Mount & Blade (PC CD)

This is an impressive game from an independent developer. My initial impressions of a slightly rough-edged game rapidly gave way to a growing addiction.

Graphically the game is okay without being stunning. Characters look slightly clumsy and faces are pretty ugly. This probably accounts for the first impression. However, once you start on the combat you realise that this is not so important and the gameplay is a whole different ball game. On the plus side graphically the environments all look good, and combat is generally rendered quite well.

Fighting a single opponent one on one it rapidly becomes apparent that this is not just a click-fest combat so readily presented by most RPGs. When you decide to strike is important. The left-click attack, right-click parry or block combination works really well. Attack at the wrong moment and you may open yourself up to take a hit or your opponent may block. Get it right and your blow will hit home. There are no healing potions here and you don't automatically gain hit-points by leveling - so blocking and good armour become increasingly important.

The game has two main views. The rendered 3D world which is used to explore towns and castles and for combat, and an abstracted map which is used for travelling. The latter shows your party and other parties within your line of sight. It helps to improve your spotting ability so you can see and assess bandit parties before they spot you and make a decision as to whether to engage or avoid.

The game makes no concessions for the beginner. Travel alone at your peril. Bandit parties of varying size and quality roam freely and will not hesitate to attack, rob and carry you off. Horse archers are particularly frustrating to engage, if you don't have sufficient cavalry in your party. The fact that the world is so dangerous for the beginner helps create a feeling of realism - but it can be frustrating at times.

Quests may be picked up from NPCs and can be a good way of earning cash. You do need to be careful what you take on as the quests appear to take little account of your abilities and may send you across very dangerous terrain with goods to carry which slow you down and make it difficult to escape from pursuing villains.

To aid you on your way you can recruit heroes, mercenaries or peasants. The latter can be trained relatively rapidly to become useful assets on the battlefield. It is very satisfying to train up a party and then watch them grow in skills to successfully take on tougher foes in larger numbers. As your party grows in numbers and experience your wage bill will also grows - but so does the potential for profit. The game gives you the ability to issue commands to your troops during the fight (whole party at once or by type). Good tactics can carry the day - but unsurprisingly battles can get pretty messy. The battles generally are immense fun once you get the hang of them.

The open-ended nature of the game allows you to forge you own path. Swear allegiance to one lord and fight his wars for him. Act as mercenary and sell your sword to the highest bidder, or just head out to pillage or protect as it takes your fancy.

There are a lot of positives to this game. It is well thought out, generally well executed and very, very different to the mass of RPGs. But there are frustrations too. The hand-to-hand combat system is intuitive but once mounted it seems harder to predict when a blow will land or fail. The archery targeting is very hard to get used to, particularly at longer ranges. There are a number of display bugs and the usual issues of path-finding and getting blocked by terrain features which are all too common in 3D games. On the large map bandit parties may be obscured by town symbols and appear without warning ruining a carefully plotted approach. The method of managing your troops inventories and skills is not intuitive and results in a lot of unnecessary clicking. But all of these are minor niggles for a game which has so much potential and so much charm. Definitely worth a look, not least because you can play it (with full features) to level 7 before you buy it by downloading it from the Taleworlds website!

I fear my evenings will be spent riding the plains of Calradia for months to come!

I played the trial downloadable version of this game until it expired and couldn't wait for the full version to arrive, in fact Mount & Blade is singularly responsible for bringing me back to playing PC games; I don't think I've bothered since 2006 when I came across EVE ONLINE.

Point of reference for many with M&B will be that graphically the game resembles the Elder Scrolls games Morrowind and Oblivion, but to tell the truth it is there that all similarities end. M&B is essentially an RPG/strategy hybrid - it contains elements of both kinds of games, with a wonderful emphasis on combat: large-scale battles in this game are something to be experienced (if medieval combat is your cup of tea, anyway) it's nothing but exhilarating to charge across battlefields hacking at enemy soldiers from horseback, I've actually found myself assuming a sort of riding position mid-gallop in front of my monitor whilst playing - the combat is where the game comes into its own, I don't think I've ever played a game where this was so detailed, for instance; it's not uncommon to find yourself on foot in the midst of fighting and witness a friendly mounted knight galloping past and slaying unseen foes for you, other nice touches include the way arrows stick in your shield (and stay there), regardless of whether you're wearing it on your back or not.

Combat isn't the entire game though, as you progress you acquire fiefs and it is up to you to garrison and protect them from bandits, etc. There's so much to do in the game that you're not likely to get bored quickly. However, there are a few negative points: the dialogue isn't great, but it's a small part of the game. There's also a few annoying bugs, but these are quickly & easily sorted with downloadable fixes.

Oh, and the music's really good too.

A quick word on the visuals: many are quick to turn tail and run if the game has even a hint that the graphics are anything but next-gen. I've noticed that detractors are keen to note this with M&B, but bear in mind this is an independently developed game from the ground up and in all fairness, graphical updates have already been made available for free download, as have a dozen mods that set the game during the hundred-years war and Britain in 1297.

This game is an exercise in substance over style that should keep you hooked for ages - utterly recommended and the best game I've played in years.

Mount and Blade has been around as an internet distributed product for quite a while now so it's amazing to see it finally get a retail release.

At heart it's a military simulation of early medievel combat with an emphasis on cavalry based combat. The developer's Turkish background gives it a flavour we don't often see in old Europe.

Graphics aren't cutting edge and it's a little rough around the edges but nobody else is doing anything close to this. At once it harks back to the old school difficulty curves of many older games while offering the free-roaming sandbox play that's characteristic of more modern titles. If you ever wondered what it was like to be in the middle of a Total War skirmish this is probably as close as you're going to get.

I think a comparison to Elite isn't that far off the mark. It's a single player only game with no real goals apart from those you set yourself. For most people your ultimate goal is going to be accumulating wealth and power but you can choose to concentrate on conquering or trading as your mood takes you.