Obligitory review of bannerlord.

I have played Warband for over 400 hours and Bannerlord for 40 hours, I am playing the 1.9.0 release of Bannerlord so basically the full release is later in the month, here are my thoughts.

Positives:

The battles are fun, so chaotic and atmospheric. Having a battle in a blizzard, watching my men trudge through swamps, and creating a shield wall to defend against the empire's lances and arrows. All fun and they did a good job here.

Everything to do with your character is well done IMO, the great character creator is superb, and the perks are really fun and allow a lot of replayability. Wanna be an archer and captain your own archer team that does bonus damage? You can do that. Wanna lead your troops from afar like Stannis Baratheon? You can do that wth leadership. Wanna make loads of dough like Tywin to fund your armies? Stewardship.

I like the influence system, you join a faction, beat enemy lords and your faction lords will more likely follow you into battle it was a pain sometimes to do that in Warband, much improved here.

Sieges are good when they work, armour and weapons look great, battle maps are superb and towns all look good, too bad there is no reason to explore at all. Warband had a samurai sword and other Warband mods had cool secrets as well,

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The problems:

A lot of problems are not huge deals however it's a death by 1000 cuts.

The economy is broken, workshops cost 20k to build and 100 denars to maintain however it gives you like 300 denars at best, caravans cost 15k to build AND cost you a companion to look after them, they can also be attacked and the profits are gone. The only way to make money in this game is by using boring broken smithing or battle loot gives you like 20k a pop. Tournaments give nothing either.

Even cities are tough to make money on because if you do not have the same culture as the same city being taken? They will rebel unless you get a companion with the same culture, bearing in mind the game limits you in how many companions you can get at a time, gone are the days in Warband where you could assemble the medieval avengers like Jeremus, Balty and Mathis to go to war.

" Bannerlord is all about battles so battles should be lucrative " yes but Bannerlord is also a sandbox and right now there are two ways to make money, one is essentially an official cheat and the other is battles and this leads to another issue.

The biggest problem with Bannerlord is that you progress through the early and mid-game way too fast and the end game is quite frankly a joke. Warband had no endgame either but the early and mid-game was slower and felt more rewarding, you scratched and clawed your way to the top.

A couple of battles in Bannerlord will make you financially secure, the progession is too quick.

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Bannerlord consists of:

Clan tier 1: Farm looters and tournaments

Clan tier 2: Build a small force of elites and become a merc, make millions through defeating enemy lords

Clan tier 3: Become a vassal and again make millions through defeating lords.

Clan tier 4: Make your kingdom, everyone declares war on you and lose all your money because the game has no diplomacy and ai that does not make understandable decisions

Lords have no personality, companions are randomly generated so you don't talk to them at all and feel no connection, I married my wife with two conversations. Managing cities are tedious to manage and no endgame.

Bannerlord is a fantastic battle simulator and commander fantasy, that's all it is though, all RPG elements like lord personality, different ways to get to the top and feasts to get to know your fellow lords. All gone.

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Prophecy of pendor is peak mount and blade to me.

Submitted October 17, 2022 at 05:32AM by Laytonc97 https://ift.tt/4QXzNka