A fantastic medieval role-playing game.

User Rating: 8.5 | Mount & Blade: Warband PC
I've always wondered how bad the Mount & Blade series was, always looked at screenshots and told myself, "Wow, this game is bad.", yet I've never given it a chance.
Now however, I finally got a chance to pick it up during a Steam sale, and I have to say, it's one of my favorite games now, and slowly ascending my "Most-Played' list.

The game starts out tough. You start with a small variety of options, you can be the son of a thief, nomad, trader, noble or a hunter. All of these have their advantages and disadvantages. Then you have to select the way you decided to live your early days, whether it was as a student or a squire. Soon after you are launched into the actual game, where you start of as an unknown Noble, or just a normal citizen.
To climb to glory, you have to complete quests, fight groups of bandits, capture castles and villages, and manage your army.

In M&B:W, you play from a third-person perspective when you are in a town or in combat, and while you are traveling, you see an RTS-like screen, where you point and click where you have to go.

The combat is fantastic. Nothing is more satisfying that beating Kings up in tournaments, and slicing your enemies in battles. You control the way you attack my moving the mouse in four directions while clicking the left mouse button. This might sound difficult, and it is at first, but eventually it becomes quite easy and fluent.

The graphics are nothing to gape at. Decent lighting is about the only attractive thing about M&B, because the textures are pretty horrible, as well as the character models and some of the animations. At least everything is recognizable!

As you progress through the game, capture castles and recruit men to your personal army, you gain "reknown", or I might say reputation, which can make Kings fear you, and allows you to expand the size of your army. As you gain more territory, you can assign your companions(which you meet and recruit throughout the game) to be Lords of towns, from which you gain profit every week.

All these elements and more just piece together to create a fantastic experience, and while the game is still in beta, Mount & Blade Warband is a game I would pay the full price for, without hesitation.