What you have with Mount&Blade is an auspicious blend of Elder Scrolls-themed combat intertwined with a smaller scale army management theme. Fortunately, unlike other Elder Scrolls titles, world travel is far more simplified. Players need not concern themselves with tiresome journeys across hours of fields, hills and rivers. The Overworld Map function is simplified to include towns, castles, and markers for various armies, caravans, or raiding parties. In point of fact, most of the player’s focus will be surrounded around more personal effects. It is your job to raise your character from a lowly adventurer into a seasoned commander of loyal followers.
Mount&Blade offers a random character generation that stems from a few superfluous choices of origin. Your choices will effect starting statistical, skill, and weapon skill assignment, though the player will have some minor control over where a few of the back end points are assigned. And, of course, leveling up gives you more points to play with. Either your character can be a warrior-king, general, siege strategist, trade specialist, even a master caravan security crew. In short, combat is inescapable. Your choices just determine how much combat your character will actually participate in. One can spend their time training and recruiting NPCs to do their dirty work for them, and that will or will not have its success based on your aptitude. But, there is no substitute for getting your hands dirty, and sometimes your presence can change the tide of any battle.
For a Beta version, although there is always “room for improvement”, a lot of the basics of Mount&Blade are locked up tight. As the name suggests, combat takes place with weapons and horses. Mounted combat is more than a mere option, especially when numbers are not in your favor. Horses aid in Overworld travel and certainly come in handy during the clash of steel. The tutorial serves best in teaching players about basic combat, at least enough to keep you comfortable from the start. Mounted combat takes much more practice to master, and should not be attempted without some degree of confidence. In later versions, the tweaks in both styles of combat will make all the difference in the world.
The second “half” of the game deals with everything else. Town interaction, side quests, allegiances with kingdoms, factional relations with other empires, the whole lot. There is plenty of room to flesh out everything else needed to make Mount&Blade a complete title. For now, there is a working skeleton of a title. A very nice skeleton, so do not misread. All it requires is a greater field of variety and balance testing. Hopefully, more quest types will be added. With that, it would be nice to see quests that have both profound and insignificant impacts on the singular player and the other kingdoms at large. Otherwise, be prepared for the appearance of Mount&Blade. Make sure to visit Taleworlds’ website for current updates.
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