One Life Left: Warband

You and your men crest the hill to find the enemy in a mad dash climbing up steep terrain. You give the signal and your men hold their position while your archers rain a volley of arrows onto the enemy’s vulnerable position. When the survivors begin to gain ground and encroach on your position, you signal your infantry to charge. As the dust settles, your cavalry chase down the deserters and finish them off. The day is yours and the men cheer to your victory. This is Mount and Blade: Warband.

Warband is a third-person role playing game, in which you play as a newcomer to the war-stricken land of Calradia. You begin as the leader of a small band of mercenaries and pledge allegiance to one of six nations vying for control of the land. As you gain the trust of a nation’s figurehead and renown through conquering your nation’s enemies, you are granted the privilege of becoming a king’s vassal. From here, the choice is yours as to whether or not you want to assist your king and fellow lords in conquering all of Calradia or split off to form your own nation.

The politics are only half the game, however. The other half involves participating in and directing large battles with your enemies. Mount and Blade offers a blend of the combat styles found in popular games like Age of Empire and Star Wars: Battlefront. While control of your own character is important, one man does not win a battle. Each battle can be won or lost by the orders you give your army.  A good commander holds his troops back at the charge of cavalry and has his archers pick the riders off from behind his line of infantry. Only a fool brings his troops into a valley surrounded by archers.

Warband also comes with a multiplayer mode in which players can select from three different character archetypes to play (Cavalry, Archer, Infantry). The game modes include several traditional game types that can be found in many first person shooter games, such as capture the flag and team battle. It also includes a unique game type that is taken directly from the single player game, castle siege. In this game type, the players are split into two teams, attack and defense. The attackers must scale the castle walls using medieval siege equipment and overwhelm the defending force on the wall.

I bought Warband during the Steam Summer Sale and spent many hours playing it in my spare time. One of the things I enjoyed most about the game was how complex the mechanics of the game were despite its simplicity at the superficial levels of graphics and character design. Beyond vying for the attention and approval of some of the lords of Calradia, the player must also run, defend, and maintain any land given to him by those lords. The game creates its own goods economy as well. Some commodities are worth far more than others depending on the supply of and demand for each commodity in that region.

Another aspect of the game I enjoyed was its difficulty. After thirty hours of gameplay I still found myself having to rebuild my army from scratch after disastrous encounters with superior forces. While this can be frustrating at times, it prevents the game from becoming monotonous or boring.

The different factions also added a lot to the game. Each faction has its own personality that is modelled not only in dialogue with characters of the region, but also in the soldiers you recruit or fight from that region. Fighting heavily armored cavalry from the plains of Swadia is a completely different experience than engaging a force of rugged Nordic infantry. These alterations in the composition of your foes’ armies cause you to change up your battle strategy every time you go to war with another nation.

Overall, I found Mount and Blade: Warband to be a very entertaining game. The challenge that each stage of the game presents, coupled with the promises of the next promotion, make for a very exciting and sometimes even addicting combination. While the horseback combat can be a bit clunky at times, the satisfaction of landing a good long shot with a bow or a well-aimed javelin more than make up for it.  The challenges that the political side of the game bring are also very interesting and complex. You have to show the people of Calradia that you are a capable ruler and that you have friends in high places or else they will refuse to acknowledge your rule. As all good medieval games, the world is full of loot and peasants to exploit. At the end of the day, I give Warband an eight out of ten.