A wonderfully red-blooded game beset with serious design & logic issues.
Setting is roughly analogous to medieval Mediterranean (perhaps too-much so), but without the disease, infant-mortality, and ideologies, including racism and misogyny - though you can buy/sell women for breeding purposes. Towns and some villages are amazingly detailed, well worth having a look around, but not much to do there.
Story is minimal, with no real reason why the different cartels of crime families are fighting, other than greed for more peasants to extort. There are some token differences of opinion in cartel descriptions in the encyclopedia, but in-game there's no difference beside appearance and initially available troop types. It all feels contrived and pointless.
The battles are magnificent, with great combat mechanics and heavy of reliance of skill & luck over stats. The 1k vs 1k battles are the craziest I've played anywhere to date, especially when you can get one-shotted by a javelin, couched-lance or a crossbow bolt to the face. Combat ai seems pretty good at 1st, where you think "yep that's what I'd do in their situation", but after a while you notice patterns that reveal it to be scripted, resulting in immersion-breaking exploits.
Sieges are much improved over the original game, with a great deal of carnage & chaos. You don't fully control your troops though, and some commands can quickly lead to disaster, for example: while defending after destroying their ram, issuing 'charge' will send troops rushing to open up the gate, then out into a horde of enemies, rather than up onto the walls where the enemies are trickling in via ladders: "K my bad, let me spell it out to you numnuts... oh, you're all dead".
Battle terrain is handmade, so expect plenty of repetition. Terrain lacks cavalry-neutralizing areas (where cav must dismount to proceed), like rocky hills, old-growth forest and marsh. Many villages are filled with obstacles, but its tricky to lure cav to fight there. This forces the player to go cavalry or suffer... greatly. It is Mount & Blade though, not Sword & Sandal.
Outside of battle, the rest of the game is a long brutal grind, initially to get your stats and cashflow up to a point where you can afford to partake in the global politics, then grinding the endless ebb & flow of expensive turf wars between rival crime families/cartels, seemingly without end (I'm told one doesn't 'finish' Bannerlord).
Mechanically there are heaps of goofs and arbitrary design decisions that will frustrate the player, worst of which was the artifical caps on otherwise sensible improve-with-use skills that results in characters peaking in their chosen field well into old-age instead of their 20's (if they work hard). There's magical caps on what your family can do, regardless of money; have 3Mil early game and want a 4th workshop? Go away looser. Have 10M and want to buy a town from a broke family or rebels? Nup you need to *grind* your way to trade level 300 (and like 40yo).
The smithing income also deserves a mention, as it earns more than enough to fund your family milita, while a combination of trade, bulk manufacturing, ransoming and extortion probably won't cover costs. To me this feels like a player-only exploit that's allowed, as its the only workaround to a flawed economic/resource model.
Npc companions, including spouses, have a basic backstory, but that's about the depth to them, they're a mostly mute troop you can equip and delegate certain limited tasks to. You can't ask a companion to transport troops/goods to a specific location. There is no contract-builder for conditional or repetitive tasks. You can't converse with companions about what affects their disposition towards you or other parties. As far as I could tell, they don't leave if you displease them. This is quite a step back from M&B v1 where companions had stuff to say, complained about other companions, and set clear boundaries.
Human breeding is part of the game, as it ensures long-term playthroughs, however its handled in a coy & superficial way, with no franchising, adultery, "wife stealing", work-wives/husbands... or even the actual deed, unless the board-game is some kind of euphemism. So one wonders. I even made a grotesque horseface character to be sure, since progeny inherit their parent's features. In any case, the idea of mating/breeding as a simulation parameter is intriguing, especially the potential drama if npc mating instincts don't quite align with npc expectations of others.
Violence is prominent but relatively sanitized: there is blood, but no gore, dismemberment, broken limbs, crushed heads/torsos or ragdoll-trampling. Characters on the battlefield are fully alive or fully dead, none of the awful in-between. Corpses don't pile-up and form obstacles, blood and other fluids don't pool in chokepoints. Horses never panic and throw their riders or bite/kick nearby troops. Horses can be killed & injured, you'll often see riderless horses fleeing in distress with arrows/javelins sticking out of them. 0-morale troops flee rather than surrender, you can slaughter fleeing enemies, and some of your troops will do it unless you call an end to the battle. You may execute captured enemy family members, it isn't explicitly shown and it turns everyone against you. It is however an effective way to hasten the demise of a cartel.
Character design is pretty weird, with most looking meaty & modern rather than the stunted, hard-lived appearance of feudal peoples. Player character design is OK, but very Caucasian. Many of the Mongoloid characters often look like Caucasians with rotated 'slant' eyes.
Lighting, color and environments were great, the sun, sunlight and skies all looked convincing, which is rare in so many productions these days. Walking around a desert settlement at golden-hour was amazing. Riding on starlit dunes was a memorable moment.
2D artwork was outstanding, as it was in M&B v1.
Music lacked the traditional instrumentation and cultural variety that could've added heaps more character. Battle music changes according to how things are going for your side.
Played on 'realistic' settings, except companion death. Game ran perfectly on Linux (all-amd) thanks to Steam Proton... just don't fight in forested areas while its raining.
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