As he surveyed the battlefield Brian took stock of the men
he had lost, the buildings burned and the peasants crying in the street. He
thought about the futility of war, whether the castle has been truly worth the
cost and whether he could reclaim the losses on expenses.
Brian is my character in single player medieval-em-up Mount
and Blade: Warbands, which sees you live out your life as a medieval mercenary
free to loot and pillage as you please. Having clicked through the character
creation process, deciding that Brian was the son of merchants and worked in a
shop, I realised that this wasn’t really the start that one would expect of a
die-hard soldier of fortune.
After beating some bandits to death with an abacus (and
admittedly several peasants wielding cleavers helping) Brian set off to find
others to share in his adventures. The early years were spent travelling from
village to village, hunting bandits, rescuing cattle and explaining the
relevance of crop rotation to a back-dated agrarian community. Gradually more
and more people began to follow Brian (and it had nothing to do with the fact
he paid them a lot of money), farmers turned pike men, cattle ranchers turned
knight errants and Dave.
Dave is a footman that looks like a large number of other
footmen within the army of Brian; he has fearlessly stood by Brian’s side
through thick and thin. Ok so I cannot actually name my troops, but he looks
like a Dave and, given his resemblance to all the others, he seems to survive
every battle.
With Dave at his side and astride his mighty horse ‘Net
Present Value’, Brian has left his life as a former accountant completely
behind. Indeed nothing can express the sheer joy of charging headlong in to
battle lance in hand. Until, that was, Brian was inexplicably awarded one of
the major cities within the game.
No Dave, that is not what I meant by Hedgehog Formation!
Having taken service with one of the kings Brian took part
in a few castle sieges, his ability at strategically concealing himself for
most of the battle resulted in him gaining most of the credit for the ensuing
victory by virtue of being alive. This resulted in said king rewarding our hero
with a big shiny city.
I am playing with the diplomacy mod enabled so I cannot be
sure to what extent this is within the
original game, but having been awarded a
major city Brian was then in charge of hiring defenders and sending out
patrols, even building a few improvements here and there. It was a little disappointing
to find that Brian was unable to rename the city ‘non-current asset’ and so it
remained with the somewhat less believable name of Suno.
In fact following on from being given a city Brain (somewhat
ironically) spent a lot more time looking at balance sheets and budget reports.
Needing to work out exactly how much money would be coming in to which city,
however the upshot of this was that Brian (and Dave) now led a troop of the
hardest, most expensive warriors around. Indeed if it was not for the fact that
Brian’s maximum army size is about 80 odd he would have long since deposed his
employer and established a kingdom free from tyranny and fiscal inaccuracy. So off
they went again, in search of more castles to capture and a vain hope that one
day they would be able to command enough troops to at least stand a chance
against an entire kingdom!
This game is one that I always go back to, it’s fun to feel
part of an epic battle, leading from the front or a nearby sheltered position.
There is a great deal of pleasure in taking an enemy lord captive and ransoming
him back for a vast fortune. While combat can be a bit challenging at first
charging in to the enemy soon becomes second nature, although I never quite got
the hang of the shooting mechanics.
I definitely feel that I got my money’s worth with this game
(given my total play time to date of 72 hours), especially since it was on sale
when I bought it originally. So if you are looking for an interesting diversion
you can find Mount & Blade: Warbands on steam.
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