Recent reviews by Seanald 'the Sean'

It's a really cool concept but right now there just isn't enough content to justify the price. Gameplay loop is very repetitive and you'd think, for a detective game, that there would be more deduction based on witness/NPC interactions. Right now you basically just collect evidence at the crime scene, go to a secondary location to match up physical evidence with an NPC, and place cuffs on said NPC.

So much potential. Great atmosphere. Hope they add more content, but I'm posting this shortly after the release of a major update which "delivered" on content promises which players were led to believe would be more substantive.

i have a shameful 800+ hours in hell let loose and many from red orchestra 2 and rising storm back in the day.

the first few matches were rough, but after watching a 10 minute youtube video explaining all the mechanics, it was easy. hell let loose is a little bit more polished (it has its bugs too), but squad 44 is leagues more realistic and historical. most immersive ww2 game i've played. it has a lot of content (maps, factions, game modes--including parachute and beach landings). the armor combat is more realistic relative to other FPS. the mechanics are great and offer much more flexibility and replayability (on massive maps) than HLL. i still like HLL, but will probably switch over to this if the they keep improving it and players stick around with the pacific update.

as for the community, every online game has douchebags. i actually found that there were far fewer of them in this game. most people were willing to teach and answer any questions i had about how to play. if you ignore the people on your team trying to win (who need your help to do so--its a very teamwork/coordination heavy game) who are asking you to help and don't do your part to learn the game, you might be flamed. and you'd deserve it. nothing worse than the noob who hops in a critical role slot and just refuses to communicate or learn the role to help the team properly. be communicative and be nice and you'll usually get nice back! that was my experience anyway.

g r e e d

update 14 was a massive backslide. commonwealth faction is terrible. the bugs are more numerous than ever. if team17 doesn't learn how to use test servers, they'll kill this game.

well doll i stuffed 'em all in the airlock, see. let's just say my brilliant deception left them breathless *drags cigarette*

space sight seeing simulator

Alright... I really really hate to do this, M&B fanboy that I am.

Quick notes: I have some 400 hours in Warband on steam, but probably 600+ hours on the disk version that my parents bought me back in 2010 when I was in middle school. I intentionally did not follow the development of Bannerlord closely so as not to overly hype my expectations.

What has been released for $49.99 is a Warband reskin with some improvements and the skeletons of some major new features.

Right now there are very few things that you can actually do. They say they're going to add more quests. Fine.

There are a bunch of little balance problems that make the game incredibly frustrating:

-No equal armor in tournaments, which are pretty much required in order to make a decent amount of early game renown. As a Battanian (in a culture group that apparently doesn't have any actual armor for sale) prepare to be dunked on by fully armored tournament participants.

-Quests that require you to fight little bands of looters within about two weeks time, even though it'll take you a week just to catch one (even with saddle horses in your inventory). Talking to you "Train 10 volunteers" quest.

-Want to stop being a mercenary and instead fully pledge fealty to a king? First you have to break your mercenary oath. -10 relation with all lords in the faction.

-Want to make some early game money by trading? By the time you get to an -adjacent- town with the goods you've purchased on trade rumor knowledge, those prices have changed, you'll probably lose money. I don't know what medieval economy had prices changing 20-50% in a matter of 24 hours on a routine basis.

-Want to clear out a bandit camp? Well if you get knocked out your men decide to just retreat even if there is only one bandit remaining.

-There is almost no unique NPC dialogue, and almost no diversity in placeholder dialogue for that matter.

-Feeling frustrated that you don't know how to work the game's economy or skill system? Well there isn't really an in-game tutorial as far as I could tell. If there is, they didn't show me how to access it.

Okay those are just some glaring and frustrating singleplayer experiences. There ARE good things in this game for certain:

-The graphics are fairly nice, if also a bit dated for 2020. But hey, I don't care. It looks good.

-The AI seems to be much better at fighting. Combat is actually a challenge. On that note, I've seen a lot of old Warband players saying the combat has been ruined- I completely disagree. I was always critical of how swords in Warband were more like lightsabers or sticks than heavy hunks of steel and iron. The combat feels more realistic. From what I can tell the swing/cancel/swing/cancel twitch spamming of Warband has been muted.

-Armor and characters look so much better, even though there are some graphical bugs that need to be worked out.

-The campaign map and the scene maps are much improved.

-The UI overhaul is excellent.

They have the framework for an excellent game here. I'm excited to try a more finished product, so I will give it another try in a month or two and then update this review.

At this time I honestly can't recommend purchasing the game at $49.99, especially if you are new to Mount & Blade. If you are a diehard M&B'er then give it a try and submit feedback to the devs for improvement. I really wanted to give this one a thumbs up. I waited 8 years ;-; Hopefully soon I can change it!

One of the most re-playable games ever. Satisfying and challenging to play alone. Hilarious to play with friends.

This is a game that you can take seriously, while laughing your ass off with your comrades.

Too bad some of the DLC are just gouged out of what should reasonably be expected to have been included in the base game, either on release or in an update...

No reason for this not to be in the base game. I would pay $0.50 for it.

I love Paradox, and I especially love that after all these years they are still releasing big DLCs and updates that add a lot of genuine content to the game- long after most developers would have stopped working on a game. I pay the $12 or whatever for those big content adding DLCs without a second thought. This is NOT one of those DLCs.

This is just greedy.

Crusader Kings 2 is an excellent game. But for a game that is made most interesting by its historical immersion, why do you have to pay $7 just to look at the historically accurate crests that real dynasties had....

It's frustrating because I'm absolutely a Paradox fanboy... but stuff like this makes me not want to buy their games. Don't buy this unless it's on sale. I got it as part of a bigger collection, while it was on sale, I believe.