"No, it’s not a type of survival tool…"

If you're reading this, you probably haven't heard of Mount & Blade. You've likely seen this in the budget section of your video game retailer and admired the Frodo/Aragorn lookalike on the cover. It's probable that you haven't been following the game throughout its 3+ years of development by a husband/wife team in Turkey. It doesn't mean that much to you either. But, it's an indie game, and indie games often have interesting ideas that develop cult followings, despite other shortcomings. One of the common mistakes independent developers make is that they try ideas that other games have already tried.

Mount & Blade differs in that regard. It doesn't look like a new and innovative game, and if you're judging solely by the screenshots, it looks like a ripoff of Oblivion or Morrowind, on horses. In fact, you couldn't be further from the truth. M&B is original. Not only is it unique, it's actually fun. Set in the fictional medieval land of Calradia, M&B is the most realistic medieval combat game ever developed – and not just on horseback.

At heart, M&B is a sandbox role-playing game. You begin by creating a character, selecting from a variety of character backgrounds and customising his or her appearance, and then you're thrown into the middle of nowhere. It can be awfully disorientating for a new player, with little to no clues as to what you should be doing. Indeed, the lack of guidance is a two-edged sword: on one hand, it means you can do whatever you want; on the other hand, it can be easy to wander around aimlessly for long periods of time. It doesn't take long to get used to this free roaming, however, and soon you'll be encountering what makes the game so addictive. If you picked up M&B and thought about how awesome it would be to ride around, bonk heads and impale hapless footmen on pointed sticks, this is the game for you.

The combat engine is what makes this game. It looks simple, but it has more depth than most RPGs. M&B isn't about spamming the left mouse button to get randomised hits Oblivion-style. Fighting actually takes a fair amount of strategy and reflex. The basis of the combat system is the use of directional attacking and blocking. Moving the mouse across and attacking will result in a side-to-side swipe. Other movements will execute thrusts and overhead strikes. Defending consists of parrying in the same direction with a weapon or hiding behind a shield. Considering the huge range of weapons available – bows, swords, maces, spears, javelins, and so on – the combat can get quite hectic. At first you'll be trading blows and getting your butt handed to you, but over time you learn how to anticipate how the AI fights, resulting in fast-paced attacking, blocking, counter-attacking and fancy footwork. The ability to control where you are attacking and blocking is incredibly immersive, and while not as flexible as lightsaber duels in Jedi Knight, it's simple to learn and it never gets boring.

What makes it really work is how fine-tuned the combat engine is. Directional attacking aside, the game has a unique damage formula, factoring what the engine calls a “speed bonus”. Basically, one aspect is which part of your weapon connects with the target. If you stab someone with the pointy end of your spear, or cleave nicely with your blade, you do more damage. If you attack someone too close to you, you're likely to land a poor hit with a non-lethal part of the weapon, and therefore do less damage. There's also movement penalty: targets moving towards you will receive more damage, and targets moving away from you will take less damage, all based on the laws of physics – making battles not only more realistic, but also make a lot more sense. If you do a ride-by against some poor archer and sweep your sword across his shoulders, you'll more than likely dispatch him with one blow instead of rolling dice for a critical hit. There's also a nice “couched lance” ability, involving a mounted combatant using a spear or lance charging towards a target, doing a ton of extra damage. Small, but nifty features like these give players more options when it comes to fighting.

That's only introducing basic combat, however. Battles in M&B aren't big one-on-one duels. The battles are huge – the game has a default max of 75 combatants on the field, although mods can easily take it over a few hundred. When you consider the intensity of single combat, and realise that you're just one in a hundred on the field, it dawns on you how challenging these battles can be. Thankfully, M&B has a simple and intuitive command system that allows you to issue basic orders to your troops, allowing you to position them and move them at whim. Don't expect Ghost Recon-style heads-up displays though; it's mostly restricted to stop and charge commands to whichever troop type you want to order.

And there are many troop types. Each of the five factions of Calradia has unique characteristics and faction-exclusive troops. The Swadians, for example, base their armies on heavy cavalry; the Khergits are Mongol-like horse archers; and the Nords are based on the Vikings. This adds a unique flavour to each battle you fight, and demands particular strategies to deal with the tougher units. You have access to a large range of melee, mounted and missile troops you can recruit and upgrade as you get more experience, eventually turning your rabble of peasants to a formidable army of knights and heavy infantry, if you so choose.

Outside of battle, most of the gameplay revolves around extensive travelling and exploration on the world map. Visuals here are much simpler, with generic troop models representing armies, and the map is dotted with villages, towns and castles, all of which have their own rendered explorative area when entered. It is possible to interact with any party on the world map, be it to ask an ally how the war is going or attacking (or being attacked by) bandits. Interacting with NPCs and visiting towns will offer a respectable variety of things to do, including fighting in tournaments, bounty hunting, capturing enemy troops, espionage, and campaigning.

So far, M&B looks very promising. The graphics look clean and well-modelled, even if not cutting-edge standard as we would expect from a major developer. They are very pretty nonetheless, and battling under different day and night conditions adds a wonderful atmosphere to the game. The full release of the game adds nice animations to the character models, such as drawing weapons and hit animations, making fighting less robotic. The music has also progressed nicely, going from basic MIDI loops to epic orchestrated pieces. Ambient noise is a bit lacking – the din of battle is pretty clear with lots of troops clanking against each other, but it does leave a feeling that more background noise would improve immersion.

But perhaps the weakest part of the game is the lack of progression experienced by the player. Some reviews might bash the game for having no story, but to be fair, it is a sandbox game; sandbox games traditionally aren't meant to have a pre-conceived plot. It is true that the game world is quite dynamic, in that things change often – wars are started and ended, castles and towns change hands, and the player can directly take part in any of these events in some form or another.

The problem is that it doesn't feel that your actions do much. Yes, eventually your faction grows larger and you start wiping factions off the map, but defeating enemy lords doesn't result in any long-term consequence; they simply disappear and respawn with a new army later. Building improvements in your villages and castles has a token effect that doesn't really change anything. Completing quests and befriending lords doesn't alter their behaviour, and there's no difference between the lords – they're all the same scripted entity. If you capture a castle, the enemy faction won't do anything about it unless it's part of their campaign script. So, while battling large armies and sieging castles and towns is part of what you do, doing so doesn't make the game much different.

That's probably the part that leaves the most to be desired. Hardcore enthusiasts will love Mount & Blade because of how much freedom the game offers without being pegged to a contrived plot. The casual gamer, however, will find the game somewhat generic and repetitive, because there isn't all that much to do. You fight battles…and that's about it. The quests offer a bit of variety, but they either still involve fighting or walking around to talk to someone. Perhaps the simplest improvement would be to introduce some scripted events or triggers just to add consequences to your actions, or introduce a world event that affects all factions. M&B doesn't need a huge storyline, or any storyline, but it does need some sort of guidance to appeal to the casual gamer.

Overall, Mount & Blade is an amazing specimen. The combat engine is by far the best element of the game, and that alone will keep you playing time and time again. The game does get repetitive, so spending many consecutive hours on the game will quickly kill your interest. The open-world, free-roaming aspect is like a big playground for you and your army. Aside from any clear sense of progression, M&B is great value for money, and its simple-yet-addictive gameplay makes this one of the more unique budget games. As a final bonus, the extensive development time means that there is an already-established modding community, providing more goodies to play with if you get bored of the native game.

Graphics: 7/10
Sound: 7/10
Gameplay: 8/10
Replay: 5/10
Overall: 7/10

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 10/13/08

Game Release: Mount & Blade (US, 09/16/08)