Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Revolutionary"

M&B Warband is a huge step up from its' predecessor, both in terms of technology and content. Visuals are a lot more pleasing, animations and controls are nicer and more fleshed out, a ton of new options for single player, not to mention the much needed addition of multiplayer!

Visually, the game might look dated. However, it is not ugly and good design of various armour and weapons actually make the game look rather pleasing. This also means that the game runs on even low-end machines, allowing people with such to take part in even very large scale battles. At max settings it looks at the very least okay.

The clanking of melee weapons and the whizz of arrows and bolts all sound rather good, the way one would expect such things to sound. Not a whole lot of voicing in the game, no voiced dialogs, only some taunts and screams in mid-battle, that sound appropriate. Overall, battles sound well. Music selection is limited, though and becomes repetitive somewhat soon.

What the game really is about, however, is its gameplay. The basic premise of the melee combat is that you have 4 attack directions and corresponding 4 block directions. Whilst one may play single-player (or in some newbie-friendly servers) with automatic block direction, manual blocking is at the heart of the game's combat system. And it works surprisingly well. Of course that is not all there is to it, as there are kicks, feints, ripostes (called chamber-blocks) and many other things adding a ton of depth to melee combat. There are also excellent archery, crossbow and throwing mechanics, as well as peerless horseback combat, all contributing to a challenging, extremely skill-dependant and unique action game.
And all this works excellent in both small scale (1v1) or large scale (100v100 or even above, both in multiplayer and single player!)

What the game might lack in out-of-the-box state, however, is content. The single player campaign, whilst fun at first, is rather shallow and there is a certain limit to how much you will want to play on the same maps in multiplayer. All this, however, is more than remedied by the games excellent modding community. There is an enormous and diverse selection of both single-player and multi-player mods, that are sure to cater to any taste. From cavemen to World War Two to Star Wars, not to mention countless variations of more or less authentic medieval and classical settings. For multiplayer, the more popular mods deal with role playing, different time periods (18th century line battles, anyone?), new and fun game modes as well as persistent character stats (cRPG, Mercenaries and some others).

Overall, this is one of the most note-worthy games in a decade, sure to provide hundreds, if not thousands of hours of fun. Highly recommended!