Review: Mount & Blade
Mount & Blade - the first of the GamersGate titles we’ll review here – is an action/role-playing game independently developed by TaleWorlds and distributed by Paradox Interactive. For what it may lack in spiffy state-of-the-art graphics it more than makes up in interesting gameplay.
You’ll start as a solitary wanderer in a non-fantasy, roughly medieval world, and from this near-naked state you can improve armor, weapons, amass followers and build yourself into a powerful warlord. The same castles through which you had trouble getting past the gates may someday be the ones to which you lay siege, and conquer.
Getting there is the challenge. The tutorials are good, and combat with blade and bow, on foot and on horseback is not difficult to learn, but putting the skills into practice in the game may prove to be an early barrier to some. It’s a little bit beyond that easy-to-learn-hard-to-master threshold, as the application of what you learn will require some hand-eye coordination. And the battles have consequences. If you ‘re defeated you may lose valuable game-time while your character is enslaved or imprisoned. And there is no option for abstracting battle results as in the Total War series.
Plenty enough of the postings on youtube.com and the trailer below will give a good idea of how fighting in the tactical screens goes…
So except for the above comment and the tip below we’ll say no more. For those who wish to devote the time and who are not debilitated by 3D action-game vertigo, like yours truly, the investment is well worth the effort, since the premise is unlike any other game, and the execution is admirable.
There’s more to the game though than the fighting.
There have been other story-style set-ups in other games but this one works better than any we remember. The handful of questions about your upbringing and misty past create your character’s background and lead right into the skills screen, with point bonuses based on the answers given. After the skill screen you get to decide what the character looks like, with some simple decisions about haircolor/style and facial shapes and sizes, and sliders to draw the features along a range between extremes. Play more than one game and you’ll have to go out of your way to make one character looks the same as another.
After that you’re placed on the strategic map, armed with little more than your wits, some food, a horse, a sword, a bow and just enough scraps of clothing to maintain modesty. This map is in three dimensions and can be zoomed and rotated, but its graphics are flattish; it’s not designed for much more than deciding what your next move will be. On the map you’ll see the castles and villages in the area, the major terrain features that may affect your movements. You will also see – and often, have a chance to avoid – other roving bands – various varieties of thieves and thugs, as well as warbands belonging to the local chieftains.
Mount & Blade Strategic Map. Use the Training Field for in-game practice.
You will also be able to enter a training area In the game where time is taken but your efforts may be rewarded by minor skills increases, and more importantly, after leaving the tutorials behind, you can continue to refine your own real-life skills. handling a sword or bow on foot or horseback.
The controls for weapons-handling are fairly straightforward and simple – for the sword, left-click to start your wind-up and left-click again to swing. On horseback though, everything changes, because you also must control the horse:
Tip: When on horseback in the tactical screens, movement and facing of the horse is controlled by the WASD key combination just like for the character alone on foot. Facing of the rider is controlled by the mouse. When on horseback and wielding a sword, you’ll need to maneuver with fingers of the left hand on the WASD to as close as possible to your target, while at the same time facing the rider and timing the mouse-click swing just right. Avoid some initial frustration around how to best achieve a hit by paying attention to the position of your mouse cursor with relation to the center-line of the horse. Your rider will swing to the opposite side of the side where the mouse cursor rests. So if your target is on the horse’s right side, you must be facing right, yes, but your mouse cursor will have to be to the left of the center of the horse to allow your rider to swing on the right side. And vice versa.
In the villages talk to any villager to get a general idea of the village’s prosperity but you’ll go to the Village Elder for any quests. Hover the mouse over the Elder himself for a handy meter showing his attitude toward you.
Mount & Blade: Entering a village
Through the Village Elder you can take on the offered tasks, or not. If you take them on you don’t have to execute them in order but they will have time limits. You may be asked to get some wheat for the village or perhaps teach the villagers to defend themselves and help them to fight marauders a la the Seven Samurai-Magnificent Seven-Bugs Life movies. The villagers will learn from you if you have mastered the skills yourself. And eventually, when you take this task, you will be faced with the reappearance the bandits, and your trained villagers, with you as their leader, will have to fight. You may also get different types of tasks from a prince of a castle, such as collecting taxes from a nearby village. In this quest you will earn part of the taxes you collect as a commission, which can be quite lucrative. Also the villages and castles will be where you recruit your followers, trade for food and weapons and pick up information about the local conditions.
Though the graphics on the strategic map are merely adequate this is where you’ll receive reports of the regional political situation – who’s at war with whom. On the tactical map the character figures are not as life-like as you’d expect in this day and age but the landscapes are stunning. Athough some of the hilly regions seem a little pointier than normal.
Audio-wise the effects are adequate but effective. Riding a horse can be fun and your mount will be quite responsive, with whinnies and snorts when appropriate; the sounds of walking, then trotting, and then galloping hooves will be feedback on speed.
Conclusion
For those with an interest in 3-D non-fantasy, Middle-Ages role playing action, though the sword fighting and horseback ridng may require some mastery of hand-eye skills to do well, a look at Mount & Blade would be well worth considering.
Tags: Mount & Blade
GamersGate, Gaming, Mount & Blade, games | bshears November 30, 2008 | 
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