Return of the TL: Mount & Blade

So I’ve been playing Mount & Blade. It’s an action adventure game set sometime in the Middle Ages. You assume the role of a hero knight, mercenary, or merchant. The game is still in open development, but it can be purchased right now for $18 instead of $30 when it is finished. The developers decided to go with this system of distribution because they are a very small team in Turkey and need money to continue developing the game. The game actually started out development between a husband and wife with him doing the coding and her responsible for the art. As you can probably tell, this game fits every definition of indie development.

You start the game by customizing your character by choosing gender and answering several questions about your character’s background. These questions serve to determine your base attribute points as well as the main story of the game. You are then greeted with the Character Screen.

As shown, there are 4 main Attributes: Strength for melee combat, Agility for weapon proficiency, Intelligence for learning new skills, and Charisma for mercantile and diplomatic pursuits. It’s a comparatively simple system that nonetheless works well for this game.

The gameplay mechanics is where Mount & Blade really shines. The focus is on realism in sword fighting. In this game the basic sword can attack in four different directions. There is the right swing, left swing, downward chop, and stab which do different types of damage against armored and unarmored opponents. Sounds pretty normal so far right? BUT, let’s say you’re defending now. You actually have to look at where the attack is coming from and block in the correct direction. If you see your opponent start to bring his sword up into the air, you have to flick your mouse up and block. It’s not like Oblivion where you just jam on the block button as a defense to all types of attacks. It sounds complicated, but it is actually very intuitive. I think this battle system is very refreshing because it doesn’t require a huge amount of practice to get the hang of, but it is also very satisfying when you realize you’ve become very adept at virtual sword fighting. Click for youtube demo.

As you can see by the video, this game doesn’t try to sell itself on its pretty graphics. Textures appear very dated, the color scheme is relatively subdued, and some animations still need a lot of work. If you’re a person that has the market’s latest video card, this game is probably not for you. Although I wish the game looked more appealing, I think the crappy graphics fits well with the subject matter. It’s the Middle Ages, things must be grainy and fuzzy.

One last thing to mention is the mods that exist for this game. I mentioned earlier that this game is still in development, but the community has already developed 8-9 full conversion mods that really do a lot to supplement the native game. For those of you who are not familiar with mods, they are modifications of the original game done by gamers that use the game engine to create additional content or even seemingly create a whole different game. As of now, there is a Star Wars mod, a mod that recreates the battles fought in the LoTR trilogy, a mod that puts you back in 11^th century Japan, and a mod that actually creates an entirely new and exciting story with completely different quests. I’m fairly excited about this game because I’m expecting the mod community to really kick up after the final version of M&B is released, and that’s when all the fun stuff happens. I thought that would happen with Oblivion, but it turns out that the game engine is so complicated that people are just sticking to retexturing weapons and consequently, there are very few total conversions.

Anyway, this will be the… second game I have ever bought and I think I'll actually be spending a lot of time on it in the future. To break it all down: unique gameplay mechanics, dated visuals, terrific sound and music, and the charm that comes with a small time developer. This is the official website where you can find additional screen shots and download a demo version of the game.

-TL out