Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord – A Disappointing Sequel Mired in Missed Potential

After nearly a decade of anticipation, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord arrived with the weight of enormous expectations—and unfortunately, it buckled under that pressure in many ways.

The core gameplay loop remains familiar: build your army, wage war, manage fiefs, and rise to power. However, despite some graphical upgrades and a more detailed map, Bannerlord often feels like a glorified early-access version of Warband rather than a true sequel. The game launched in a technically unstable state, with crashes, poor optimization, and a slew of bugs that persisted long after release. Even now, performance issues and AI problems plague the experience.

Combat, while serviceable, lacks the polish expected after so many years of development. The AI behavior—both in battles and on the campaign map—is baffling at times. Enemy lords make nonsensical decisions, sieges are clunky and repetitive, and unit pathfinding is still frustratingly unreliable.

What’s most disappointing is the shallow campaign mechanics. Diplomacy is barebones, kingdom management is opaque and underwhelming, and character development feels stripped down. There's a ton of potential in the world of Calradia, but it too often feels like a lifeless sandbox filled with grindy, repetitive tasks and little meaningful progression.

Mods have helped salvage the game, as the community remains incredibly passionate and resourceful. But it’s troubling that, even years post-release, players often rely on modders to fix what should be core gameplay deficiencies.

In the end, Bannerlord feels like an early access title masquerading as a finished product. For longtime fans of the series, it's a frustrating reminder that ambition without execution leads to disappointment.

Score: 5/10 – A long-awaited sequel that stumbles where it should have soared.

Dont bother with the game if you have an AMD gpu. Game will cause your GPU to completely timeout for no particular reason other than who cares about fixing an issue that has been known of for over a year. Cant wait to have my gpu timeout whilst on a boat on next update.

Gather money, gather arms, gather men, gather glory! That is it pretty simple but pretty awesome.

This game has been a buggy mess that the devs abandoned after getting their money, modding is basically impossible because the devs will do updates every other month where they add a helmet to the base game and all of a sudden its just constantly crashing and causing issues, would not recommend. Especially for that price which is insanely high for what you get.

Addicting gameloop, but needs the No Mans' Sky treatment.
AI is dumb, diplomacy is a joke, smithing is broken OP. Big battles are still great fun!
Hope the upcoming DLC is good, if not, I'll probably get into the mods.

If you're like me and you saw the large-scale battles on YT with multiple squads doing tactical and strategic maneuvers to defeat your enemy in an epic battle, all commanded from the field as one of the soldiers, and you thought it looked like it would be a ton of fun in multiplayer... I'm really sorry but this is not the game for you (even if you'd settle for singleplayer).

I really, really wanted to like this game, but unfortunately the multiplayer apparently has effectively only two modes that have enough players to get into: Team Deathmatch, where you play as a single character (no units to control) in a very open brawl that ends up with way too much movement and mostly only 1v1 to 3v2s (in numbers of players) at largest in each engagement, nothing even approaching large-scale formation combat even with 70+ players in the server; and Captain, where you command a single squad of around 20-40 units (all the same type) in a 6v6 (players), and can't even split your one squad up to do any real tactics with it aside from managing that one squad. I do not believe there is any way to play a multiplayer battle in this game where you control more than a single squad, which is incredibly disappointing as that's the entire reason that I bought the game. Also, unfortunately I've only been able to find one community that does events with large enough player counts to actually have formations or any form of large-scale combat, and that only happens twice a month.

I would also strongly recommend against this game if you want to do battles even in singleplayer, as the "Custom Battle" option is incredibly barebones with no way to even choose how many of each unit you want, no cost/points/balance system, nothing. This game seems to be designed entirely around the singleplayer campaign, which is frankly extremely boring as at least at the start you're just running around doing errands for people like "deliver 10 sheep here", or fighting tiny groups of like 5-20 bandits, over and over again for the first ~10+ hours, at least if you're new to the game. It feels like work rather than playing a game. Not to mention the extremely repetitive AI dialogue, poor graphics, horribly unintuitive UI, very weak tutorial, frequent bugs, and messed up mechanics (such as escaping from an army only for that same army to immediately re-capture you). I've heard if you get to the end-game it's fun, but at this point I'm very skeptical, and for $72 I'd expect the entire experience to be fun in the thing they put all of that development time into, and that's just not the case.

Unfortunately, in the game's current state I really cannot recommend it to anyone unless you get it at least 50% off, are only interested in the singleplayer campaign, and love the idea of the progression starting off having to do errands and grind endless fights with brigands in order to progress. Don't get me wrong, the game's a lot of fun, but at least for me, maybe $20 of fun at most. $72 for this game is absurd imo.

Removed custom groups from the game, mount & blade warband had it, this game had it before, and now it's gone, you want a custom group for just your companions? A custom group for specific units you want to use for attacking from the side or for putting at the front? Too bad, no more custom groups, what a downgrade, this removal of a feature has made warband to be the better game with more features now,

By far an amazing game if you want hours of fun this is the game I would choose. Takes a good amount of time to get going but super worth it

This game took me deep into history.
You start alone in the world of Bannerlord, and when you immerse yourself in the game, you see that you have become the king of a country and you have to take the fate of thousands of people and command the army in your hands.
And fight the enemies of the empire and add new lands to your territory.
The Bannerlord game is the best in its genre.
This game has room for improvement, but there are no updates from the developer for this game.
Almost all the updates that make the game better are from modders.
I recommend this game to those who have seen movies like The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, Game of Thrones and like to take command of the army.

503.6 hours on record. Fantastic game with a wide variety of play styles supported from a developer that is deeply invested.

10/10 would buy it again.

This review is based solely on what was promised and what we received (some things might be missing, so feel free to add positive or negative implementations on the comments), not with the aim to bad mouth the game, but to put the situation plain and simple for any newcomer ( especially because of the new DLC coming out) so here we go:
Implemented Features ( some don't fully work )
1. Battle Terrain System
Works just as intended, only problem is not all maps have been created/released. And there is snow and rain on the campaign map which doesn't really affect the outcome of battles.
2. Voice Acting for Dialogues
A portion of dialogues, especially greetings and main storyline conversations, have been voiced in English. Doesn't really add much, it's a nice touch and all but basically no localization and feels weird when the silent dialogue was just fine.
3. Multiplayer Enhancements
Features like voice chat, cheer and shout systems, and custom servers have been introduced to improve multiplayer communication and gameplay. And on top of that, they broke the sounds for the cheers with the new implementation of extra cheers you can unlock with in-game currency.
4. Crafting Orders
This system allows players to accept crafting orders, adding depth to the weapon crafting system and providing a new career path within the sandbox.
5. Keep Battles
Expanded sieges now include climactic battles within besieged castles, offering more immersive siege experiences.
6. Party and Kingdom War Stances
Players can assign orders to subordinate parties to dictate their approach towards hostilities, adding strategic depth to kingdom management. Though I haven't noticed any big difference in AI responsiveness to this.
7. Perks
You can customize your characters based on what perks you put on them, some perks do not work and there is no way of training the perks other than doing their passive skill ( no books or trainers)

Unimplemented or Uncertain Features
1. Expanded Settlement Management
While the game includes basic settlement management, more detailed control over village infrastructure and development is still lacking.
2. Replay Editor
Although there were discussions about a replay feature, it has not been fully realized or integrated into the game.
3. Unique Companion Quests
The game lacks unique quests for companions, which were initially promised to add depth to character interactions. This one has received the cold shoulder when asked about to silently get rid of any further ideas of implementing it.
4. Expanded Banditry and Crime Systems
Promised features like expanded interactions with city gangs and a more complex crime system have not been fully implemented.
5. Intrigue and Diplomacy
Mechanics involving espionage, defamation, and complex diplomatic interactions are still underdeveloped or missing.
6. Feasts, Tournaments, and Ceremonies
Social events like feasts, tournaments, and ceremonies for milestones such as a child's coming-of-age are not present in the game. Tournaments are just random events that appear and sometimes hold no meaningful reward or participants.

In Development or Under Consideration
1. Sally Out Missions
Currently, when defenders sally out during a siege, it initiates a standard field battle. Plans are in place to create dedicated missions for these events to enhance immersion. ​
2. Cut Scenes for Life Events
The introduction of cut scenes to commemorate significant life events, such as the birth of a child or the death of a comrade, is planned to improve narrative immersion.

These are not everything that was promised, but just some key points to give somewhat of an idea of what's happening with the game. Could go on with minor bugs in singleplayer and multiplayer combat bugs and animation glitches, but main part of all of this is to say that the game was never fully released. I'm not saying I didn't have fun spending 1000 hours in singleplayer and another 1000 in multiplayer, just saying what they're putting out is not what you're getting, as I have seen plenty of people with no more than 10 hours just quit the game because it's not what has been advertised. So this upcoming DLC is just another cash grab from Taleworlds, same strategy they pulled when they classified the game as fully released and releasing the weird digital companion DLC, same as when they released it for consoles and you can't even download mods ( unsure if you can even play multiplayer on console). I like the game but if you're expecting everything you've read or seen on Taleworlds promotion don't bother buying.

Dead world when all is said and done. After the battles are over, there's very very little to do. Like so many games of the last 15, maybe even 20 years, no effort and thought into the gameplay capabilities of the player outside one specific function.

An open world without is nothing if your character is not an open world of possibilities within. That goes for any npc. They're little more than cardboard cutouts.

The battles are fun, but unsustainable because there's nothing to really fight for and cultivate. Can't expect recommendation when the cause of investment is so overtly shallow.

That being said, like skyrim, the framework is excellent for mods and the modders have shown that (bless them).

You'd just expect TW to do so much more to fulfil their end of the bargain and they didn't. I think they said they'd be doing a massive update soon for us though so we'll see if that fixes it.

It's only fun with a heap ton of mods. And even then, there's a lot missing from the game. Somehow the devs managed to have fewer features and less depth than Warband or WFAS.

The campaign is the worst ever thing created. I could have down syndrome and create a better campaign solo than the entire development team. Fix the god awful campaign? No lets release a dlc several years after release. I cant imagine developing this game and looking at the campaign and saying "yeah this is great". its the same 3 quests on repeat until conspiracy fires. Does your country help with these quests that are pertinent to the nation? No. Player only. It's bewildering how awful the campaign is, whatever path you choose, independent kingdom or gifting the banner, its complete trash. If you buy the game do not engage with the dragon banner at all, one of the worst campaigns/stories ever created in gaming history.

Game still has GPU crashing issues despite being a known issue for 3+ years. Crazy that the game was more functional in early access.

If you have a AMD RX 5700 XT, this game has a game-breaking bug that makes it so you cannot actually play a battle on these maps in the game. You have to autoresolve.
Towns and Castles

Amitatys
Amprela
Charas
Myzea
Onira
Pen Cannoc
Ustokol Castle

Villages

Asalig
Kuruluk

Regular Battle Maps

Damar River (Steppe)
Myzead Woods (Plain)
Ozu River (Steppe)
Sulun Dag Wastes (Steppe)
Temea Creek (Plain)

The only solution is to roll back drivers to 23.5.2 which released in 2023-06-01, almost TWO YEARS AGO. Taleworlds has done NOTHING to remedy this and everytime you post your crash logs to their forum, they just copy and paste "Sadly we can't reliably reproduce the GPU crashes on debug environments." on every forum post. If you buy the game, and your GPU and CPU can handle it, you should expect it to work. This does not. Taleworlds: Please just fix this damn issue. This is one of my favorite games of all time and I hate having to leave a bad review, but this issue going on THIS DAMN LONG is just insane.

Fun at first but a grind in late game coupled with extremely frustrating glitches and bad AI:

- if you besiege a castle and are defeated and only lose some of your soldiers, but get attacked by a party waiting outside, your entire army randomly glitches and disappears and you have to face the entire attacking party alone.

- some sieges won't end because there's one enemy that apparently glitches into the middle of a wall forcing you to retreat and try again.

- soldiers will abandon the battering ram or siege tower mere feet from the wall/gate and when you call them back to it, they won't help push anymore; instead they'll just march behind and get wiped out by enemy catapults

- to save memory, armies only partially load at the beginning of a battle, so entire waves of soldiers will suddenly appear out of thin air later on in the fight, sometimes right on top of you. When your second wave randomly spawns, you're not alerted, so they may end up just standing there not doing anything.

- you can organize the order of your soldier types in your party manager, but if all of a certain kind dies or are upgraded, but then you get more of that kind later, they'll appear at the bottom of the list instead of in the spot you put them in, making the sorting function essentially pointless when you have to completely redo it after every major battle and re-recruiting cycle.

- friendly armies have very poor AI and will do things like walk right by smaller and weaker enemy armies that are besieging your towns and castles or aimlessly chase around smaller but faster enemy parties they'll never catch up with until the army is forced to disband after running out of the cohesion stat.

- if you get captured you're stuck with no options but to watch the NPC who captured you randomly run around the map till it finally offers you to pay a ransom to be freed, and when you do, you have a temporary speed penalty and will often get recaptured again within seconds.

It's a broken, half-finished game. It can be fun, but definitely not worth the full price.

Unplayable trash. Constant crashes - rglGPU_device_d3d11::create_render_texture errors - unacceptable for a game that's been around for years.

Bannerlord has come a long way since its rocky launch. While it still doesn’t quite have that magic spark that Warband had, there’s no denying that Bannerlord is now a solid game — and a worthy sequel in most respects. It’s exactly what you’d expect from a follow-up: more of the same, but bigger, better-looking, and far more refined.

The quality-of-life improvements alone are fantastic. Managing armies, fiefs, companions — everything feels smoother and more accessible now. The systems are still deep, but far more player-friendly than Warband ever was. Core combat is still satisfying, large-scale battles are a blast, and the game world finally feels alive thanks to all the new systems and polish.

But let’s be honest — the real reason Bannerlord is starting to shine is mods. Now that the game’s been out for a few years and the modding tools are solid, the community is kicking off properly. Those legendary total conversion mods from the Warband days — Lord of the Rings, Warhammer, historical eras like the Samurai and Napoleonic Wars — are all starting to take shape again.

There are already a few standout mods with active communities, like Persistent World, which is fantastic for those who want that immersive sandbox roleplay and combat. There’s even a small competitive scene for vanilla and some mods, where players join teams, clans, or regiments and take part in organised battles. So whether you're into casual sandboxing, roleplay, or competitive multiplayer, there’s a decent amount going on for everyone.

If you’ve been on the fence about jumping in, now’s a great time. The vanilla experience is solid, but as these big mods get more fleshed out, Bannerlord might just recapture that iconic spark Warband had for so many of us.

And TaleWorlds...
WHERE’S MY NAPOLEONIC DLC?!
We need line battles. Muskets. Drums. Shouts of “Hold the line!” echoing across snowy hillsides. You did it before — bring it back!

There is no suitable description for this greatness, from the first moment you are in the game until you die, your main character will not decrease the amount of passion, as for the open world, the world is very large, the cities and the village are large and the terrain is different, as for the RPG style, you may be absorbed in building your character inside the game more than your real character , but as for the strategy, I guarantee that when you finish controlling the empire you want and fight more than 50 battles, you will become better than Napoleon personally without a doubt, enjoy this greatness until the next part is released

If you're someone who loves action, definitely get it—this might become your favorite game.
However, if you're someone who likes RPG, this is absolutely not the right place. Even after all these years, proper diplomacy hasn't been implemented in the game.
Moreover, in the late game, you never feel like a king or a lord.
It's similar to how in Skyrim, even after becoming the guild leader, no one reacts to it.
In this game, too, there’s no feeling of being a king or a lord.
If you're going to play this game, it should be for the action alone. Don’t believe in its other promises because it has lazy developers.

Game has the potential to be great, but the devs seem to have their priorities mixed up.
AI for the lords on the campaign map is awful, they siege far away settlements, ignore close by friendly settlements under siege, voting for war while already at war. There needs to be better mechanics to manage armies and conduct war, AI decision making needs to be improved. Instead the devs focus on a million different helmets and a dlc that will ultimately suffer from the same issues as the base game.

I simply don't understand how unpolished this game is... After all these years!!! Still crashes randomly, the campaign is meh at best.

Some gamebreaking bug that wont let you open the game since 2023 with no fix in sight

This is an epic strategy RPG that I absolutely loved and would recommend to anyone. The ability to craft your army, customize your heroes, and then witness the impact of every choice in massive battles is deeply satisfying. One unforgettable moment for me was winning the main campaign through a clash of over 300 troops—it felt like something out of a medieval legend. While I wish the game had more native options for settlement building and interactions, the immersive and grand atmosphere more than makes up for it. Bannerlord II delivers pure, strategic glory.

Bold of TW to announce paid DLC while the game is still so barebones and broken.

If you played the previous Mount & Blade: Warband, this game feels pretty much the same with better graphics. It is a bit disappointing in depth, but a good game nonetheless.

If you've never played a Mount & Blade game, you've gotta try this. This game feels like a mix of Skyrim and Total War, is highly modable and you could spend 100h or more on a single game. And since it's a sandbox, high replayability.

Overall, very good game play. Needs more tutorials. I think it could be better but worth buying.

This game is fun if you can actually get it to function. Expect to spend more time bug fixing then actually playing the game. As a fan of the entire Mount & Blade series, this is a disappointment

Absolutely great game! I love the modding community more though, the amount of mods you can have on this game is astounding with great dev support for the modding community. Above average vanilla experience, I can't wait for more updates in the feature with more vanilla items and modes!

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☑ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☑ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☑ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Game Size }---
☐ Floppy Disk
☐ Old Fashioned
☑ Workable
☐ Big
☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive
☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it
☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☑ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☑ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☐ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☑ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☐ Never heard of
☑ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☐ 8
☑ 9
☐ 10

Warband is better in everyway than this, except for the limit the engine puts on battle sizes and it's lack of cool siege mechanics, and the least important, graphics. Unfortunately, now I choose this over that for those reasons, since big battles and trebuchets breaking walls have been something I've wanted a first/third person hand in since Total War.

But why, why do I not recommend this. Because, it's been 5 years since release, and it's just revolting how Talesworld keep adding dumb updates that break mods we rely on to add stuff to the game that the lazy developers should have added by now.

Just to name a few; diplomacy, better economy, naval battles (but no they want to charge for that in their new "DLC," pigs,) and many other things. They haven't even fixed the sieges. The stability of the game is woeful as well. Thanks for nothing, Talesworld.

They also had the gumption to ban me from their forums when I gave my blunt opinions about their garbage "dlc" they are releasing for this. Unfortunately, there are too many pigeon brained morons who actually think the table scrap sized "dlc" they are preparing for us (adding 1 faction and naval battles) is going to be worth it. Viking Conquest for warband, had it's own campaign, it's own full fledged map of England, Ireland and Denmark, factions to match, and new unique mechanics. Napoleanic Wars for warband also had content. These were worthy of being called DLC's, since they actually delivered on content. But no, Talesworld have got their money now, so their care level for the customers has gone down.

If warband had the same siege mechanics with breaking walls, trebuchets and what have you. and the ability for 2000 warriors in a battle, I'd be on that instead of this piece of unstable shit.

I can guarantee that you can't provide a decent argument for as to why I'm incorrect about that poor trash excuse for a "DLC" they are releasing.

• The game is out of Early Access only on paper
• The content is lackluster and superficial while good enough to get the player initially invested, only to leave them searching for thrill where there isn't any
• The progression has the player wade through tedium to discover vapidity
• Instead of addressing the obvious shortcomings of the game, the developer spends their time working on superfluous gimmicks and paid DLC that hardly complement the base game in any meaningful way
• Genuine content updates trickle in at such a rate that it wouldn't be unreasonable to wait for another game to come out and provide a richer experience
• The audience boasts hordes of dopamine junkies in denial, willing to depart with any amount of money for just another promise that things will get better.

All evidence points to this being a modern gaming experience.

The developers recently announced that a Viking and Ship DLC will be released alongside a base game addition of a stealth movement system, so I thought it might be good to talk about this now.

Overall this game needs further developments and dedication similar to what happened to Total Warhammer III for their Thrones of Decay release.

Even trying to make the most of it, the early game has fun combat but no story to be invested in. There is one main one, but it does not bear the impact you think it will later on. Your decisions and actions don't have much impact on the world. In the mid-game the road remains directionless. Any relations you build in the game are painstakingly slow. Furthermore, the leveling system is counter-intuitive as you are disincentivized from learning a wide variety of skills as your levels massively slow down later on. In the end game, the story makes no impact nor do your decisions in the economy or planning. While Warband had some clear strategies, I have built multiple types of buildings across the map and see little financial change to be worthwhile.

I really want this game to do well, but it is not worth buying at this time. This needs more writing, more mid and late game mechanics in the economy and diplomacy, and overall systems that show your impact on the world. Normally you can mod this out as the modders do great work, but each update has the potential to break many mod loadouts. The most recent announcement has stated their concerns for modders for the future, but this game overall needs more time in the oven to provide some mid and late game opportunities beyond random events and a stealth system.

Stick with Warband, the stories, your actions, the followers, and the mod stability has a lot you can invest your hours in.

I got this game when it first came out and I put like 100 hours into it. The game was really rough and super hard to play. However now they have fixed so much stuff optimized it the transformation was night and day. it is a fantastic game with so much depth, and if you really like medieval fighting games then its totally worth a buy.

TaleWorlds did not deliver the amazing game that was promised and still fail to update many of the promised features

Writing this review in the context of the recent announcement of the Warsails DLC made by Taleworlds.

M&B Warband was pure lightning in a bottle. I have hundreds of hours in that game and this context also puts this review into perspective.

Following Warband, M&B 2 Bannerlord has taken a decade for Taleworlds to dev and bring to market, in it's E.A form. From the get-go it received many praises for the technical aspect of it, with a proprietary engine that is, it is true, a big improvement upon the dated Warband game.

It then stagnated in E.A for some time, receiving staunch criticism over its departure from the character progression systems in place in Warband to some bastardized perk system that never worked and still doesn't work (more on this in a bit)

It tried to bring novelty to the M&B formula by adding an aging/birth/clan management system (if you can call it that. As i am writing this, it feels like this is too big of a word to qualify what it actually is), but in the mean time failed to add many features that were present in the original game. (actual diplomacy, relationships with nobles, courtship, books, feasts, claimants/civil wars, deserters/manhunters, actual memorable companions, the ability to start as a nobody/or start with interesting builds, city ambushes, etc.)

In many ways, Bannerlord added some management systems in the settlements you own that were taken from the Warband modding scene, but misimplemented them in a way that renders them very much sidelined and uninteresting.

Trading started broken in EA, was touched and broken a great many times, and is still largely entirely derpy and poor, which by this point in the product life cycle is a recurring farcical theme.

One big addition Bannerlord brought was Smithing. Smithing brought the promise of gear you make yourself and a side progression to provide an alternative way of making money. It's broken. It's always been broken. It's so insanely broken that it *is the one true way to make money in this game, by breaking any and all game pace until you get good enough at it that you can print currency. I have heard that the reason this gameloop remains broken is that it's a brainchild of the big boss at Taleworlds and that thus no one dares even acknowledge how absolutely broken it is and rework. It's a brillant idea, but someone needs to wear the pants and say it has to be redone right.

On the character progression side of things, Warband had an insteresting albeit rather classic system of character sheet that combined stat increments and perks linked to those increments in a way very much reminiscent of classic RPGs, combined with a learn by doing approach for weapon skills. Progressive yet impactful progression that keeps you going for more because of a well thought out pacing and meaningful/impactful upgrades. Bannerlord tried to do something new, and ended up screwing the pooch hard, electing instead to have a much, much more incremental progression and a slew of perks ranging from absolutely broken to meaningless with the occasional -i-break-the-game-lel perk thrown in there by good measure of incompetence. The xp calculation system also changed, and in that as well as in its perks there is such a thing as "Taleworlds maths" with nonsensical calculations not consistent with descriptive happening all the time.

The AI also was flawed, in movement, lack of defense from AI, bad decision making, etc. Some mods likely came to address it. Taleworlds also thought they addressed it but linked in to difficulty so that if you want to have a middling experience on average, you will have to deal with brain dead AI, and reciprocally, if you want to play on bannerlord difficulty, you will largely have to cheese the AI to get hits in because they will block everything.
In 1 on 1 it was very pronounced, but it was also visible in group battles where a numerical actual advantage (how many can actually reach concurrently) was likely to be the single main driver for whether or not your guys win or lose a battle. In that context, factors that should matter a lot like troop tier, or troop specialization (defensive infantry/cavalry, etc) take the backseat and you will see top tier troops get absolutely wrecked by lower peons regularly.

Faction balance was flawed as well. This was due in part to poorly thought faction traits (this received some measure of patching) but also just debatable performances on troops. For instance, people have done extensive testing and confirmed that sturgians which are supposed to have the best or almost the best infantry regularly perform the worst. Or that some troops have equipment pieces assigned to them that aren't consistent with the tier they're on, relative to the gear their inferior tiers have, or relative to the other factions similar tiered units.

Combat was just a measure worse compared to warband. RBM (the mod) to some extent fixes some issues, notably with damage calculations that has to do with how kinetic impacts are calculated, but long story short, the impact of armours in this is not consistent with what is to be expected coming from warband. I get that this probably doesn't evoke much to a newcomer to the series, but in a game where the core loop involves simulating battle, not getting the damage calculations/penetration right is a BIG deal.

Factions wise, Warband gave us 6 factions and Bannerlord also gives 6. However some weird and debatable amalgamation occurred where by if Sarranids became Aserai and Khergit became Khuzait, Vlandia effectively amalgamated Rhodoks and Swadians, and Sturgia did so for Nords and Vaegirs. This effectively diluted meaningful factions into others for no gain.

Then Bannerlord launched, much of its promised roadmap features not being even implemented yet (most notably the dynamic battle terrain cells or whatever they called it, but not only).
Was everything mentioned above addressed? no. Not even close. In fact we've had year-long periods of silence coming from Taleworlds as to on-going developments and intentions to fix what was broken/to be improved/promised but not delivered. This current major patch we are on, we have been on since 2024 with not a single post about the future. Some minute patches (including the now famous 84kb patch of doom that breaks all the mods) have come out (without versions or notes tbh), but nothing concerning the next version.

And so we arrive to today. Taleworlds just announced its upcoming release of.... a paid DLC.
This paid DLC brings a new faction (see above my comments about warband), and naval combat. Not too much else is known at this point (not even the DLC's pricing!)

Some of what Taleworlds calls "scrapped work" will make its way to the base game for free (oh so benevolent are they indeed) but reading the details, you realize that this "scrapped work" encompasses work that's directly and indirectly lifted or at the very least strongly influenced by unpaid work from the Bannerlord Modding scene.

We still don't have any visibility at this stage on whether or not Taleworlds will deem it fit to eventually go back to the work they promised to deliver on the base game, including reworks of the flawed/missing mechanics detailed above.
What we do know for sure though, is the clear intent from this company to tack on a paid DLC on a rushed E.A product, as well as the readiness to poach work from unpaid modders and call it their own, make you pay for it and not even mention compensating the modders for their work.

So to conclude, thanks for reading this review if you made it this far, do not buy Bannerlord, in fact i would recommend not engaging with Taleworlds alltogether as a company. But if you are this drawn to the mount and blade series, i recommend you play the acclaimed Warband instead.

I will of course amend this review should Taleworlds dial back on the practice of issuing this DLC at a premium and probably turn this review in a much more favourable light.

This game was rushed out of early access with the promise of adding and fixing the core game mechanics, instead they added a few things then did their best impression of the Vacuum of space. They could have made more money by simply updating the game let all the real dev's do.

Instead they rushed it out of EA way too soon, barely updated the single player then after years of radio silence they announce paid DLC when the game is *checks notes* still unfortunately unfinished.

Which is a real EA™ Games (It's DLC) move.

Diplomacy, Kingdom and army management are just a few of the major systems they have completed forgotten about which were core selling points of the newer game over the older ones (Warband)

Some of you may ask "What does this guy know?"

To which I direct you to my playtime in this game.

This game has sold too well for them to need to pull this sort of move.

TLDR: Do not buy this game or it's DLC you should not support developers who frankly abuse a dedicated fanbase by releasing paid DLC for a game they promised to finish and didn't.

Much were promised, few delivered. Months for a minuscules fix that changes not much but bricks the mod list, which is 70%of this game content. And now they pack some QoL mods and sell as an DLC. Just play Warband. Speaking of Warband, many features were cut such as feast and diplomacy (BL does have, but very shallow). The honeymoon period could last for 60-70 hours and then you decide, i haven't play this for months. Will re-evaluate later should anything huge happen.

The devs promised so much and yet they didn't deliver. Even though the game is "done" it still feels like it's in heavy beta and you need mods to fix the most issues (btw good luck with that.....). After all the radio silence and patches (that didn't really do anything other than break the mods) now they want to sell you a DLC with stuff that should have been in the game from the start? These devs are really scummy.

If you really want to play this game wait for big sale (like 60% minimum). Otherwise don't spend your hard earned smeckels on this dumpster fire.....

honestly what i wanted, being a field commander with a shit ton of warriors with me while using strategy to win disadvantageous battles 9/10 game.

A bit wordy, TL;DR at the end.

Coming here after the DLC announcement. I'll admit I'm a little mixed on it, since TW decided to tell none of us anything while putting out extremely tiny patches for the last 2 years. Patches that did more harm than good for the community due to messing up mods. Their excuse of "we were working on story DLC that we kept scrapping because it wasn't good" would have been fine if they had said anything about it.

That being said, I recommend the game even in its current state. All the people whining about problems have hundreds of hours, or they have under 2 in which you can't have possibly seen diplomacy issues. If you play this game for hundreds of hours how can you possibly say it isn't good? I get there's issues, hell look at my time played and you can be sure I have seen them. I would not have almost 1000 hours if I thought this game was not good.

One of the biggest complaints I see is "no feasts" did any of you even play Warband? Everyone back then thought feasts were annoying and constantly interfered in the wars. Go play vanilla Warband and join Swadia. Tell me just how much you love feasts after that.

Then you have the issue of those teeny tiny updates busting mods. You guys know that you can just select the previous game version in Steam, so the updates you claim "add nothing" don't ruin your modlist or save? I just don't see the point in complaining about an issue that is community driven (you don't NEED mods, no matter what you feel about the game) and that can be perfectly fixed with a feature TW has opted into using specifically to cater to those people.

You will know within the first 2 hours whether you like this game or not. Use the Steam refund policy if it isn't for you. There's not much depth to it, and you won't get some grand economic or diplomatic simulator like CK3 or X4. What's here is incredibly fun to me and I have to recommend it based on that.

TL;DR
It is a fun game. It is a good game. Could it be better? Sure. Doesn't mean it isn't enjoyable. You'll know within the first 2 hours if you like it or not.

The devs are asking for more money for a paid DLC; when they haven't even implemented about 20% of the previous games features in 6+ years since EA release. I can't name a single patch they pushed through its EA lifespan other than killing the economy for being too much to the players benefit. Everythings shallow as can be and Bannerlords the definition of a cash grab and run. Minimum viable product; not any of the product is worth the money they ask.

At least Bethesda got up to Elder Scrolls V before they sold out. Bannerlord is the hollowed-out husk of what a good game could've been if the devs actually cared. It's honestly tragic to see how quickly Taleworlds gave up. This game's predecessor, Warband, was kind of janky but it was revolutionary for its time. Bannerlord is just less game but with a shiny coat of paint to try and make you not notice.

Get it on sale if you must, then download a ton of mods. That seems to be par for the course for modern games these days.

warhammer mod saved this game for me. vanilla is such a shallow and still unfinished feeling product and the devs have moved on to other things.

i recommend the mods, i do not recommend the game

Feels like Early Access, with little to no promised features included. Seems devs are only interested in maintaining MP. SP is very barebones.

This is a game that the Dev's have abandoned for the past 3 years and is very bare bones, this game has potential but the Dev's have decided not to make a road map and not communicate with the community for the past 3 years and only made community Tales/highlights for it's multiplayer since launch.

An opinion I see quite alot in the Bannerlord community is that the Dev's have decided to leave the games development to it's modder's to keep it alive kinda like fallout 4's did. "But" But it didn't for Bannerlord... because it takes both ends of communication and TLC for it to work and the difference is, is that Bethesda is a AAA company and Bethesda had a roadmap after launch for it's future content and DLC's for their games to keep them alive and Bethesda has also praised it's modders on more than the one occasion over the years but as of late they've relied too heavily on Modders to fix Starfield and to fix their game but the Modders and the community have lost interest in doing so since the game was a barren skeleton and boring/repetitive, See where I'm getting at?

I'll fix any error's in the future I'm just too tired to give a crap.

After expiriencing warband where i had almost 150 hours i love the game mainly thru the mods. With Bannerlord i hoped developers would take a look at why people like mods and whet the game missing... no. They have one of the greatiest community and they said **** off. We dont wanna do almost nothing they want and let them do it for free. Buy Warband instead and download some mods you will do better choice then this. And i say this with the tears they had great opportunity to do something great. But yea battles and tactics is better absolutely

(sorry for my english)

Not gonna lie, the game is absolutely amazing in almost every single way.

BUT

In every single campaign, if you play long enough, the game will enter a hard D3D crash mode where you basically can't do anything any more other than wipe your entire game including the save files.

It's been four years and this issue is somehow still not resolved, and a large portion of the community seems to experience this same issue. Can't recommend the game until this is fixed.

This game is not what was promised. Dialogue options lead nowhere. Mechanics remain unimplemented. This could have been one of the greatest games of all time, and the developer gave up on it the moment it was released, relying on modder labour to complete it. Such a disappointment. Do not buy it.