Introduction:
Mount&Blade is a medieval single-player open-ended action role-playing video game (as per said by wikipedia). of course, you start as a single person wearing medieval yet fashionable clothes and kinda weak in the beginning. You first start to look for companions (Like and RPG) the games doesn't end as well (that is why it's open-ended) and when you battle enemies, it's real time action at the same time the characters and your companions level up as well.
The best thing about mount&blade is that it's mod friendly, and it does have a vast majority of people that modify their own game for it's longevity. Meaning, if you're sick and tired that you've already conquered the whole damn kingdom of w/e. Then you can just download modules at http://www.taleworlds.com/mb_settings.html. As for myself, I haven't finish the game itself and have yet to see those modules.
Gameplay and some thoughs about it:
1. Map navigation: This is a real pain in the ass yo! Just think about how incredibly foreign the names of each town, castle and civilian village. It's really a choir when you visit from town to town and the fact that you want to level up is absurd at times. Sometimes, you would see enemies that will run away from you because you have a huge army, then at times if they know that they can kick you arse, then they'll hunt you down like an animal. Anyway, if you probably play the game for about 14 hours and you've got a feel for it. Then map navigation will not be that much of an issue and I'll try to provide some simple steps on how to deal with this occurrence.
2. Inventory: Yeah the inventory is very simple, kinda Diablo-ish and you know the drill
You also need to buy food and stuff. Food so that the morale of your comrades doesn't get low (meaning if they are poor in morale, they'll leave the party and make travelling slower) Stuff, so you can trade it from town to town.
3. Troops: the interesting part, you get to level up your troops everytime you defeat some enemies of the king (or mountain bandits at times). You can order your troops to defend a position or charge the enemies. Also, you can choose if you want to order only the archers, cavalries and infantries. Man, the battles is intense in this one and sometimes retarded at best
Btw, you can actually kidnap defeated lords and kings, then ransom them for money! You'd actually know who you up against if you asked your own lords "who are we at war against or w/e?" I also suggest not to fight every single lord because they can out match you with mass soldiers or they can pounce on you like hyenas. (I'm trying to say 1v5 lords is like 50 soldiers vs 200 to 500 soldiers anyone?)
4. Fighting: This one has a kung fu side to it, I'm not going to provide all the details but I can say is that gets a little repetitive when you're not mounted on a horse, but mount-on-horse action is so fucking awesome! You get do to horse-bys on does puny humans wearing ordinary clothes while you gallop your way and slash their heads! Man, the game is really about the horses if I was to be ask. Also, there is a system called siege the castle/defend the castle. These one is pretty 50/50 for me. It's sometimes fun due to being too challenging and at times retard again because of it's simplicity. Well, you'll get my drift once you play the besiege the castle.
Strategy (I'm going to put it in spoiler for option of finding out the game by yourself):
+ Show Spoiler +
I'm just going to try listing the necessary stuff in the game so you will not be confused:
1. Importance of Money -> Money here is totally relevant, not unlike in other RPG's that when you go level 9999 you're money is nothing more than display or something you just flaunt. NO, it's like real life, if you don't have the money, you don't have the troops and bye bye to them. So as much as possible join tournaments and kidnap conflicting lords as much as possible.
2. Get Comrades from Town Taverns -> You get unique characters that will help you in your quest from kingdom conquering! They have different specialities, there is an engineer, a medic (so that you can quickly heal the wounded in no time), a very awesome fighter, a leader, a very intelligent young woman (for buying books), etc. The problem with the unique characters is that sometimes they conflict with each other, then of course you have to be bias whom to support with their arguments. Of course, you always have to be bias with the higher level comrade since they are more useful.
Note: Also get a lot of recruits from different villages, Swadia and Vaegirs has awesome knights, Khans have awesome crossbow men, Rhodoks spearmen and Nords for Infantry or w/e.
3. Be an Errand Boy -> The love and hate relationship with the game. You are going to be provided with a lot of task by the kings and lords. Man, it's going to be 50 percent fighting and 50 percent delivery boy which looks like a choir. But you got to do this to get their support, get a lot of pat in the back, of course in the long run, the king and his men will provide you a castle or even best a TOWN!
4. Don't forget to buy food -> for the party's morale of course, and you also need to buy different because they kinda like it. food is quite expensive here and beef always rots. (stay away from buying beef)
5. Take advantage of the trading -> try buying a lot of stuff like oil, furs etc cheaply then selling it to the other town really helps! You'd gain lots of money if you know that the other town want's to buy the junk you have for a higher price.
6. Always talk to prisoners -> very simple just always remember to talk to some of them because there's a big risk that they sometimes run away.
7. Last but not the least, Garrison -> Just put some soldiers in your castle in case you already own one, so that you don't need to pay them all on a weekly basis, Also helps if you are being sieged by the warring tribes.
1. Importance of Money -> Money here is totally relevant, not unlike in other RPG's that when you go level 9999 you're money is nothing more than display or something you just flaunt. NO, it's like real life, if you don't have the money, you don't have the troops and bye bye to them. So as much as possible join tournaments and kidnap conflicting lords as much as possible.
2. Get Comrades from Town Taverns -> You get unique characters that will help you in your quest from kingdom conquering! They have different specialities, there is an engineer, a medic (so that you can quickly heal the wounded in no time), a very awesome fighter, a leader, a very intelligent young woman (for buying books), etc. The problem with the unique characters is that sometimes they conflict with each other, then of course you have to be bias whom to support with their arguments. Of course, you always have to be bias with the higher level comrade since they are more useful.
Note: Also get a lot of recruits from different villages, Swadia and Vaegirs has awesome knights, Khans have awesome crossbow men, Rhodoks spearmen and Nords for Infantry or w/e.
3. Be an Errand Boy -> The love and hate relationship with the game. You are going to be provided with a lot of task by the kings and lords. Man, it's going to be 50 percent fighting and 50 percent delivery boy which looks like a choir. But you got to do this to get their support, get a lot of pat in the back, of course in the long run, the king and his men will provide you a castle or even best a TOWN!
4. Don't forget to buy food -> for the party's morale of course, and you also need to buy different because they kinda like it. food is quite expensive here and beef always rots. (stay away from buying beef)
5. Take advantage of the trading -> try buying a lot of stuff like oil, furs etc cheaply then selling it to the other town really helps! You'd gain lots of money if you know that the other town want's to buy the junk you have for a higher price.
6. Always talk to prisoners -> very simple just always remember to talk to some of them because there's a big risk that they sometimes run away.
7. Last but not the least, Garrison -> Just put some soldiers in your castle in case you already own one, so that you don't need to pay them all on a weekly basis, Also helps if you are being sieged by the warring tribes.
Man, I think this is not a brief introduction of the game anymore:
My thoughts:
It's really addicting and personally I like the game, Man the thing that got to me is the horse-by's! It's also damn challenging as well, it's a little complex at times but if you are pretty good at decision-making and planning a head. it will work just fine, I also have problems with autosaving and saving on exit. Man, had to cheat the game many times (pressing alt+f4) because I was losing a castle or losing a fight. Forgot to add the graphics looks like so 2002, which is not too visually appealing
Man, to be honest I just wanted to put this in a link but I don't want to be a rule-breaker so I've tried my best to put all my insight in this post
Just check out the wiki page if you like their information more than mine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_and_blade
Anyway, to hype things up:
And put your computer up to the challenge:
Also, PM me if you need details or if you very interested about the game since I know for a fact I might have missed some things. I do have some mod stuff with me that I can send to you (like example is battlesizer and so that you can have 500 vs 500 battles which crashed Mount and Blade )
And please enjoy the hard work I've put in this thread
edit: also, if there are alot of grammar issues please just ignore, kinda rushed this one
Insight provided by Falcynn:
If you really want to have an awesome time with this I suggest getting the Native Expansion mod from the forums. Makes the game so much more awesome
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Mount&Blade
and this is a good site to understand some strategies and tips a little better. Also it helps to understand right away the likes and dislikes of each comrade, so you don't end up like me and have a party full of people who don't like pillaging villages (which is my main source of income ) or who hate doing whatever else it is you prefer doing.
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Mount&Blade
and this is a good site to understand some strategies and tips a little better. Also it helps to understand right away the likes and dislikes of each comrade, so you don't end up like me and have a party full of people who don't like pillaging villages (which is my main source of income ) or who hate doing whatever else it is you prefer doing.