Recent reviews by AtomicToyRobot

Game feels way different than Tropico 3 and 4. I wouldn't say the changes they made are for the better.

If you like playing Ranked enjoy the god awful lag.

Azure Gaming is GARBAGE for server hosting. Sea of Thieves has the same issue.

Pure. Trash

This review, is brought to you by me trying to get a steam badge.

Games ok, could be better, not the worse. Team usually wants to drop hot and can't fight.

Game crashes after a level so you don't game any experience or money. ♥♥♥♥♥♥ SUCKS.

Fun game until the very end.

Recommended to pick up while on a sale.

Up until the King of Scales the RNG felt fair and didn't swing to unfairly in the NPC favor. Up until the very end.

For some reason the balancing completely changes. My character is usually starved and half dead because of brutal RNG. Random "injuries, misfortune, and curses" are more common than not in the final card adventure leaving me at a severe disadvantage if and when I reach the King of Scales. It's very frustrating and a mark on a other wise enjoyable experience.

Combat is kinda slugish there is this constant slow mode as you counter which makes timing of everything kinda off and makes it hard to develop a flow. Decent game at a discount.

Updating my review since playing more of this game.

First thing I'd want to state is that the game seems well optimized, I have a mid-range PC from 2011 and it can handle large army battles and sieges with little to no issues.

In revisiting this game since April I've noticed things that I think need to be addressed by the Dev team, I'm sure they may have touched on things I'm going to suggest but I hope an additional voice reinforces the importance of these topics.

-Tournaments, in the beginning tournaments are a fairly easy way to earn a few thousand denars and useful gear. Though as you quickly progress through the game the monetary rewards quickly diminish in value; eventually you'll only be seeing a gain of 600 - 900 denars per tournament. Regardless of winning an item per each tournament, a majority of the time the item will not be an improvement over any other equipment that you would have at that point. They really need to rework tournaments to make them worth your time.

-Feasts, need to be brought back into the game. A convenient way to track down and speak to multiple nobles at once. Also is beneficial to the player so that they aren't constantly chasing down nobles that never seem to stay still. I find myself running from one side of a kingdoms territory to the other chasing down a what seems to be a teleporting noble.

-More NPC interaction, interactions with Nobles is still bare-bones compared to Warband. I would like to see this expanded upon but also and adjustment to relationships should be considered. When assisting fellow nobles in combat your reputation only seems to increase with the Army leader or over all faction. Compared to Warband where your relationship with every noble involved in the combat was effected. This would be nice to have brought back even if it is at a lesser value than with the party leader. I think it just makes sense that winning battles would increase your relationship with all your allies.

-Unit AI in combat, One thing I always found frustrating in Warband was units would crowd you in larger fights. If you were attacking an enemy some of your units would also be rushing to attack the same enemy. The issue was that they would generally want to attack from the front and end up blocking your swing. Bannerlord seems to have the same issue were units rush forward to attack and crowd the front of an enemy. It would be nice to see them build the Ai to understand flanking and positioning in combat. As it is now in large group battles I sometimes find myself flanking around to get hits in on units but since I am the only unit doing so it usually ends up causing multiple enemies to turn around and rush me.

[Old review]
(Note all these points I am going to make come as playing as a vassal for my first play through)
So 8 years later.

First off I'd want to start by saying like most likely everyone here I absolutely love Warband. I came across it one day and decided to give it a shot and was completely hooked from the start. I played over 200 hours of vanilla Warband and have been looking forward to Bannerlord for quite some time.

So first thing is first. Bannerlord is basically Warband, if you have some other sort of expectation of what this game is you need to realize Bannerlord plays and basically is Warband. Now with that out of the way Is this game bad. No, is this game good? Ehhh depends, it's in a weird state where you can see where the team is going but not every idea or concept has been realized.

Some of the grievances I have currently with Bannerlord are mostly areas that are lacking polish or follow through with their design.

For instance, joining a kingdom basically works the same way as it did in Warband but now with a new "influence" system this system from what I gather allows the play to sway votes for land won in raids, different kingdom policies, effecting different clans in the kingdom, ect, but gaining influence is such a grind in itself the speed at which things are happening happen to fast for you to be able to build any influence to properly contribute to Kingdom decisions if you're doing other main story quests in the story mode.

Additionally you can make armies now a bit differently than in Warband but the frustration I found in marching with large armies is that most of the time the other nobles do not prepair enough food for their units. Causing your supply to be rationed out to the entire army of soldiers which can be frustrating especially when you may have of upwards of a month food in stock quickly go down to 1 days worth.

Kindgoms and Wars, back in Warband there generally was a big announcement when kingdoms would go to war with each other. In Bannerlord there is some flavor text that shows outcomes of battle, your daily gold fluctuation and other minor events but from what I've seen no declarations of wars. To find this information out you either wait for other nobles to "Form Armies" or have to check the Kingdom tab periodically to see what new war your kingdom has involved itself with.

Dialog with NPC's seems basically pointless, you can no longer ask for locations of other nobles, ask about the current status of wars, or even build relationships like you could prior in Warband. NPCs are there to just kind of keep the wars going. There's no relation building when fighting along side fellow Noblemen or when winning a tournament like in Warband. There are no feasts where nobles come together, allowing you to track down specific NPCs easier. No follow option or ride with me option like in Warband (though forming armies allows you to recruit other nobility to march with you but for limited time) This to me is one of the bigger disappointments I feel like basic functionality that Warband had when dealing with NPCs was completely removed.

There are other small nit-picks and there are things that are a nice improvement in the game as well but right now I wouldn't be able to recommend this to someone that doesn't like CORE gameplay of Warband.

Fun game when it works.

Complete garbage and terrible community.

First game was completely unbalanced high level ranked players vs new players, we got stomped and surprise surprise started talking ♥♥♥♥.

All these bros will cycle over to Halo once Microsoft gets those ports over.

Zero guidence not enjoyable, game is out of early access but still feels the same from when I bought it like 3 years ago.

enjoyable 10/10