Mount & Blade Warband heheheheheehhehehehehehe

[Llyranor]

Mount & Blade Warband is an awesome awesome game. I'm completely addicted to the phenomenal multiplayer. I didn't pick up the game day1 because of lack of co-op, but I'm not missing it at all (the few custom battles I played showed a pretty lackluster AI compared to other humans).

 

I love riding across open plains on horseback and jousting archers in the face, or filling enemy horses with arrows, and doing ride-by slash-a-tons on enemy infantry looking the other way. Mounted combat is so utterly satisfying, and masterfully implemented. Just really love it to bits.

 

Even basic archery is lots of fun. Standing on the castle walls wailing death from above onto the invading force, or covering allied players as they're engaged in a melee, or just killing off horses as one of your infantry allies kills the enemy knight just as he falls off the horse.

 

On-foot melee can be pretty cool as well (and necessarily once you lose your horse or get in melee range as an archer). Attacking or defending on the castle walls of a siege can be loads of fun. It's pretty important to switch between the various styles, fighting defensively with the shield when you need to buy time for reinforcements to come or the enemy has ranged back-up shooting at you (don't turn your back!), or going for a stronger two-handed weapon when it's a big melee and the enemy isn't paying attention to your swings. Parrying with just a weapon is tough, but pretty satisfying when you pull it off.

 

The various game modes are nice. Team deathmatch is just a large mess of melee. Riding around trying to joust people is pretty fun. The sheer horror you get when you get knocked off your horse and are completely surrounded by enemy knights is pretty awesome. There you, looking in your every direction, shield up, trying to evade any incoming riders, while hoping until allied reinforcements come to back you up, or some riderless horse gets near you so you can escape. Awesome!

 

Basic CTF is nice. It's more team-based as teams start off in different areas of the map. It's usually a mix of infantry/archer defense at the bases and mounted combat occuring in the middle of the map. Flag pursuits are really fun. You have to get off your horse to cap the flag, so hacking off the horse (or just stealing it) as the enemy is trying to cap yours is a very viable tactic (nom nom nom).

 

Conquest is basically king of the hill with various flags spread across the map. This is more a territory-based mode, so the teams have to spread out and control as much terrain as they can, which makes for quite a different experience.

 

Siege is awesome, but less horse-centered. Setting up ladders (or kicking them down), bringing up the siege towers, assaulting the enemy castle from different locations to try to overwhelm and flank the resistance, or defending against various breaches in the castle walls. Great fun. I usually love castle siege stuff, and it's particularly well-implemented here. Defense takes more time to respawn, which makes things pretty tense.

 

The one mode I don't like (aside from vanilla Deathmatch since I only play team games) is Battle, which is just 1 life per round. Good on paper, which should make for some tense battles. Unfortunately, it just ends up with everyone playing an archery and camping/hiding, which I don't find goes well with the gameplay at all.

 

I love this game.

[Flouride]

I personally enjoy Battle a lot. At least on EU servers the fights ain't endless camping. Can't stand team deathmatch and Siege since it's just chaos. Siege fights could be a lot better if the spawn points weren't that retarded. Nothing is as much "fun" as someone spawning right next to you once you've finally managed to get into the tower that archers were using to shoot you and your teammates... Last time I checked there weren't really any CTF EU servers with actual players, so haven't been able to check that out.

 

I love the game as well

[Hurlshort]

I'm enjoying the heck out of the single player campaign as well.

[Llyranor]

Hey Hurlie, you should get on board with us for the multiplayer, just like the old days when you'd backstab us on Live.

[Hurlshort]

Hey Hurlie, you should get on board with us for the multiplayer, just like the old days when you'd backstab us on Live.

 

Ever since I moved to the country, my broadband has been pretty miserable. Online gaming is basically no fun anymore. Someday I'll hopefully get a decent connection for more backstabbing.