Mount and Blade review (PC)

There is certainly no shortage of role-playing games on the market – indeed, this mainstay of computer gaming seems as popular as ever, so any new title that wanted to stand out from the herd would have to offer something a little different just to get noticed.

Mount and Blade, from Taleworlds and Paradox Interactive certainly tries to do just that.

Although ostensibly an RPG, there is a strong strategy element to the game as well, which immediately gives it an intriguing level of extra detail over similar titles.

The most notable difference between this and the “standard” RPG though, is the fact that Mount and Blade is set in a realistic medieval world rather than some ludicrous fantasy realm.

I have little doubt there will be many fans of the genre that just cannot enjoy fighting anything but goblins and who resent the loss of their magic blades and potions, but I for one found this refreshing.

In fact, the game gives you a better simulation of medieval life than you’re likely to find anywhere outside a historical re-enactment society.

Mount and Blade has no storyline as such - the player is simply cast adrift in the game world and left to carve his (or her) own path.

Where that path leads is entirely up to you. You can be a lone adventurer, mercenary captain, trader, errand boy, brigand, nobleman or warlord. You can be good and honourable, ruthless and calculating or even downright evil.

The chances are even that you’ll be something of all of these before your career is over.

Personally, I like the freedom of choice, but this open-ended ‘sandbox’ approach will not suit everybody. It can be difficult to know what to do next when your options are so expansive.

Furthermore, once you reach a certain level and have all the nice weapons you were saving up for, the lack of an overarching narrative can mean that there is little left driving you on. There is no getting to the end of the story in Mount and Blade.

This does serve to give the game surprising longevity though, as not only will no two games be quite the same, but there will always be another enemy to fight, another castle to storm, or another pile of money to be made (or stolen).

Another subjective ‘weakness’ of the game, in many players’ eyes, will be the graphics. While the landscapes and weather effects can be pretty impressive, the character graphics are rather more limited.

About three years ago these would have looked good, but by this point they have been extensively outclassed by games like Oblivion. If you consider graphical excellence a non-negotiable quality of a game, then Mount and Blade may not be for you.

You would, however, be missing out on what is unquestionably the outstanding aspect of the game: the combat.

Much of your adventuring takes place on a strategy-like map board, but whenever you find yourself getting into a scrap, the game will switch to a first/third person 3D battlefield.

Here, you and your companions will charge the enemy and deal glorious death to countless foes.

Unlike most games of this type, the combat system in Mount and Blade is both intuitive and involving. Merely standing in front of your enemy and clicking will not lead to inevitable, repetitive victory as in so many games, but instead will lead to your own demise.

Instead, you must use your mouse movements to control the direction of your cuts and parries in the finest simulation of personal combat I’ve ever seen.

This is easy enough to get the hang of, but still requires a degree of skill and timing that makes each victory an achievement.

When mounted on your trusty charger, the combat becomes even more exciting. There is a genuine feeling of pace and fluidity to the battles that really has to be experienced.

You can almost feel the impact as the two bodies of armoured riders first collide, followed by a wheeling, stamping free-for-all that amply demonstrates the chaos of the melee.

Despite the limited graphics there can be some surprisingly impressive little vignettes amongst all this confusion.

A horse charging full-tilt impales itself on an infantryman’s pike, pitching its rider from the saddle in its death throes. A mist of blood sprays up your sword arm as the tip of the blade casually tears out an enemy’s throat.

Shot from the saddle, a knight slips from the back of his galloping steed only to drag behind it in a cloud of dust with his foot caught in the stirrup.

These scenes are mere glimpses, snatched from the corner of your view as you desperately parry a blow or seek out your next opponent, but this kind of detail adds immeasurably to the enjoyment of the fight.

In fact, the combat is so good that the rest of the game is almost incidental to it. Building up your lands and carrying out quests pales in significance next to the glory of battle.

The quests you can accept are actually one of the weakest aspects of the game. There is little variety and they’re rather repetitive, and just occasionally they’re so frustratingly impossible you want to scream. None of this matters though, as you can ignore them almost entirely if you so wish, without losing anything from the game experience.

Non-player characters, too, are an area of indifference. There are a decent number of them to meet and interact with, but much of the time they will be virtual clones of one another, and your conversations will always take exactly the same limited path.

Even the more individual NPCs you can hire as mercenary companions are uninspiring. There is enough about them to notice the differences, but they’re all pretty one-dimensional, and the conversations are stilted.

Again though, this barely matters. Those who want an involving storyline will already be disappointed (as there isn’t one) and without a narrative to follow, believable NPCs don’t seem to be all that important.

Almost all the faults of Mount and Blade can be entirely overlooked. Yes, the game could (and would) be better if these faults did not exist, but their presence does not have enough of an effect to stop one wanting to play the game.

The issue that annoyed me the most is one that many people would barely notice at all. I found it intensely irritating that a game in a realistic setting, which allows you realistic choices, has been placed in so entirely fictional a world.

When I heard that Mount and Blade was a medieval RPG I had looked forward to exploring the cities and states of medieval Europe.

It was disappointing, therefore, to discover that despite being based on the real world, the actual cities and states in question might as well have been in a fantasy realm. Inventing a world to set a historical game in just seems unnecessary to me.

However, like the other faults of Mount and Blade, this can be overlooked when balanced against the truly excellent parts of the game, and despite my disappointment, I found it in no way diminished my desire to play.

All in all, Mount and Blade is an absorbing and surprisingly addictive game that is almost hampered by its own ambition. You are left with the feeling that the developers wanted to cram so much into it that, with their limited budget, they were just not able to flesh it all out in the ways it deserved.

It is a shame that this game could have been so much better than it is, but this should not be allowed to obscure the fact that it is excellent already.

We would be lucky if Mount and Blade had achieved the heights it aspired to, but even in that failure it stands head and shoulders above most other offerings.

When so many games appear to aim for nothing but profit, it’s reassuring to come across one that seems to have genuinely aimed for perfection. We can’t dock marks simply because they didn’t quite get there!

8/10

Steven Rees