HomeFeaturesMount & Blade II: Bannerlord
Mount & Blade 2 is promising, but its performance issues are too serious to review it yetCount & Wait
Count & Wait
Mount & Bladepredates RPS. That’s how long we’ve been waiting for its sequel,Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, which released yesterday afternoon.
This isn’t a review, because to review it in this state would short change both its developers, Taleworlds, and everyone reading. Crucially, Bannerlord went into early access yesterday, not a final release. And every game ever made had at least something that needed fixing up. Some bugs or oversights or clunky bits are normal and acceptable. But even with those concessions, yeah, this is… this needs to be fixed.
I’ve since upgraded to riding a mule. Yes, I meant “upgrade”.What I can tell you upfront is I can already see glimpses of the sequel I was hoping for. The briliant, exciting, satisfying free-roaming manstab game with spears, javelins, proper good bows, and dodging to the side of a charging pillock to cut him deftly off his horse with a glaive. It might be in there. Bits of it certainly are. But most of my ‘play’ time has been spent waiting around for the bloody thing to load, and I’m not the only one.
I’ve since upgraded to riding a mule. Yes, I meant “upgrade”.
It’s hard of course to get a reading on what proportion of players are having problems (and what are the sort to give their pet series 103% BEST GAME EVER within 12 seconds of buying it). But for all the instant thumbs up, there are already serious bugs, questionable design decisions, and some truly horrible optimisation. Taleworlds have a lot to do even before they can get to work on the estimated year or so of added content they have planned.
This is probably generic text but I love the idea that this kid hero worships the local millerAt the time of writing (stupidly late last night to you), the large majority of threads on the first page of the Taleworldsgeneral discussion forum(separate to thetechnical help forum) are things like:
This is probably generic text but I love the idea that this kid hero worships the local miller
Players are reporting corrupted saves. There are crashes on startup, on loading a saved game, on parts of particular quests, on entering or leaving areas, on using menus. There’s stuttering (I had some, but playing around with graphics settings helped. Look out for Katharine’s advice on the technical side soon) and generally subpar performance. I’ve not had any crashes so far, but the loading times are terrible.
Taleworlds werequick to issuea couple of crash-crushing hotfixes throughout the day, and I’ve no doubt that work will continue. But for the time being, any progress I make in Bannerlord will be slow and tedious.
It starts out fine, but within an hour of play, loading screens begin to take anything up to two minutes. And they happen every time you enter or leave a settlement, start a fight, or talk to anyone. Which fans of the original will note is almost the entire game.
Compounding this is the early, mandatory story mission, the first leg of which ends with an option to duel a petty bandit leader who your villagers comfortably defeat. But between the tougher combat, a badly paced mission, and the total removal of the first game’s automatic blocking (literally the only combat difficulty feature I used in the original. Crosshairs? For a bow? Why would I do that), that leader is an absolute monster. You can’t choose your weapons or armour for this either (everything is locked during the tutorial but the next fight). But you can at least just have your men kill him instead. I strongly recommend this. Leave him Danny he aint worth it.
Choosing your face has sliders to make it more or less symmetrical. It’s a nice touch.
That might not be fatal, but it turns the very long loading times into a near disaster. Want to check this town for merchants? Loading. Walked around town for long enough to find the tavern? Loading. Nobody useful in there? Loading. Found the merchant you need? Great! Oh but he doesn’t have the thing you need. L O A D I N G.
I’ve yet to see anything but a tiny fight. But it looks rather nice in parts.
At one point I shut the game down and it lingered on my PC for ten minutes, even after I tried to kill the process through task manager. The launcher remained whatever I did, eating a mere 2.5 gigs of RAM, but somehow snailing my entire PC to the point where I had to hard reset the whole system.
This was a messy, disappointing day for someone who adored the original game.
Skill advancement seems intriguing, but that’s all I can say, due to my linear perception of time.However!
Skill advancement seems intriguing, but that’s all I can say, due to my linear perception of time.
All this can be fixed. I will be shocked (and if I’d paid for it, especially a massive £35 even with discounts compared to the stable early version of M&B I bought for £6 in 2006, I’d be fuming. But this is why wedon’t preorder, kids!) if it isn’t. And in between grumping and sighing, I’ve seen a lot to like about Bannerlord. It’s very much the same sort of thing with all new everything, and improvements all over.
It’s the smaller things, mostly. When you get knocked down in a fight, it continues without you, and there’s even a free camera option to get a better angle. That will make a huge difference to some players/characters, and means that strong leaders with weak fighting skills (or just light armour) can still get stuck in.
All the factions are new. The setting is the same as the original’s, but set long earlier, with different empires and cultures, which are divided into distinct clans with their own bit of flavour and backstory rather than identical lords. I love that there’s a Celtic-influenced faction whose people sometimes look sort of Mediterranean. I mean, why not, right? Have some fun with it.
The loading icons in the left column demonstrate the constant delays even just checking certain menus.
It all feels so close, you know? I can almost play it. But right now it’s got a long way to go.
We’ve asked Taleworlds for a comment on any plans they have for patching. Believe me, we have many eyes on this one and we want to know as much as you do.
