldwide. Now we can enjoy the full Bannerlord experience, so Join us in this crusade for giving a name to our house.

What is Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

In Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord we take on the role of a character created by ourselves in a fictional medieval country, called Calradia. You will have to choose your career path, your physical appearance, and choose a name and a banner for our house. Since the creation of the character, the title makes it clear that the role facet is very present. For instance, we can choose that our character grew up as a merchant and he excelled in treating people well, which would start him off with high grades in charm and commerce.

Once our character is created, we’ll be free to start exploring. The premise of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord are give us a name starting from the bottom. That’s to say, we are a “sword for hire” who will have to earn a living visit the cities to find orders and thus raise our notoriety. Exploration is totally free, and we will have a large map at our disposal to treat it as we wish. We will start by hiring a few soldiers for our gang, and over time we can have our own business, start a family, or even become lords of an entire fiefdom.

Exploración, cornerstone of Mount & Blade II

Dive a little deeper into game mechanics, it’s time to explore. We will spend most of our game time explore the map of Calradia, in zenithal view, although we can move the camera angle as we please. It is very important to stop in towns and villages, because inside we will find locals, mostly merchants or local lords who will offer us missions. If we complete them, we will increase our reputation with that person, this improvement in the relationship will give us the opportunity to be offered more and better troops to recruit and access more orders.

Thus, in the villages one can rest, recruit soldiers, receive orders and we can not forget to trade, since another fundamental aspect is that in our inventory we must always have enough food to feed our troops. We can even carry out “hostile action” against any population to be looted, the game gives complete freedom in this aspect, as well as when making decisions. Also good time management, since most missions have a time limit. The game has day and night cycleand some tasks can take days, like escorting a flock of sheep from one town to another.

A legacy combat system

Inevitably, in our act most conflicts will be resolved with steelSo let’s move on to the combat system. Mount and Blade II will test us different types of battle. In open country with two armies facing each other, or sometimes in small raids with a handful of men. In addition, on certain occasions, we have the possibility of challenge the enemy leader to a one-on-one duelif he doesn’t do it first.

Taleworlds has done pretty well at forward some commands to consoles which are clearly intended for a PC game. For melee weapons, we can attack by directing our cut or lunge in four directions that we choose with the right stick, while pressing the attack button. That is to say a vertical bar, a horizontal bar from the left or from the right and a thrust towards the legs of our opponent. Our “skills” with each type of weapon They will be fundamental in the future of combat.

We also have a button to lock, and In the same way that we attack, we will have to guide our defense depending on the rival slot. It is a type of control we have already seen in some games with this setting, although the truth is that all of these games inherited their controls from the first Mount & Blade. We talk about titles like Knighthood II, recently added to Xbox Gamepassoh kingdom come deliverance, with similar control. It is strongly recommended to start with the Campaign mode, where Relevant tutorials await us to master the controls before exploring the map.

Remarkable performance in its console version

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord It’s not a title that comes to show graphic muscle in front of the great contenders in this aspect, but you don’t need it. worlds of tales he knew how to play this card very well, since the exploration is carried out in zenithal view. On the other hand, the fights are not resolved in a large open world, but in a kind of big sands. In these sands, we move freely and that gives the feeling of being in a large cartography, like a battle in a forest. We can say the same when we enter a town or a villageis a small minimap where we can move around freely.

This resource management makes the game great only having to manage small locations, both when exploring and when fighting. The engine does not suffer in terms of frame rate, and can display a large number of soldiers on the screen without spoiling Something fundamental in a game where we have to turn very well with the control and the “timing” during the attack. The animations are sufficiently detailed, with very well resolved aspects such as differentiate at a glance from what direction the enemy attack will come. Of course, this you can request improvements in some details, such as the appearance of the faces of the characters, very unnatural, or the textures of the vegetation, which clash a little with the rest of the graphic part. At no time will the details take us out of the experience.

Spectacular in its sound section

Where we can’t put any but where we are the sound part of the gamewhether it’s a leisurely stroll through a city, or brandishing a weapon on the battlefield. Mount and Blade II have one of the best soundtracks in terms of a medieval theme, as resounding as that sounds. The same can be said for work that is not music. The clash of steel, the cries of battle, the noise of daily life in a city. All is perfectly rendered for total immersion in our daily lives by Calradia.

Final Conclusions Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

Mount and Blade II amore than extends the experience of its predecessor, deepening all of its mechanics while retaining the basics that made previous Taleworlds work so successful. A title well finished in all its sections, with a Campaign mode and a Sandbox mode, which between the two gives us tens and tens of hours in advance. On the other hand, there is no Multiplayer mode to compete online. Mount and Blade II can dazzle all kinds of players, but especially fans of RPGs, strategy and management games should give it a try. He knows how to mix these genres judiciously, while offering us action and fights in real time. For a server it is a real pleasure to be able to have this type of releases, so niche PC, on my Xbox. If you don’t want to miss all the news from the Xbox universe, visit our website, Xbox Zone.

Finally, we thank the PLAION Europe team for the code that allowed us to perform this analysis.