In the beginning there was light head trauma
Originally, I purchased this game for its online multiplayer mode alone. And that's exactly the part of the game, which is refusing to work for me right now. There was an overwhelming amount of Steam-purchases this weekend, they ran out of digital keys, I didn't get mine and I'm still waiting for a response from their support crew, so I got stuck with the offline campaign for now.
Character creation starts off with a little note saying that, while you do get the possibility to start out as a male noble, you may get a much more interesting and challenging early game experience with a female member of the common riffraff faction, so that's what I ended up going with. It's a pretty realistic setting after all. Middle ages. The dark, 'shit anywhere you want' kind of middle ages, where it sucked to be female. That kinda thing.
My character is the daughter of a legendary warrior (yawn), she trained to be a smith and eventually left home in search of revenge (YAWN!). Revenge for what? Fuck if I know. I can't tell whether any of these background choices really had any significant impact on the actual gameplay. I suppose they affected my starting stats a bit, but that's about it.
So my angry blacksmith chick, who seeks revenge for no particular reason found herself in some alley, with a guy charging at her, sword drawn and stabbing the crap out of her. I had a crossbow. The guy ran at me, I was loading my crossbow. The guy was right in front of me, I was still loading my crossbow. The guy started hitting me with his sword, I was STILL loading my FUCKING CROSSBOW! At that time I had no fucking clue how to fight, but playing around with the mouse wheel made me draw a shield. Turns out I had no melee weapon, so I punched the guy in the face and blocked his attacks with the board. Which seemed to work out okay at first, but the baddie had increased punching resistance and he just shattered my shield, so I was back to loading my damn crossbow and getting beat up.
The whole thing ended in me getting my ass kicked and waking up in the middle of some tavern, where an NPC told me he just got there in time to drag me away. He turned out to be a real joker: "Since you're handy with a blade, I need to ask you a favour." Dude. You just watched me as I got the shit beat out of me. You had to save my ass. Now you need ME to do YOU a favour that involves swordsplay?
So far, so generic. He told me I had to kill a bunch of bandits that like to hang around in the outskirts surrounding the village. Big fucking surprise.
Day 1 - LFG!
Since I was going after a whole bunch of bandits, I was told to hire five men before fighting anyone. I figured the place to hire people would be the tavern, since that's how it works in most games. I bumped into some oriental-looking dude, scimitar and all, telling me he's a super legendary mega warrior and up for hire, so I grabbed him and two generic caravan guards, then I was out of cash and two guys short of starting my quest. I went to the marketplace to sell that stupid crossbow and a fish. Why the hell was there a fish in my inventory? Away with you, fish! Still didn't have enough money for more people, so I went to the arena.
The arena is weird. Basically, 40 people beat the crap out of each other with wooden weapons. Naked. Combat was fun, though. Block attacks with the right mouse button, beat them up with the left button, directional attacks depending on how you wiggle the mouse. I've read some articles about how the combat in Mount & Blade is incredibly realistic. It isn't. It's no different from ancient action games like Rune, it's fun, it's solid, but there's no way in hell it feels like actual sword fighting. I defeated 10 guys, defeated 20 guys, made some money, looked for more recruits, but couldn't afford anyone. Eventually, I got another quest to deliver a message to some nearby castle.
Day 3 - Peasant Power!
I was fully expecting to get eaten by bears or some shit the moment I leave the city walls' safety, but nothing happened when I looked at the world map, so I clicked on the nearest village on the way to my delivery destination. And hey - I could actually recruit random peasants into my warband there for just a few coins! Boy did I feel stupid for hiring those expensive guys at the tavern!
So with my fair band of merry farmers I went to the next village and people there refused to join me. In fact, the dumb fucks wanted nothing to do with me. With great disappointment I moved on to that castle where I was supposed to take the message and the local count asked me to collect some taxes for him. Right. I'm a complete stranger. And he's asking me to run around collecting money in his name. Sounds totally believable. Ahem, anyway - the peasants refusing to pay up happened to live in that annoying little village where nobody wanted to help me, so I signed up to play sheriff of Nottingham. And they were seriously pissed off at me when I went there to ask for their money! So pissed off in fact, that after a while they gathered an angry mob and charged at me with their pitchforks.
After beating the crap out of them, not only were they willing to pay up, but some of them even agreed to earn back some of their cash by joining my warband. Ahh yes... the salty smell of cheap labour! With thousands of coins in my pockets, I considered keeping all the tax money to myself, but after having a close look at the hundreds of soldiers scouting Count Whatshisface's castle, I decided it would be a bad idea to make him my enemy, handed in the money and got a cut fo 20% for a reward. Not too shabby.
I was now ready to head back to my starting city to inform the quest guy that I had gathered enough men to fight the bandits. On the way home my troops bitched about hunger. Didn't I have a fish in my inventory? Where the f... oh right. Well, I just made a nice profit, so I stopped at the next village to stock up on pork. Celebrate the day and all that.
Day 5 - Rotten Swine!
Mounted combat is hard! Horse behaviour is semi-realistic: If you tell that horse to run, it will do exactly that! It won't just stand still once you let go of your W-key - it keeps on running till you slow it down and eventually stop it using the S-key. I kept galloping across the battlefield like an idiot whilst my army of peasants beat the crap out of the bandits. Turns out the default difficulty setting is ultra-low, which is okay for the time being. Still learning how everything works on here.
I got a nice reward for defeating those guys and made my first big mistake: Spend it all on some shiny item. I got myself this really cool winged helmet. Then I got a quest to get rid of the bandits once and for all by raiding their hideout. By the time I got there, my first virtual week had come to an end and my troops demanded their wages. So now I was without a penny in my pocket and it also turned out that stocking up on lots of pork was a stupid idea. After several days of sitting in my inventory, the stuff was getting a little rank and the troops weren't too happy about it.
The actual raid was fun, because the place couldn't be reached on horseback. And combat on foot is that much easier! I looted every last bit of their possessions and made enough money to afford my troops for the coming week. Everyone had gained lots of experience, so I could upgrade my peasants to basic infantrymen and hunters. There were still wielding farmer-grade toy equipment, but it was a start.
Day 8 - Why won't you hold my hand?
The game keeps sending me on stupid errands. Deliver a cask of ale here, deliver a letter there, pay is shit, there's no fighting involved and most villages and castles don't need a helping hand. With anything. At day 10 I have finally bumped into some small settlement with raider problems, so I agreed to help train a local militia. Once again, I beat up peasants with sticks. The whole thing lasted three days, then the raiders came back. I ended up leading a bunch of stick-wielding farmers against them, most of them got killed, but at least a handful lived to see another day and, more importantly, lived to reward me for my efforts. Yay!
My small band was growing into a bit of an army, some of the more experienced men were beginning to resemble soldiers with actual weapons and armor and while everyone started growing sick and tired of cabbage, it kept them well-fed, it lasted long in my inventory and it was cheap. Eat cabbage, fuckers!
Day 12 - Prison Break
Upgrading my troops means having to pay and feed them more. I was out of cash again, but now I had finally realized that acquiring lucrative quests was as simple as asking any tavernkeep about quest NPCs. Some count was being held prisoner in a nearby castle and I was supposed to get him out, no matter the cost. So I walked into the castle, talked to the prison guard and when I couldn't afford the bribe, I beat the keys out of him and dragged Count Douchenbach out of the dungeon. He stood in the middle of the castle courtyard, refusing to go anywhere. Assuming he bugged out, I went ahead alone and found myself surrounded by half a dozen angry guardsmen. I ran away, left them behind, only to realize my quest had not updated, because the stupid Count never escaped with me. So I reloaded my savegame and had to free him all over again. This time around, I ran back to the count when the guards chased after me and forced him to fight them with me.
We beat the crap out of them, I brought the guy home to his lady, got a nifty reward and spent it on a new horse and some troop upgrades. Rawr!
Day 13 - More Bandits
Entered a new area that day and kept running into bandits. One of their groups had a pair of female slaves with them, so I had them join my ranks after killing the bandits. They had little more than sticks and stones on them to protect themselves, but I had room for more people, they were practically free and free fodder is good fodder. The local ruler tasked me with wiping out yet another bandit camp, but this time they didn't actually give me their location, so I had to spend ages chasing after random bandits until they finally revealed their stupid hideout. On the plus side, the slave girls actually survived one fight after another and slowly advanced in ranks from lowly camp guards to huntresses to sword sisters, clad in full heavy metal! Mounted combat was a little less awkward now and it was actually fun riding into battle, whacking bandits left and right and chasing after that one poor fucker who tried to escape the massacre as I slashed him whilst passing him at top speed. Riding back to my cheering and roaring soldiers only made it more fun. It looked like this:
I'm starting to realize that the key stat to winning this game must be charisma, as it powers up leadership. And leadership raises maximum army size and lowers their overall wages, so that's what I should have powered up from the very beginning. Oh well.
First Impression - Whee!
Warband is so very, very flawed. The stupid game tells me that I need to talk to the count of Castle Suchandsuch, but the stupid bastard isn't home. In fact, he's a pillage-happy, war-mongering asshat, leading his troops from city to city with me trying to keep up, just to deliver something for a stupid errant quest. The game also likes to crash a lot. The characters look shit. Don't get me wrong - the actual gear looks nice, but the character models have the lowest polygon count since Counter-Strike. Of course that also means I get 400 of them on one battlefield without any significant amount of graphical lag. The micro-management is downright tedious: Forget to buy food and the troops will start bitching. Buy too much food and the stuff will go bad. Spend too much cash on food and you can't pay your troops' weekly wages. Neglect to upgrade your troops and they will suck. Upgrade them too much and you can no longer afford them. Neglect to gear up your unique units and spend their talent points and they'll lag behind. There's an actual "enable cheats" checkbox right on the launcher, but I wanna play this game fair and square.
All my bitching aside, this game feels incredibly fun and satisfying to play when it works. Ride into battle, lead a bunch of screaming, blood-thirsty warriors, beat the crap out of the enemy hordes, cut them down as you pass them on your horse, loot all their stuff, upgrade your troops, rinse, repeat. And I have only scratched the surface of what you can do on there. Maybe I'll rule over my own kingdom at some point, maybe I'll end up raiding and pillaging and burning random villages - after all, I'm out for revenge, right? Most of all, the fighting activities on there feel surprisingly varied: Break a guy out of prison, train peasants for battle and help them fight off some raiders, raid a bandit camp... sometimes I get ambushed right inside a tavern or whilst trying to shop for some stuff and I have to fight back a bunch of guys all by myself, without my troops or my horse. And there's always the arena. Of course I could also give up on all the warring and just become a merchant. Harhar!
My main problem right now is finding the proper balance. Steady income vs. warband upgrades. I need a stronger, bigger party to fight tougher enemies and make more cash. At the same time, all that extra cash will be spent ten-fold to support these upgrades. And I'm still waiting for Steam to give me a proper key for online play. This might become a whole new addiction. And if it does, there's also the Napoleonic Wars expansion. Holy crap. I just got back into Modern Warfare 3 with my clan, I'm hooked on Patapon, I love Warband and the Guild Wars 2 beta weekend is starting this Friday. I'm just glad I don't have a regular 9-5 office job.
-Cat
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