A refreshing break from games that only care about graphics.
Its a game where you play as a player-created adventurer travelling throug ha fictional land made up of villages, castles and main cities. There is no story as such, and the entire map is open to you from the word go. It's difficult not to have something to do; there villages you can pillage, armies you can mass, deserters you can kill, kings you can aid, cattle you can steal, commodities you can peddle, and thats just the beginning. The 'sim' part the game is all about keeping yourself in good shape and travelling around a huge land during realistic day-night cycles. The rpg part of the game is all about building up and army, building up your skills, accumulating wealth and using it to buy things; horses, armour, goods or weapons. And finally, the best part of the game is all about being one out of 500 men, charging at an army twice the size of yours, swinging your sword and making perfect contact, slicing your enemy to ribbons and covering you sword in blood. Seriously. The first part of the game there won't be quite that many people, but its easy to find fights of up to 50 men in the early stages of the game.
The game isn't without problems though, it has ugly, ugly graphics, a badly designed interface and heavily recycled towns and facial textures.
However, it has remained a very stable game for me, and has not frozen up on me once, which, lets be honest, is a rareity with modern games.
Overall, if the idea of leading massive armies into battle, swinging your sword and throwing your axes, and cutting down thousands of enemies sounds appealing to you, get this game.