Recent reviews by Lyze

Bannerlord has been in Early Access for almost two years, and while the game is more stable, the fundamental design problems remain. Considering the 8 year timeline to get from M&B1 to this sequel, it's safe to say that this will not be solved.

TL;DR - if you enjoy a casual battle simulator in a (very) surface level early medieval world, you'll have fun fighting bandits and shooting bows. Things start to collapse at the mid-game however.

Bannerlord was supposed to take the nugget of good ideas and battle simulation and give it depth, life, and dynamism. None of these things have happened. With that said, the main problems I have with this game, which really just exposes the fundamentally broken core design philosophy that was already showing with the first game:

• Diplomacy, relationships, and dialogue have no depth. The systems aren't even shallow, they're barely functional. There is never any dialogue, and no complexity to diplomacy. As an example, if I execute a Cruel enemy lord who our faction is always at war with who is always raiding our border villages, I get a -100 relations hit to the across-the-world faction that also hated that faction (but didn't know the person I executed). Complete and total nonsense. Everything is half-baked. Executions weren't frequent but they did happen, and this game refuses to identify how to make that work in a sensible way.
  
  
• Recruitment, troop management, and the "lack of impact" in war - it's war all the time with doomstacks of armies that immediately teleport to you when you're sieging their fief, or that replenish in a couple days. There are claims they just pull from their garrisons and that's why it's quick, but meanwhile, their garrisons don't drop either. Adversity is what can make this game thrilling, but the same adversity over and over again in a way that very clearly breaks immersion is just boring and frustrating. All games will have hidden systems to keep the AI competitive, but they need to be inconspicuous and make sense within the game's design logic. Bannerlord does not do this at all.
  
  
• The economy is rudimentary, valuations are out of whack, and workshops/trading/economic simulations you can participate in as the player have no depth. Again, half-baked.
  
  
• There are also some serious problems in the combat simulator too - have you seen how cavalry mob and then can barely swing their swords or maces as they circle a few footmen and float around the map because of all the poorly defined physics collisions of their "movements"?
  
  
• Battlefield reinforcement, no tactics, no strategy, etc. Basically take any of the "Total War" style battlefield design philosophies for pre-battle deployment and manoeuvring that would make sense in a battle game of this style and literally none of them exist. There are limited troop command controls for your character on the battlefield, but this quickly falls apart at larger battle scales (100 vs 100 or greater), especially when reinforcements come into play.
  
  
• Kingdom dynamics are problematic and surface level - you build up Influence in order to vote on actions or take your own, but there is no real intrigue to be had - any of the mechanics you might expect for a kingdom/nobles/clan simulator (looking at you, CK3) that could apply here do not exist.
  
  
• Tech stack-wise, the game has serious engine limitations. I suspect the issues with the AI behaviour on world map and battle map, physics, and scripting for relationships, events, and kingdom actions is restricted by the engine they use. They're too far into it now to make any changes.
  
  
• There are more observations I could make as I keep seeing new examples every time I try a run-through, but I'll leave it there.

If you're just wanting a fun battle simulator, go for it. For anything sandbox or story mode though, give it a pass. You'll be left teased and denied, and not in a fun way.

Foundation is a promising city building. The developers look like they have a realistic roadmap and have pinpointed areas of improvement. It's definitely Early Access but is already very enjoyable after a 9 hour playthrough, though I'm definitely at the point where I'm kinda hitting a "what next" wall on my first run on a Coastal map.

The art style is gorgeous and the way the town grows organically due to how citizens choose to place their housing plots in relation to the organically developed "desire paths" is fabulous. That sets Foundation apart. If they can nail the rest of the fundamentals, and figure out end-game replayability or challenges, it'll be an amazing little gem.

I can't believe I haven't reviewed this game yet. Ignore the "Early Access" game label. This game is more fleshed out and feature-rich than most release state games. It's a beautiful homage to sci fi exploration, Dwarf Fortress style building, and Firefly esque space-western aesthetics.

Tynan has built a phenomenal game far richer than I could have expected when I funded it in the original Kickstarter years back. On top of that, the modding community is vibrant and the support for those mods is built into the game's structure, so you can get endless replayability from this game. You will NOT regret buying this.

The depth involved in this game so far is phenomenal. It's already fleshed out, and while the replayability isn't there yet as much as one would hope, considering this is Early Access, I am incredibly excited to see where they go with this. The basic RTS framework they've put in place runs so well with a lot of innovative mechanics that there is a really strong foundation for them to build on with more complexity and game longevity.

Phenomenal. The EU style 4X space game we've all been waiting for.