The best game of the year, highly addictive, plain awesome. The large number of available mods are the icing on the cake
Mount&Blade might not have the graphics of Crysis, but the game play whoops any other game of the board. I've taken part, like many others, in the beta testing of this game for around 2 years or so and still absolutely love playing the game. The only game that I still feel like picking up and playing even though I've had it for a long time is Mount&Blade.
The game shines through its combat system, four way attacks, blocking, horse combat, awesome archery and physics system that takes speed into consideration when attacking. The recruiting of lower rank soldiers and training them is also just plain fun.
There are so many things that are awesome in the game so you should just try it. Also give a try to the mods as they are updated to the newest version, especially TLD.