Mount & Blade

Mount & Blade is the product of a talented husband & wife development team in Turkey, and the support of a devoted fan base that has been given the opportunity to play and provide feedback on the game over the long course of its evolution to the final product that is available today.

The core of the game is evident in its title. Before I discovered M&B, I had always lamented the absence of true horseback combat, diverse infantry combat, and on a large scale. The Total War games gave us classical/medieval warfare and tactics on a macroscopic collective scale, and the likes of Oblivion gave us first/third person unmounted combat on a small scale… but we were always missing something in between, until M&B came along.

Try to imagine a battlefield of potentially thousands of individual, autonomous, AI-controlled actors; all with individual appearance, a variety of unique and functional arms and armour (including swords, axes, polearms, javelins, bows, crossbows and more), some on foot, and some on horseback. Imagine yourself on the side of one army, right in the thick of it, able to order your cavalry, infantry and archers to carry out a battle plan that best serves against your opponents. Harass your foes with horse archers, foil their cavalry with a tight formation of pikemen, or march your infantry forward to overwhelm the enemy with axe and blade. That is M&B's crowning achievement, and you will not find a similar experience anywhere else.

The vanilla game is essentially a sandbox of military conquest and feudal politics in the land of Calradia, which is to a large extent modeled on medieval Europe and Asia. Serve one of 5 kingdoms and rise to become one of its most powerful lords, holding your own castles, towns and villages, or live the challenging life of a mercenary/renegade, thrilling in the spoils of plunder. Due to the open ended nature of the game, your career may span many roles and many sagas, without the need for rerolling whenever you want to try something different. By itself, the vanilla game is sufficient reason to try and buy M&B… but wait, there's more…

Because M&B primarily dedicates itself to realistic medieval warfare/action, a variety of macroscopic strategy elements such as factions, war, economy, et cetera, and a decent core RPG system, it therefore offers an excellent base upon which to construct a myriad of stories, both historical and fantastical. The game has been architected to be highly modifiable, and the fan community has not disappointed in this regard. From simple mods that enhance specific aspects such as sounds, graphics and gameplay features to total conversion mods that allow you to do everything from reliving the War of the Ring in Middle Earth to historical conflicts such as the Hundred Years War, all with painstaking attention to details of heraldry, arms, armour, and more… this is where M&B really shines. (NOTE: at this time, many mods have yet to be updated to compatibility with 1.003, and many are still works in progress)

From a purely technical standpoint, M&B is not the prettiest looking game next to its contemporaries, and sports its share of bugs and gameplay flaws. The sound effects are decent, the small amount of voice acting adequate, and the music far from unpleasant. That they have accomplished that much with so few development resources is, however, nothing less than inspirational. Although Mount & Blade has finally gone gold after all these years, future patches and fan mods are certain to lift this game higher and higher still.

This game has no draconian DRM… it has forever been low-cost shareware, and is now available through pain-free digital distribution as well as in boxed form on store shelves. Its sheer innovation alone makes a mockery of the many cash-cow boilerplate titles backed by big corporate publishers that flood the market today. If M&B's gameplay appeals to you, please purchase this game and support the developers, because you will also be supporting and encouraging all that is still good in the PC gaming industry.

If you have not played this, Google it and get the shareware demo and have a go. The combat system is brilliant and very intuitive, especially when you are on a horse. I have played the demo for hours just fighting arena fights.

This game is definitely worth its weight in gold. Do not let the graphics get in the way of buying this; the graphics are not as good as Oblivion by any means. But games are supposed to be about gameplay and having fun isn’t it, and Mount & Blade delivers in every aspect.

Best indy game ever made. You will never have played one like it.
Definitely must try mods as core game is rather bland. 100 years war mod is best I have played so far.

Mount and Blade is very fun and keeps you doing something every second, it's kinda a mix between medieval and oblivion but horseback riding which is very fun and easy to use, try the demo and give it a try and you will most probably love this game.

Best combat system ever! Endless hours of fun. Got this game when it was still a beta a couple of years ago and still playing now.