A Fan’s Reaction to Mount and Blade: With Fire and Sword

This is the first time I have actually sat down to write a review of, or rather a reaction to, a video game.  I say a “reaction to” because I’ve logged less than 10 hours and therefore I have not gotten the full experience yet.  With a game like one of the Mount & Blade series, you have to spend a lot of time playing the single-player campaign to really experience it all.  I think I’ve played over 50 hours in Warband, and I still enjoy running around the map doing my thing and definitely have not seen every aspect of the game.  Also, I am not a video game developer, nor am I a critic.  I just play ‘em and sometimes have opinions.

I have been quite a fan of TaleWorlds’ Mount & Blade series for some time.  For those of you that are not familiar with the Mount & Blade series, they are a set of open-ended RPGs focusing on medieval mounted combat (hence the “mount” in the title).   You create your own character and lead a band of heroes and soldiers in a world wrought with war (you get to decide who makes up your army and how many soldiers you take along).  The games prior to With Fire and Sword took  place in a semi-realistic fictional medieval land called Calradia.  When I say semi-realistic, I mean that there’s no magic, and that the characters mostly stick to what we would consider the societal norms of a medieval realm.  Though the Mount & Blade series lacks the polished feel of other sandbox-like games, they are probably the most accurate RPG representation of a medieval world I have encountered.  Granted, I haven’t encountered that many games that focus on realistic medieval mounted combat.  But if you enjoy exploring a world of lords and ladies and carving a name out of the war-torn land for yourself — these are some niche games that are worth a shot.

On to my observations about the newest installment of TaleWorld’s signature series, which by now, came out a couple months ago.

Mount & Blade: With Fire And Sword!

I feel like I should point out that Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword is not a sequel or what I consider a normal expansion; it is a “stand-alone expansion.”  A very odd category that I checked out the wikipedia entry on anyway.  I thought that being a stand-alone expansion meant it would include and expands on the previous Mount & Blade games, specifically Warband.  However, it became clear to me that With Fire and Sword is supposed to be an entirely separate game altogether, mostly just using the framework of the previous two.  That’s fine; it just seems to be a little slim on the new content and features that would make it very different (in ways that I enjoy) from Warband.  A better term for With Fire and Sword in respect to the previous Mount & Blade games is probably that it’s a “spin-off.”

There are some very big differences in content however that I think I should also point out before I go on to discuss the game play itself.  Probably the biggest difference is that the game’s setting and story are based on a historical fiction novel, Ogniem i Mieczem by Henryk Sienkiewicz.  Toto, I don’t think we’re in Calradia anymore.  This is very important when it comes to With Fire and Sword‘s “historical accuracy,” which I applaud certain aspects of.

What type of games are the Mount & Blade games, anyway?

As I was writing this, I was trying to think of what I would classify Mount & Blade as…  As I have stated, I am no expert.  I’m not a developer or a professional critic who supposedly knows all the ins and outs of these terms.  But to me, I have always called it a “sandbox RPG.”  It’s not like the hardcore RPGs and JRPGs where you play a set character and have a very strict story line to follow.  It is more along the lines of something like Oblivion or Fallout but it seems to have far less story than those WRPGs (though it is supposedly more story driven than Warband), only sharing the open aspect of the world map and semi-customizable player character.  I don’t really know, and I think it’s just semantics.  But you treat and RPG very different from an RTS.

It's a good thing I picked a unisex name for my character...

Mount & Blade is sometimes referred to as an open-ended action-RPG.  I could agree with that. The games are definitely open-ended and there’s definitely a lot of action in those battles and tournaments.  However, there are also the aspects of your relationships with lords and villages, as well as the nurturing of any villages you might own.  And there are the classic RPG elements of creating your own character.  But.  Eh.  What’s in a name?

I approach the Mount & Blade franchise primarily as a very free form RPG, which led to my first disappointment in With Fire and Sword.  Many core elements that made the previous games RPGs were removed: right off the bat you cannot choose your sex or the several facets of your background like you could in Warband.  I was actually in denial for a little while.  I just thought I had missed the options somehow.  I was very disappointed to find out that no, those options were flat out removed/left out of this implementation of the newest installment in the Mount & Blade series.  I almost stopped playing right there.  I wanted to play a certain character in my head and I couldn’t.  I was left with a character defined only by stats and equipment.  Usually in expansion packs, features and content are added not removed.  

The Tutorial: A Whole New World? Not Quite.

But I dealt with it and kept playing, because I enjoyed the game play of Warband as a male character, so I could enjoy the game play of With Fire and Sword as a male too.  The tutorial seemed much more… I don’t want to say important, but maybe… defined?  Instead of waking up and being attacked, you… randomly break down a barricade of a village and help some named guy fight off some other guys? The comparison I meant to make was between the “Merchant” and this named guy whose name escapes me at the moment (this will probably come back to bite me as I think he may be a prominent historical figure and I am displaying my ignorance of the subject matter). Anyway, the likelihood I will see said named guy again after the tutorial seems much greater than seeing the “Merchant” of Warband.

In the tutorial they give you the standard, this is how you move, fight, mount a horse (up until this point those of us that have played the previous games cannot click fast enough to get through the hand holding), and fire a gun!  Oh, and not firing a gun at a person, but at a lock to open a gate!  OOh, that was actually interesting to me.  I didn’t think of that.  But then of course you go and fight some bandits, or brigands, or whatever they’re called, and because this is With Fire and Sword I decided to try out mounted shooting.  Well that was difficult!  I failed so badly at hitting any mounted opponents.  I quickly went back to using the techniques with a blade I’d refined in Warband.  (I have since then become a little better at mounted aiming, but ranged combat has always been difficult for me in Mount & Blade.)

Combat: Fire at will! No? Oh…

What I stare at for half the duration of each battle if I chose a firearm.

One thing I did notice that I both loved and hated at the same time was the amount of realism that has been put into the weaponry.  When using a melee weapon, depending on which way you flick your mouse, the weapon does different strokes.  Well, the realistic bit that they tacked onto their guns is the reloading: you literally have to wait about 15 seconds while your character pours in the shot, beats it down and whatnot.  Then you can fire.  It cracks me up.  And while I think some may find it annoying because it makes you wait, it adds a touch of realism to the game that I have always applauded Mount & Blade for.

Also, for some reason it’s entertaining when you run out of ammo and get to bash people upside the head with the barrel of your matchlock carbine. Although I did realize during a shootout with an NPC that sometimes, it’s easier to just charge them with your sword instead of racing to see who can reload, aim and shoot faster.  Which I also found entertaining.  I kept thinking as I was running towards him: who brings a blade to a gun fight?

I haven’t gotten to the grenades aspect of the game yet, but they sound like a great addition to the game.  One reviewer said that they were a great way to combat the trademark Mount & Blade battle clusters – where all your enemies and soldiers cluster together in one big… well.  Cluster. (It’s never good to be caught in the middle of that.)  So, grenades make a wonderful area attack to exploit this very, very common occurrence in the many battles that you will play.  I’m looking forward to it.

Questing: Where’s the salt!?

Alright seriously. It took me nine in game days to find 3 bags of salt to finish the first quest and I couldn’t even tell you how many villages and fortresses/cities I visited.  Questing was always repetitivein Warband (go to the other side of the map to deliver this, kill this meanie, collect these taxes, bring us cows, e tc) and not necessarily easy (sometimes no one has any cows! and if they do, they certainly don’t have 9 spares to sell you!).  Anyway, so while I was running around searching for salt, I quickly became outnumbered: the meanies (deserters, looters, bandits and whatnot) had much bigger armies (say, 40 whereas I was… 1) and it took me a while to find a mercenary camp where I could recruit soldiers for my army.  I miss being able to recruit random peasants.  In order to survive, you really need an army.

Ooh Shiny!

On an aesthetic note, the graphics are pretty much the same, although somehow the User Interface seems shinier and yet exactly the same… I don’t know how that’s possible.  I think the “parchment” template is just lighter and somehow streamlined.

But your character is just as blocky and scary looking as ever.  With Fire and Sword has the same level of avatar appearance customization as Warband. The way you can tweak the different aspects of the face is very Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind – esque.  And I like it.  It’s just hard to made a good looking character.  I also haven’t been able to find out if you can pick a banner anywhere, which you could do in Warband if you started out with the impoverished noble background.  You can however, customize your army my talking to the leaders in the same type of mercenary camp as the group of soldiers you are trying to customize.  You can upgrade their armor, horses, weapons, and hats.  There may be some other aspects I’m failing to mention, but you probably get the gist of it.  Although it makes some sense that you can only customize the specific regional type of soldier from the corresponding camp, it makes it a little inconvenient if you happen to have soldiers from a far away land and want to upgrade them.  And are at war with said country.  That can make gallivanting around trying to find a mercenary camp exciting.  But I digress.

The villages seem a little nicer, the buildings are a little more spread out, and the addition of gates that you can actually open are a neat little addition.  I’ve always thought that the in-combat scenery is nice.  Nothing spectacular, but then again, there’s something about a whole horde of cavalry galloping over a hill back-lit by the setting sun that just makes me all warm and fuzzy inside…

Wait… who developed this game again?

This is something that’s confused me to no end.  Steam says With Fire & Sword‘s developer is TaleWorlds but on the forums I kept hearing that it wasn’t TaleWorlds that physically developed the game.  According to the forums, a reliable source, I know, TaleWorlds just designed it and then another company, SiCh Studio to be precise, actually implemented it.  This is not uncommon, to my understanding, in the game development world (but again, I’m no expert).  However, as it often happens when a third party steps into a franchise, somebody (namely many fans) feel butted out.  Here are some other sequels where this has happened: Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic developed by BioWare whereas Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II was developed by Obsidian.   Same thing, same companies with Neverwinter Nights and Neverwinter Nights II: BioWare handed off the sequel to Obsidian.  Another example: Fallout and Fallout 2 were both developed by Black Isle Studios, Fallout 3 by Bethesda Softworks, and Fallout 3: New Vegas by Obsidian.  So needless to say, it happens.  And it’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Reflections

It’s not what I expected.  That doesn’t mean it’s bad.  Not at all.  I think that people who are just getting in on the Mount & Blade series will enjoy it, though they might have a hard time with the quirkily realistic combat and the tedious quests, and long travel times (wow, that was a long list of negatives).  The game has it’s good sides!  I swear.  Because for some reason I keep playing it.  Maybe it’s the hope that that one village over there might have my extra bag of salt. Or the promise of fresh new villages for me to run through at full tilt, stopping only for the Village Elder. Or maybe it’s the new semi-historical factions that I am curious to learn more about.  I don’t know.

I would recommend playing Warband first, if you haven’t and are interested in a medieval action-RPG or mounted combat.  The additional RPG elements are a major selling point to me (for Warband).  Right now, I haven’t found much in With Fire and Sword that is going to keep me away from Warband for very much longer.  But I applaud TaleWorlds (and SiCh Studios – though I don’t know how much of a say they had) for making the leap and moving to a new land, factions and storyline, as well as  trying out the additional quest types and political intrigue (both of which I have yet to encounter — a major reason I haven’t stopped playing) .

There’s a lot wrong with Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword and I worry that I have focused a little too much on these negative aspects of the game in this post, but I want to stress that I still really enjoy the game.  It has it’s flaws and it still feels very rough.  But the thing is… I still like it.  It’s one of a kind.

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