Mount and Blade is an excellent and innovative RPG if you are hardcore enough to bear with some missing elements.
First, let's talk about the general gameplay. Mount and Blade is a free exploring game, where you're set in the Kingdom of Calradia where it's divided by 5 Fiefdoms, and your goal......wait there is no goal. That's rigt, Mount and Blade has no goal, no story, at all. Whether you were expecting a cheesy Elder Scrolls plot or a heroic Mass Effect story style, you're be immediately dumbwitted the first minute you enter the game as you'll be stranded in the middle of this vast Kingdom with no objective and direction. This is not neccesarily a bad thing, for this is where the exploration comes in. The entire idea whether you're trying to set up your own kingdom, serve a particular one or be a bandit/ outlaw and raid innocent civilians, IT IS COMPLETELY YOUR OWN CHOICE. The only thing I would complain from this is that the first hour is an absolute confusion running around villages and cities looking for quests which not neccesarily come and even when they come, they are retarded. The first few hours you'll be spending your time running away from raider parties and chasing looters, while doin silly quests such as escorting cattle and letter delivery missions.
But you can actually bear with these boring hours, you'll soon ascend fast enough. Here comes the introduction of the party system, and an element that introduces that you really need a versatile party instead yourself as a super soldier. Regardless of your level, damage is pretty much the same. You don't fight in a landslide battle just because you're Level 30 and the enemy is Level 1, and this is pretty due to a hideously slow upgrade system when you level up. Each time you level you won't be adding points by 10 or 100, but by 1. This does make a huge difference compared to any previous Role-Playing experience for you can't really make a versatile character to be good at everything. So everytime you upgrade yourself or your "hero" companions (Which can be recruited just like other soliders but never die), you will want to specialize heavily on each subject, such as being a swordsman yourself by constanly upgrading Iron Flesh (Hit Points), or keeping your surgeon away from battle and upgrade his surgery (Which prevents your units from dying when they are KOed) or wound treatment (Increases health regeneration after battles for all units). This forces you to make a choice and making a big party, along with other different soldiers (Which if you recruit them from a "Recruit" level, you'll be able to upgrade them to knights, swordsma, archers etc....depending which Kingdom's culture). Speaking of upgrading and levelling, Mount and Blade includes all RPG elements as realistic, where there's no such thing as magic, so you dont go drinking healthpotions, instead you'll have to watch out for yourself when you take a hit, for you'll take more than days to recover your health. Instead you'll be upgrading things such as power draw (Which benefits accuracy and allows usage of better bows) or Engineer (To build improvements on towns and castles faster....when you have 0 on that skill it'll take like 60 days....no kidding).
But perhaps the most shiny element of this game would be the combat, for it does have very, very simplistic yet innovative design. The basic combat doesn't work by spamming attacks, instead you have to point a certain direction to attack (Such as look right sides, then when you whack you'll whack your foe's right side). This makes the game a lot more challenging for both offensive side and defensive side, since parrying attacks with take a lot of reflex to dodge it, and timing when to attack is extremely important (Such as moving left to expose your foe's undefended side). The Archery is pretty much the same with any game, though it's considerably way harder aactually hit from long distance such as up to 50 yards (If you manage to hit from 100 yards, You're probably VERY lucky or you have played this game more than 200 hours and have completely mastered it). The combat, honestly never gets old. Myself upon playing 50 hours into this, am still challenged constantly each time, whether it is a 50 vs 50 battle or a 1v1 duel. In this game if you do survive that long to start enjoying it, you'll be dying to dive into combat, whether it's against a 200 men warband, a 20 men bandit party or a ten men deserter squad.
Speaking of group combat, Mount and blade is about one of those that actually allows you to customize all your troops (You can have infinite amount of troops as long as you have enough leadership points and the money to actually keep them each week) and they actually fight individually (NO they do not fight like a dynasty warriors hack and slash style, they fight individually and each man you encounter will be a threat). Though with all these unique and fantastic acheievements, you'll be extremely disappointed by the lack of tactics that you can include (Charge, hold, start shooting, retreat..etc), for you cant form any real formations or such to actually make a proper combat that you would imagine in a Total war game (I know it's RTS). The sieges are probably the most hideous for it involves the act of building a tower or a ladder and 50 men charge up while getting shot. The flood of troops rushing at a bottleneck point will be the most retarded sight you'll ever see. Lastly fights are always limited to around 30 vs 30 regardless of army size (There are mods to modify this however), the battles work like reinforcements by supplying additional troops when one wave fails.
As a side note, the presentation of Mount and Blade is pretty hideous. The graphics are at a 2004-2005 level, with hideous textures and lighting (Honestly I'm doubting whether there's even HDR). Though the sunset is a good thing to watch, but the character models, shading and pretty much overall detail are hedious. And no, there's nothing destructable in the environments, and you dont get big weapons like catapults. Don't put your hopes high in the sky just because you can engage in large battle in first person.
The audio is more of a mixed reaction. You'll get some extremely repetitve but pretty atmospheically heroic music when in battle (Though there maybe bugs on when battles or exploration occurs, playing the wrong music). The sound effects of weapons slashing on humans and clashing against other weapons do sound pretty awsome, though there is no blood in the game (Read the label people, it's 13+).
Overall, Mount and Blade is a fantastic game if you are willing to bear with it's flaws and problems. There are plenty of mods to fix some of the problems I have listed within this review. This game is certainly intended for hardgore gamers for this isn't a weekend rush or a holiday time burning product. It certainly will demand some dedication to get fun.