Cross-Post: A Fan’s Reaction to Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword

Apparently, sometime in the past year I forgot this blog existed.  So when I went to write a post that is exactly what I intended to post here, I published it on my other, also-neglected, blog, preposterous.  Following is the intro and a link to said post. Hope you enjoy!  And maybe next time I'll remember to use to right blog.

This is the first time I have actually sat down to write a review of, or rather a reaction to, a video game.  I say a “reaction to” because I’ve logged less than 10 hours and therefore I have not gotten the full experience yet.  With a game like one of the Mount & Blade series, you have to spend a lot of time playing the single-player campaign to really experience it all.  I think I’ve played over 50 hours in Warband, and I still enjoy running around the map doing my thing and definitely have not seen every aspect of the game.  Also, I am not a video game developer, nor am I a critic.  I just play ‘em and sometimes have opinions.

I have been quite a fan of TaleWorlds’ Mount & Blade series for some time.  For those of you that are not familiar with the Mount & Blade series, they are a set of open-ended RPGs focusing on medieval mounted combat (hence the “mount” in the title).   You create your own character and lead a band of heroes and soldiers in a world wrought with war (you get to decide who makes up your army and how many soldiers you take along).  The games prior to With Fire and Sword took  place in a semi-realistic fictional medieval land called Calradia.  When I say semi-realistic, I mean that there’s no magic, and that the characters mostly stick to what we would consider the societal norms of a medieval realm.  Though the Mount & Blade series lacks the polished feel of other sandbox-like games, they are probably the most accurate RPG representation of a medieval world I have encountered.  Granted, I haven’t encountered that many games that focus on realistic medieval mounted combat.  But if you enjoy exploring a world of lords and ladies and carving a name out of the war-torn land for yourself — these are some niche games that are worth a shot.

On to my observations about the newest installment of TaleWorld’s signature series, which by now, came out a couple months ago.

Mount & Blade: With Fire And Sword!