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Mount and Blade is a primitive, shareware, made-by-two-people (who are even Turkish) game. It's also absolutely kickass... well, slightly kickass anyway. Has anyone else seen it? It's non-magic medieval stuff. It's sort of Darklands-ish in tone, but it's 140Mb (or something) so just download it and see. The free version is limited to level 6, but I've been having so much fun pwnzoring bandits with my band of merry men I haven't got there yet. The 3d, realtime, squadbased combat (including cavalry combat) is sort of like Dynasty Warriors, but with 'clonk people on the head then sell them into slavery' attitude.

Official site.

If I could pick up Mount and Blade's combat system wholesale and plonk it into Oblivion, that would almost be the perfect game.

Yeah, that's actually why I'm playing it. I'm sick of Oblivion (probably temporary), but with the 'Norman Invasion' mod and the 'War of the Ring' mod for B&M, I'm having a blast. WotR even has strategic warfare and faction death... so it's Dynasty Warriors and Rome:TW at the same time. There's a Rome mod too.

I haven't played M&B in quite a while, but I'll invariably go back. It's just the kind of game you keep going back to. I only paid $11 for it, too. It's probably closer to $20 now. The farther along the game's development gets, the closer the price gets to the final price of $25.

LOL It's currently at the $14 mark.

So, can it still run properly on a 733 Mhz/128 RAM PC or have the system requirements inflated as well ?

It still looks like ass, if that's what you mean.

EDIT - ZOMG Pirates! Naval combat!

Yeah, i got it a month or so ago, great fun! Mounted combat is awesome, and the animations for the horse are great.

The modding community still cant add animations yet, which limits the game a lot.

Whats the deal with the green water too?

I can't believe how active the mod forums are there. Looking at number of posts, and number of threads kept active every day (whole pages), it's pretty nuts.

I've got to stop shooting my own guys, tho.

Are there any mods I'd wanna get right away ? Things like game balancing or bug fixes ?

I haven't run into any bugs in 0.731. I'm playing The Last Battle LotR mod, and 1066 the Norman mod. There's a mod that adds more quests, more of a storyline and changes to weapons/armour... umm... Storymod, I think. It's very nice.

Oh. Wow.

I haven't done anything else but play this since I got home. Even the tournament in the starting town is a game in itself...

When I'm done with it, it'll be a WWE-style gladiator minigame. Unless I get bored first.

The demo comes too quickly; I've played through with 4 characters so far using only two general character builds (archer and merchant/large party leader). The combat system is deceptively simple, but I can perform all sorts of feints and counter-attacks just by interrupting with the block button. jousting with a polearm on horseback is fun but I need to get the hang of targetting to land some properly-devestating hit for once.

I'd personally like the footwork to be a bit more dynamic than the normal meandering around like an FPS knife-fight, (perhaps by adding side-stepping function by double-tapping a move key. Quickly add distance between you and your enemy but a chance to lose your balance especially if hit). But other than that I really adore the consistent design of combat and application of the attack moves. Some games too often just get too arcade-like by restricting ones options of timing and direction. This game has such a gritty, open-ended system that I can't emphasize or describe enough. And that's not even getting into the map mode, travelling from city to city, hunting down bandits, starting battles on hills and fields, charging through the ranks on horseback, swinging a mace in one hand across the heads of your enemies, shield in the other hand upheld at the right moments to block incoming arrows and rocks, and a fresh horde of loot, prisoners, and allies ready for promoting when the batlte is over.

I'm off to create a 5th character just for the tournaments now. I need to aquire $14...

Yeah, when I read the 'play to level 6' thing I figured levels would come slowly... but I get to level three before I leave town. :S

The mods are where it's at, though. I've got a Mordor character hanging around south of Gondor killing all the supply trains headed for Dol Amroth - and running away from patrols. Selling slaves is neat!

Oh man, I finally figured out how to use the lance properly.

The secret is to NOT attack with it. You just leave it in position and when the lance head strikes a target, you do some nice damage.

I've now dropped the missile weapons altogether, my usual loadout is a lance, one-handed sword, shield, and one-handed mace.

The lance is for the first strike, esp vs mounted opponents. The sword is for hacking down infantry and if I get stuck after the charge, and the mace is for knocking people out.

I just wish friendly AI troops were slightly less useless. I feel like I have to be able to solo an opposing force for it to be worth taking on.

Yeah, using the lance properly is kinda counter-intuitive. I use a two-handed bardiche for close-in work, and a jousting lance for capturing.

Not a fan of the shield? Sometimes it's just nice to right-click, know you're pretty much safe, and ride away, rather than get pounded trying to escape a bad situation.

Meh. With timing I can block melee with the bardiche... although I do feel the lack of a shield when facing ranged attackers. The number of times I've been shot IN THE FACE as I ride to lance an archer is very, very high.

Of course, when you get close, raising the shield to block will screw up your lance strike. Sword & board!

I'll be damned, the lance really does work best when you don't attack at all, which makes sense considering you're bracing it with your arm. all this time I'd been trying to perfect my timing with thrusting it into my target, usually only dealing 10-25 points and killing in 4-5 hits at best. This practically ensures one or two-hit kills now.

I do rather like bastard swords when I can get them in the demo (I picked one up on a lvl 5 character after saving up cash from trading goods around. I found some good routes running oil and furs). Yheir ability to use either one or two-handed makes them useful with or without a shield. Good damage and reach when attacking on horseback, as well. I've practically killed bandits and army deserters in one hit with the one I got.

...Although now he's 300xp away from leveling and ending his demo save file, so I can only use it for another half-dozen kills at best. :/

I suppose I'll check out the demo, but just a quick question, does this game actually have a storyline? If so, is it linear, or dynamic?

It sounds sort of like the Starshatter of RPGs from what I'm hearing now.

It technically does have a storyline, but don't blink or you'll miss it. Seriously, this is not a game you play from start to finish for the storyline. It's a game you play for a while, wandering around and starting fights, leveling up your character and getting better equipment all the while, get bored after a few weeks and quit. Then you get a hankering for it a few weeks later and come running back to repeat the process all over again. This repeats every few months as you come back to find the game in a later stage of development with cool new stuff.

The various mods have more or less plot, but it's always pretty open-ended stuff. The sensibly-named Storymod is probably the most traditional, follow-the-missions sort of thing. The LotR mod, 1066 and Hundred-years War have interactive worlds, and you can play good or evil, Norman or Saxon, etc.

The best thing about lances is the 'jousting lance', which does blunt damage. It's the easiest way ever to capture peeps.

For those that are interested, a new M&B version has been released. It's much more polished, with the textures, models and animations greatly improved. The horses and face-creator are now even MORE embarrassing for Bethseda. The game overall is harder, more fun to play, and less budget.

The storymod - a traditional RPG mod for M&B - is already available for the new version.