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$10US on Steam this weekend. Buy it.
For those who never played the original, it's a true one of a kind. Extremely rough around the edges but the late medieval (~1350AD) action combat is unmatched. Horses aren't cars, which is so simple conceptually and so thrilling to actually play. There's no set story but the world motors along with or without the player doing anything meaningful. Villages prosper or get sacked, brigands shut down roads or get captured, and Lords get married, feud, and ransom each other. Piles of loving period detail (steppe, viking, norman, etc. pseudo-historical factions) cheek-by-jowl with unfinished spaces and bugs.
Warband adds multiplayer (fun but extremely frustrating), a roll-your-own campaign (take over a kingdom or carve out a new one), and siege combat. The last is delicious when it works but quite buggy.
Both original and Warband have huge modding communities. If you want to joust as Luke Skywalker, I'm sure some dufus made it possible.
grooowrrrr! [menace menace] rrrrowwwr!
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I would totally second that. Warband was one of my favorite games of the last couple years. That said, it has a ton of problems, but the one thing it nails is the combat. Midival battles were never cooler then this.
I'd read an interesting article on gamasutra a few days ago that talked about how flaws in games can make them much more enjoyable then "perfect" games. The author compared (amongst others) Gears of War 2 with The Void and Deadly Premonitions, explaining why he felt that though Gears was a "perfect" game, he really didn't enjoy it. And with The Void, he felt its flaws made it great. This seems to apply to a lot of the favorites of people on this site (STALKER, Mount and Blade, so on.) If interested, check out the link below. Good read.
/forum/whats-the-frequency-kenneth/mount-blade-warband-sale/
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Hey Fink, good to see you again. Could you clear up my confusion?
Bought M&B on Steam way back when, not (yet) played although I did try a couple of early betas (non-steam of course). Rough at best & I couldn't steer a horse for sh*t.
Read about Warband but don't understand where it fits with/into M&B. Yes, adds multiplayer but I want only single.
1. Does Warband install over M&B?
2. Is my M&B a total loss if I buy Warband?
3. If I can't play M&B due to ineptitude, which quite correctly I don't know at this point, is buying another version smart?
Please light my way. [Image Can Not Be Found]
P.S. In fact I think I bought two M&Bs. Buying early beta bought game at release which I never bothered to download (emails/codes long gone via computer upgrades), then years later I bought it again on steam.
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I totally agree with Fink & Armand (nice gravatars by the way, gents). Mount & Blade sure had its rough edges, but there were some aspects that couldn't be beat. I accidentally played it for 14 hours one time.
The Medieval melee/horse combat is second to none. Unparalleled. Simply amazing. Yap, your experience in horse steering matched my own frustrations at first, until I learned that it wasn't me, it was the horse. Horses that turn on a dime are quite a hefty investment.
My personal favorite (I haven't played in years) was the Heavy Hunter. A perfect combination of speed, maneuverability, and run-enemies-down-ability.
At $10 it's hard to say no... god damn you Steam!
Life is the misery we endure between disappointments.
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Hey Yapette,
I only started playing the game when Warband came out and haven't had the early experience others had. From what I understand, the game was vastly upgraded over the years through patching, so whatever a launch version of the game has, a fully patched version should play a lot better.
As for the diff between warband and the original, I bought both a while back, but never played the original. They are separate games, but from what I understand, more or less the same with Warband having a few extra elements to it. If $10 isn't an issue for you, and you were interested, I'd say pick up Warband just for the siege combat alone (which is awesome.)
The game takes practice, so though controlling a horse, or combat, or worst of all: combat while on horseback, can all be pretty tough at first, when you finally get the hang of it, it becomes real fun. Also, the game has tons of options to scale the difficulty back (at least Warband does) which can go a long way in making you more of a hero type character and less sword fodder.
It also has a tutorial of sorts, where you can practice as much as you want with horses and all the weapon types. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.
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Thanks, guys. It's not just the $10, it's the dumbitity* of repeatedly buying that which I will not play. 'Spose the smart thing to do would be to load up M&B & like, uh, try to play it? Like this weekend? Before the sale expires?
Except that I'm currently blasting stuff to smithereens in Bioshock 2. Don't care what complaints anyone has, I think it's a wonderfully imagined environment with likewise wonderfully malicious ways to destroy everything in my path. [Image Can Not Be Found]
* with a silent b
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Good to see your fur in full luster, my dear Yap. [Image Can Not Be Found]
Warband is a standalone game. The features are a superset of M&B. The only reason to go back would be for mods that didn't get updated or 'cause you already own M&B and have other plans for the ten bucks. Combat is a tiny bit easier but the core is otherwise unchanged.
Steering the horse still goes against all videogame habits. When it clicks, cut a tangent to lance a chump at 25 MPH, it's extremely satisfying. The other 90% of the time drive it into a tree and a horde of very angry farmers yank the character off and beat her to death with rocks. Which is also satisfying, in the shouty-angry sense.
Different weapons remain almost a collection of minigames. Find the one you're best at. Keep in mind M&B has an RPG streak. Weapon skill has a huge effect on aiming ranged weapons. Skipping horses entirely is viable, and sometimes more effective. Nord ground troops with heavy armor and giant axes are scary dudes. Ssshnick, your horse no longer has legs. Ssshnick. Neither do you.
Set the difficulty as low as it'll go. The arenas in major towns (large names on the map) are only open during day hours but while in them time does not pass. Good place to try a bunch of weapons, make a few bucks, and die a lot. Check taverns for the named NPCs. If you luck into one with the healing skills, great. If not, train what you get in them ASAP.
If you want to give either a shot I'll restart and give more tips.
Now, off to my current game. Character's just married a Lord with a mustache and we're fomenting revolution. Swadia shall be mine by proxy. Ssshnick!
[edit] http://tinyurl.com/33ubzrq is an incomplete but useful Warband wiki. http://tinyurl.com/2ue557n is a super useful post about possible party combinations. I generally run option #3 and have Ymira learn engineering once it's needed. I push her intelligence so there're lots of extra points. Too many things needed on main hero to do it there.
grooowrrrr! [menace menace] rrrrowwwr!
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