Mount & Blade

I have a confession to make:  I don’t care for most role playing games.  I’m sorry, but it’s true.  You see, in my mind I have a definite idea of what it must have been like to have lived in a time where the cold steel of a sword was your best friend.  I firmly believe that in those bad ol’ days, battles were hard fought affairs where victory was achieved not by magical spells or +3 maces, but by skill with a blade and lots of sinew.  Unfortunately, most RPGs, be they single player or massively multiplayer affairs, just don’t live up to those realities.  Instead, combat is often portrayed as a distant, mathematically-based process livened up with a flash of the Tolkien-esque fantastical.  Simply, where are all the Braveheart moments in RPG gaming?

I had despaired of ever finding a RPG that I could truly sink my, er…sword into until I came across TaleWorlds’ Mount & Blade.  Within moments of giving the beta a try, I knew that TaleWorlds’ was well on its way to achieving something unique in the world of electronic swordplay:  removing the middle man and allowing the gamer to swing his own sword.  That simple change, combined with a few other innovations, offered the promise of fundamentally altering the standard RPG formula forevermore.

With the release of the full game, we can now find out if Mount & Blade made good on that promise.

This isn’t your Parent’s RPG

The first thing a prospective gamer has to understand about Mount & Blade is that this is not your typical RPG.  If you have come looking to slay some orks or trolls, look elsewhere.  Likewise, if casting fireballs from your fingertips is your preferred method of bring down a foe, move on.  Mount & Blade is refreshingly original in that while it takes place in the mythical land of Calradia, this is a realm that has far more in common with the medieval kingdoms of Europe than they do with Middle Earth.  There is none of the fantastic here, just armed bands of troops jockeying for the favor of local lords and kings.  Again, if you enjoy questing for the lost moonstone of Neverland, you won’t find much to your liking in Calradia.  On the other hand, if your idea of a good time is sacking the village of a rival lord and carrying off loot and prisoners, well, in that case, Mount & Blade offers a lot you might enjoy.

Character Creation

Mount & Blade begins in a conventional fashion by asking the player to create a character via a round of questions that that help flesh out the character’s past.  For example, did your character begin life as the son of a nobleman or as a street urchin?  As a young man, did he attend a university or make a living as a merchant’s apprentice?  As an adult, was he set on his adventuring ways by misfortune or by restlessness?  These are just some of the questions the player is asked with the given answers being used to influence the character’s starting abilities.

With the back-story set, the gamer can then divvy out points to his attributes – strength, intelligence, agility and charisma – which in turn affects the starting skills set.  Here, the player can add additional points to such skills as “iron flesh”, which gives a character greater resistance to damage, and the self-explanatory “wound treatment”.  All skills are divided into three classes: “personal”, “leader” and “party”.  A personal skill only applies to individual characters and their abilities; a leader skill is effective only if your own character knows them; and party skills are shared by your entire band.  Lastly, there are six weapon proficiencies that include such categories as “one handed weapons” and “crossbows”.   Needless to say, as you character levels-up, you will accumulate more points which you can allocate as you will to your attributes, skills and weapon proficiencies, making the character increasingly formidable.

Lastly, Mount & Blade offers the gamer the ability to custom-tailor his character’s facial appearance with a nice selection of tools that alter everything from hair to cheek bones.  Unfortunately, only the facial characteristics of the character can be changed and not parts of his body, something we have seen in some RPG recent titles.

Welcome to Calradia

Ready to begin your adventure?  Upon entering Calradia, the first thing seen is the realm laid out from a god’s-eye perspective that can be panned and zoomed as wished.  Calradia is divided amongst five kingdoms: the Khergit Khanate; the Kingdom of Swadia; the Kingdom of Nords; the Kingdom of Vaegris; and the Kingdom of Rhodoks.  Each realm has a scattering of towns, villages and castles that the player can visit, with each realm having a distinctive look to its terrain, architecture and people.  While viewing this map, various NPC activities can be observed, from war bands clashing to trading caravans arriving at their markets.  

The player’s character is represented on the map, usually on horseback, but on foot if without a steed.  Navigation is easily accomplished by a point and click system.  Want to visit the nearby village?  Just click on it and your character will move there.  Want to follow a group of raiders?  Click on their moving figures and your character will automatically follow them.  However, care has to be used as not everything can be seen (the better the character’s spotting skill, the more he can see).  If he decides to go galloping off into the night, don’t be surprised if your character is ambushed by thieves or worse!

First time players may be a little lost the first time they are presented with this overview of Calradia.  Mount & Blade is not a story-driven game; the player is completely free to pursue whatever business opportunities he wishes.  As such, some players are not sure where to go first.  Head to a castle and ask the lord for a quest?  Visit a prosperous town and begin a trading enterprise?  Or perhaps ride into a nearby village and help the village elder obtain some cattle or drive off some bandits?  The choice is completely up to the gamer but one thing becomes immediately clear:  the Calradian “tactical map” (for lack of a better term) will be where the gamer spends more than a little time planning and plotting and moving from location to location as he seeks out new opportunities.

Behold the Beautiful World

Once the gamer enters a location, the fun really begins because Mount & Blade is not like other RPGs.  Rather, Mount & Blade offers the choice between the more traditional third-person perspective and a novel first person perspective.  Because the game sports some pretty visuals, either choice is a rewarding experience but it is the first person perspective that brings the game to life like no other RPG I can think of.  To ride into town, dismount your horse, and take a tour of the market district can be a fully immersive experience as you take in the sights with your own two eyes.  Navigation is accomplished with the standard WASD key scheme, so moving around towns and castles is effortless.

As you wander around town, feel free to stop and talk to the locals.  Most areas have a believable assortment of people wandering here and there, and except for the occasionally creepy individual who is contentedly walking into a wall, most serve to make Calradia seem populated at a realistic level.  Generally, there are only a few individuals in a town, village or castle that are worth speaking to: the nobility, village masters, and characters looking for employment.  Striking up a conversation is easily accomplished by facing the individual and hitting the “F” key to initiate the dialogue.  At that point, a question and answer session begins with the NPC telling his story and the gamer responding by selecting an answer from the two or three that are offered.  The systems works well enough but I wish that there was some voice acting accompanying the dialogue as the whole process seems strangely quiet for a conversation.   

    
Behold the Grim World

Of course, you’re not in Calradia as a tourist, but as a would-be conqueror, so prepare for more than a little swordplay!  In Mount & Blade, you can forget about “button mashing” auto- attacks where combat is resolved by clicking on special attack abilities and then watching the character respond to the player’s commands.  Mount & Blade is different in that like a first person shooter, the gamer needs to actually wield his own weapons and personally bring his foe(s) down.  As Lead Programmer Armagan Yavuz describes it, “even though the damage you do is influenced by the statistics of your character and his weapon, it is also based on physics formulas: the energy, speed and impact angle of the weapon.”  Let me assure you that this is most decidedly true as victory in combat takes more than mindless slashing.

Combat is conducted with a straightforward scheme:  the left mouse button swings a weapon or triggers a bow, while the right mouse button is used to block with a shield or parry with a weapon.  Scroll the mouse wheel up to cycle through available weapons and down to take up a shield.  Using this mouse-based scheme, along with the aforementioned movement keys, the player will confront a myriad of opponents in a deadly combat – with the emphasis on “deadly” as even with the difficultly levels turned down, the gamer will need to constantly be on guard as enemies intelligently respond to your actions and movements.  It is not uncommon to find your character needing to swing and parry, all the while keeping on his toes and moving to avoid having an opponent get behind him and unleash a deadly strike.  I did find that this scheme can leave the player a little finger-tied, especially during battles with multiple opponents.

Most players new to Mount & Blade should begin with using the third person perspective as it is easier to keep track of your opponent’s actions, but once settled in, I urge a swift switch to the first person perspective as it adds a FPS immediacy to combat. However, unlike most shooters, don’t expect to be stacking bodies without lots of practice.  Each weapon - and there are a lot of them in M&B – requires a specific approach and the player will quickly discover which are best suited to his style.  For example, I have found that my current character is particularly talented when it comes to burying a hatchet into a foe but quite inept at using a bow and only middling with a sword.

Lastly, the sounds of battle are nicely presented with warriors groaning with effort and injury and weapons clanging together or ‘thunking’ into shields.  While there isn’t as much gore as can be found in a recent MMO, expect to see more than a little blood when fighting.

You’re Hired!

I have always found it kind of silly when a RPG promises the player a shot at great glory and then limits him to small parties suitable for little else than a dungeon crawl (something tells me that Charlemagne had more than three people supporting him at any given moment).  Mount & Blade breaks this silly limitation by offering the ability to manage large war parties.

Throughout Calradia, the player will find many people willing to fight for pay.  Most are poorly trained peasants who are cheap to hire but won’t win any major battles on their own.  However, there are also better quality troops that will add some steel to an army, from professional, if expensive, mercenary bands to individual “hero” characters – a diverse group encompassing professional soldiers to folks on the lam from the law (in one notable case, I hired a surgeon on the run from a malpractice suit and received a nice wound treatment bonus for my group!). These hero units add some nice personality to the game as not only do they have a distinctive back-story, but they also act according to their characteristics (e.g., don’t expect an idealistic adventurer to stay with your group as you go around strong-arming local peasants).  What is more, these heroes can be specially outfitted by the player using equipment found on the battlefield or purchased from merchants, something that serves to make them even more memorable members of your party.

Of course, the real purpose of hiring all these folks is to help you win battles, something accomplished via a basic war party management screen where the player can organize his troops for battle.  Since an adjustable setting limits battles to a certain percentage of troops on the field, serving to make the player’s character more or less influential in a fight, setting the battle march of the different troop types can be crucial.  The player is also able to hand out promotions after a battle from this screen and deal with prisoners as he sees fit (i.e., sell them into slavery, release or hire them!).

Once on the battlefield, you can order your troops about with a simple system that uses 1 to 4 to designate a group for orders (e.g., ‘2’ for infantry) and F1 to F9 for the actual order (e.g., ‘F2’ for “follow me!”). When a battle is joined, it can be a real treat to watch rank and file troopers, along with your hero companions, join with your character in overcoming the enemy.  I recall one instance in which I was dueling with a Nord soldier when two of his companions joined the fight and started to pummel my character.  All I could do was hold up my shield and call for help.  Sure enough, some of my soldiers arrived to help me out, including a soldier with a skirt who stabbed one of the enemy in the back with a kitchen knife – it turned out she was the cook I hired for the morale bonus from having good, prepared meals (she later nagged me for never having enough food on hand to feed the boys)!  Yes, combat in Mount & Blade can often play out in surprising ways.

Mount Up!

As can probably be inferred from the game’s title, Mount & Blade involves a lot of riding, not just from place to place, but into battle as well.  The player can control his horse using the familiar WASD keys.  However, unlike walking around on foot, maneuvering on horseback takes a lot more skill as these beasts react according to different performance factors such as speed and maneuverability and terrain.  Riding into battle might sound like fun - and it certainly can be, especially when running down a foe! – but actually hitting something from horseback can be a real challenge, so much so that I usually dismount and run into combat.  Of course, the more skilled the player’s character the easier this becomes, but don’t expect to perform movie-styled heroics any time soon.

Horses also perform the vital function of carrying the player’s gear from place to place.  Unlike other RPGs where the inventory screen is used to hold a single character’s accoutrements, in M&B the inventory screen represents the entire assortment of gear available to the party.  Add more horses and you get to carry more stuff.  Needless to say, traders often employ lots of horses to carry large quantities of goods but at the cost of slowing down the entire party.

So What’s Not to Like?

I think one of my biggest complaints concerns the inability of your main character, or the heroes you employ, to die in combat.  I believe this was done so as to make life in Calradia a little more bearable for the gamer as a single lost battle can ruin a lengthy campaign.  However, I think the added sense of life-or-death danger would spice things up a bit and make the player more careful when running off to war.  As it is, you can be taken prisoner and your band scattered, but knowing that you can always come back from a defeat removes a bit of the sense of danger.

I also find some of the quests to be repetitious.  Of course, repetitious quests are not something unique to M&B.  In fact, I find that this game burdens the player with far less grinding than you find in the typical RPG (i.e., there’s none of the nonsense such as needing to slaughter a gazillion giant spiders that are inexplicably roaming the countryside), but I still would like to see a greater variety, especially at the beginning of the game when your renown is not sufficient to garner the notice of the lords who hand out the exciting quests such as overthrowing a lord with a dramatic castle siege and being rewarded with your own lands.

In a similar vein, the lack of a central story is missed.  While the open sandbox play of M&B is enjoyable, occasionally I found myself wishing for a central narrative to all the political maneuverings of Calradia.  I believe such a narrative would be a good way to provide some quests that would serve to help new players get their bearings in such a freewheeling game world.

Finally, I wish there were some multiplayer action, even if it was just limited to M&B’s skirmish game that involves a series of linked battles for some quick action fun.  While the AI makes for a challenging opponent, I imagine it would be quite enjoyable to fight other humans on the battlefield, or even in one of the jousting tourneys (trust me, this can be a lot of fun and a quick way to earn some attention from the nobility).