RPG LAND

Idin Leis · Niggar Alarm! Joined: 19 Oct 2005 Posts: 4435

Mount & Blade is an action based rpg which unfortunately does not have a story in its current state. The game plays kind of like Sid Meirs Pirates!. It is very open ended and moddable. It does not have the best graphics but the gameplay featured in this game is quite possibly the best for games of these type. Bethesda should look at this game and take some notes is what I am trying to say.

You can play this game for free till you hit a certain level and it will ask you to buy it.

I bought this game for like 10 dollars 2 years ago but as time goes on and they keep developing it further the price keeps going up. Currently it is 22 dollars with 29 dollars being the max. Try the game out and tell me what you think. It is only 103 mb.

Official:
http://www.taleworlds.com/download/mountandblade_0890_setup.exe

Mirror:
http://www.filecloud.com/files/file.php?user_file_id=592604

It just got a huge massive awesome update.

It now has Rag Doll physics which is great for a melee/mount combat based medieval game.

I am downloading it now but here are some other things it has updated for those that have played it before.

Loads of smaller villages and townships to visit.
The existing cities have had slight layout changes to expand them.
There are now townsfolk walking around during the day in the cities.
Merchants are laid out slightly different now, the town trader is no longer the horse merchant (now a separate guy) and you can directly access each merchant from the town menu (hit TAB).
Different towns have different opinions of you, and you can view individual people's attitude to you by mousing over their portrait in the conversation window.
Horse stats have been altered, and the horses seem even more responsive now.
A bunch of new graphics options, including actor detail, environment shadows and auto-scaling.
The combat engine has been optimised, and the speed of combat can be altered in the options.
You can now pick up dropped weapons and shields in combat.
Battle size now maxes out at 72 instead of 48.
Certain heads in character creation mode are limited to certain hair colours.
World map camera rotated to sit lower and give a better view of the map.
World map has a 3d compass that stays on screen at all times now instead of being a static object off in a corner of the map.
Villages can be looted, by yourself and by others (you'll see notifications about which village and who did the looting).
2 new factions, The Kingdom of Nords, and the Kingdom of Rhodoks.
The Khergit Khanate is now an actual faction you can join.
Food choices now have an effect on overall party morale.
Morale effects how quickly you move on the overworld map.
Tutorial mode is totally separate from the main game now.
Quick battle mode.
Quest Log screen now has a huge plethora of info, like who's in control of which city, which faction that person belongs to, how much food the city has, etc.
You can earn the right to bear a banner, which among other things displays over your head on the worldmap.
Cities fly the banner of their occupying general on the worldmap
You can gain fiefdoms, which earn you a weekly amount of cash, and allow you to recruit troops. The fiefs can be upgraded.
Mercenaries are now present as actual people in the taverns now, and you speak with them to recruit them. No longer do you have to speak to the tavern keeper.
Cavalry charges actually work now, the horses have appreciable weight and will plough through a crowd of infantry like an axe through a skull.
Tactical map/order menu on the battle screen. Accessed via backspace (has been reported on the official forums to occasionally cause crashes or errors)

This update is probably one of the biggest I have seen to this game yet. It is very addictive for a game that only has around 6 people developing it.

The new mods have not come out for the new version yet but I am sure they will be on the way. The Lord of the Rings mod was pretty damn cool.

Screens I guess:

_________________

LiQuid! · fasta dan a muddafucka! Joined: 07 Oct 2005 Posts: 8942

I always hear about this from the indie game crowd, and I love this type of game, but I tried to play it one of the previous times you linked it and I couldn't handle it. I don't know if I was missing some documentation or something but I couldn't figure out how to do anything. Also the hit detection/clipping in the town I visited sucked balls so I got stuck in a stairway or something... Maybe I'll give it another shot though.
_________________

LiQuid! · fasta dan a muddafucka! Joined: 07 Oct 2005 Posts: 8942

Actually, maybe I won't...

Downloading at a booty rocking 10 KB/s!
_________________

Idin Leis · Niggar Alarm! Joined: 19 Oct 2005 Posts: 4435

LiQuid! · fasta dan a muddafucka! Joined: 07 Oct 2005 Posts: 8942

So I played this for about two hours this morning. I'm not going to lie, the mounted combat is fun as shit and worth playing the game for. Charging on a horse with a big spear or lance at the ready and mowing down 2-3 infantry in a single pass and then coming about for another run is rad as f---ing shit. The problem I have, and I might be able to work this out over time, is that it's TOO freaking open ended. I have no clue how to be successful at this game. They just kind of dump you out in the world with a tiny unit of soldiers and you basically have to fend for yourself. I have no clue how to make money other than pillaging tiny villages and plundering them of all their money and goods. Anytime I get attacked by bandits, it's such a one sided slaughter that it's not even funny. I'm sure I'll be able to figure out how to better recruit dudes and troops for my army over time, but it seems like balancing them out and keeping your wounded healed is going to be a pain in the ass. Basically, it's not user friendly. Not even a little bit. Still pretty damn fun though.
_________________

Idin Leis · Niggar Alarm! Joined: 19 Oct 2005 Posts: 4435

LiQuid! · fasta dan a muddafucka! Joined: 07 Oct 2005 Posts: 8942

I tried archery for a bit, but it was only effective when dismounted and standing still for the most part. That might change with some higher skills, but it was slow going at first. Whereas with the polearm you start the game with I was laying waste to tons of dudes just by charging at them. It's actually even a little unbalanced. I managed to take out a 40 man bandit army with my starter army of about 11 dudes (plus the two perma members I recruited, Borcha, and some other chick with a dress who sucks).

I frickin hate it when my horse gets chopped up out from under me though. I'm nearly guaranteed to lose any battle where my horse gets deaded. It usually happens when one of my dickhead army members gets in my way during a charge and I come to a screeching halt. Man I hate that...

I swore fealty to some king or something so now I've got lots of enemies and it's hard to actually do anything without pissing people off, which kind of sucks. Is there a better way to make money than pillaging the villages? I usually net a good 1000-2000 gold from that, plus supplies, but the knights of whatever kingdom I knocked over never seem to be too thrilled with me, and they usually end up reinforcing the peasants mid-fight... I guess with a little start up capital I could try trading, but in all honesty that's a can of worms I don't really want to open up since I've spent so much time doing menial shit like that in so many RPG's. I just want to build a huge army in this game and slaughter shit... I'm actually even thinking about using some cheat codes and I don't think I'd be totally unjustified in doing so.
_________________

Idin Leis · Niggar Alarm! Joined: 19 Oct 2005 Posts: 4435

Well what I did in the end game is just hunt huge ass armies down and kill them.

For money I would just sell the armor I obtained. Before that I would just sell prisoners to slavery.

The whole pillaging villages thing was just brought out so I have not experienced that yet.

I heard they got rid of the units Dark Knights and Dark Hunters. These units fijucked me up when I played the game before this version. I would often try to find units that has them as prisoner so I can get them on my team.

ALSO why isnt anyone else trying this game out? I know I might suck as a person but this game is pretty cool! Try it out! ITS FUN

COMON HEATH! ACEND! JONES! those dudes from irc whose first rpg was ff7.... COMON try this game out!
_________________

LiQuid! · fasta dan a muddafucka! Joined: 07 Oct 2005 Posts: 8942

In their defense, it's a hard game to "just try out." Like I said, this is the second time I've tried it. The first time I was just lost as hell and had no patience for it. Not sure what snapped this time, but I was finally able to at least get a grasp of the basic gameplay. I think it would help if the game had some kind of plot intro or a better gameplay tutorial.

I still don't know if I'm going to spend any long term time with it, but it's definitely worth the effort it takes to learn the ropes to play it if you're a fan of the TES games.
_________________

Idin Leis · Niggar Alarm! Joined: 19 Oct 2005 Posts: 4435

LiQuid! · fasta dan a muddafucka! Joined: 07 Oct 2005 Posts: 8942

I like Oblivion's melee combat the best. even if it is a little basic and actiony. Combat in Morrowind was kind of wonky, but doesn't it kind of work the same way in M&B? Where whatever direction you point in before you attack decides the type of move you use? With the exception of couched lance damage, which is freaking badass and unique to any game that I can think of, aside from like Joust, but I don't think that counts. Smile

_________________

Idin Leis · Niggar Alarm! Joined: 19 Oct 2005 Posts: 4435

http://forums.taleworlds.net/index.php/topic,26743.0.html

0.891 is out.

However it does not let saves get transfered over. Meaning you have to start over again.
_________________

Idin Leis · Niggar Alarm! Joined: 19 Oct 2005 Posts: 4435

LiQuid! · fasta dan a muddafucka! Joined: 07 Oct 2005 Posts: 8942

Ok, ok, you win. It took a while, but I officially really, really love this game. It's overwhelming at first, but once you start leveling up, learning how the skills work and effect you and your army and save up enough for some totally rad equipment and an unstoppable horsie, this game rocks the shit out of most retail games.

I still wish there was a story mode, or some more obvious objectives to the game though instead of being so open ended. The gameplay here would really compliment a single player campaign where you maybe start as a squire or stable hand and work your way up as a fighter and then you could branch off and become like a bandit leader, a group of mercenaries that could take jobs from any kingdom for the right price (with faction movement accordingly) or join a fiefdom...

I hear there's a pretty robust mod community out there for this game. I'm looking forward to messing around with some of those after (if) I tire of just running around with my band of merry men, slaughtering bandits and ransacking the villages of my enemies. First things first, time to save up some loot IRL and buy me a serial key for this gem.
_________________

LiQuid! · fasta dan a muddafucka! Joined: 07 Oct 2005 Posts: 8942

Oh, some game related questions: Is there any way to check stats or change equipment of your non party member henchmen? I'd love to be able to get everyone on my team mounted if possible. Do I just need to learn which hirelings come with horses and hire accordingly or what? Also, what's the point of talking to these guys. I never seem to want to talk to them.

Related to that, how do I (if possible) recruit army members from the country I belong to? I rescued a group of my kingdom's fighters from a group of bandits and they joined me, but that's the only way I've found so far.

My party members: They suck. Is there any way I can help these guys get exp without dying every single battle save from chaperoning them and making sure they don't get in over their heads? The woman I've had on my team forever and I'm level 8 or 9 and she's still level 2... She has no horse or riding skill, so every fight consists of her taking 5 minutes to even reach to battlefield and then dying the first time an enemy looks at her funny.

What can I do with prisoners? I read somewhere you can sell them into slavery. How does that happen? Is there anything else I can do with them?

How do I get quests or missions from the Lord I swore an oath to? After I swore at him he didn't have anything else to say to me.

I'm gonna go pore over the official forum for a while and see if I don't learn some shit, but go ahead and answer these anyways.
_________________

Idin Leis · Niggar Alarm! Joined: 19 Oct 2005 Posts: 4435

LiQuid! · fasta dan a muddafucka! Joined: 07 Oct 2005 Posts: 8942

Holy crap, I can see why you're so confused. I just downloaded the game to see if I can run it on my office computers (I can, but it's slow as shit and not fun) and I accidentally got .808 instead of .890 and it's like a totally different game!! The towns and parties roaming the map are way more sparse. There's no peasant villages to loot (it wouldn't even let me attack a single peasant I found roaming around the map).

I guess that proves the new version beats the shit out of the older version and it's probably why I didn't get into the game before. In the older version I couldn't even figure out anything fun to do except wander around and get captured by bandits.

I can't wait to see what kind of leaps are made by the time it gets to version 1.0...
_________________

LiQuid! · fasta dan a muddafucka! Joined: 07 Oct 2005 Posts: 8942

Man, the mirrors for downloading this game suck dick. I wanna play at the office damn it! (I totally just stole a 512MB stick of ram from one of the upstairs computers, roofle!)
_________________

Idin Leis · Niggar Alarm! Joined: 19 Oct 2005 Posts: 4435

Jackal · Joined: 27 Apr 2006 Posts: 337 Location: Carthage, TX

I'll try it and send a link to my brother and his coworkers at Gearbox. My mother may even want to play it. (She has over 20 characters on Oblivion and nearly twice that on WoW.)
_________________
"What's that powder he's putting in our dinner?"