Mount and Blade Warband - An Update

When I last wrote about Mount and Blade, I spoke about how I hadn’t made any progress with the diplomacy. In fact, I had managed to alienate all the factions (due to not realising that attacking them would make them dislike me...) This time round, though, I was on my best behaviour and ingratiated myself as much as possible.



As I have read before, each promotion changed the game. After pumping an extraordinary amount of time into the game (I won’t reveal how much... ok, around 70 hours in total...) I gained several in-game promotions.

Firstly I was granted the position of Marshall. This meant that I began to try to decimate the other factions. My stupid king, though, didn’t sue for peace with the other factions, meaning that I was fighting on three fronts at once. While somewhat frustrating, it felt manageable. A bit like a promotion would be in real-life, I imagine.

One of the things about this sandbox game that I don’t think I emphasised enough last time is that it should be treated like high-brow literature in the sense that to get the most out of it, you should really read some study guides. Yes, there is an element of fun in killing thousands of enemies. But there’s a certain entropy that sets in rather quickly.

As it was, I used this to my advantage and rebelled against the King. To my surprise, I was allowed to set up my own kingdom aptly (if ridiculously) named The Andersonians. If I had a chance again, I would choose something more like The Gregorians or even The Empire. Or Scarbados. Still, the game continues to hold my interest. Even if I don’t have any diplomacy mods installed, and I don’t quite understand what the hell is going on.

One important update to my original review to note is that the game plays extremely well with Medieval Total War 2. Both involve conquest, and both play with the idea of controlling large armies. The chaos of the Mount and Blade battlefield is more evocative, although the trait system of Medieval TW 2 more immersive;; I image that something that combines both games into a developed system would be highly successful...