Mount & Blade II - Preview

Bluesuit checked out the Early Access version of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord:

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord (2020) - Early Access Review

Good Day! Today we're review my favorite game of 2020 so far Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. It's not for everyone, but if you do end up picking up this grand conquest RPG, there's a ton of value and lots of things to do.

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More information.

Once again someone calls it a review, and makes no sense. It's still in Early Access.

Review because as an early access game, a portion of the general public has access to it .

Same applies with a demo released to the public.

A preview is for something only game press has access to.

Got it ?

Still makes no damn sense. To many incomplete EARLY Access games.

Let it be said Early Access games are not released games. Just Alpha and Betas.

HiddenX thanks for not calling it a review.

connus said:

Review because as an early access game, a portion of the general public has access to it .

Same applies with a demo released to the public.

A preview is for something only game press has access to.

Got it ?

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This is a perfectly good post until you get to the end. Leave off stuff like "got it?" It makes you seem like an ass.

Seems fair to me to review an early access game. Once you start selling the game to the public, it's legit to be able to rate its value for what it offers today. Many quite popular games have lived in early access for years, and it would be kind of absurd not to be able to review them along the way.

I don't think it's just the review/preview thing that's muddying the waters.
It's also the state in which games are released. There's full releases worse than many early access games. There's early access games that never seem to leave that status. There's full releases that never stop getting updates.

When do you consider a game finished, and worthy of a review?

Maybe you can even review a Demo? Or an alpha release? A tech-demo? Just concept art? Afterall, the reviewer has made an experience, and is looking back on it?

And is it really worth it, wading through this sludge, just to for the sake of a little "p"?



PS: I did not watch the (p)review, but "my favorite game of 2020 so far Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord." seems pretty accurate to me.

Putting semantics aside, I'm a fan of M&B, but I won't buy this game until it's finished. I might then, if the changes don't appear to be largely cosmetic, as they do to me now.

Taking an example from another Early Access game, This Land is My Land is similar to M&B, but I didn't hesitate to buy this ambitious first attempt still patching and proving itself.

What have you done for me lately? M&B hasn't done much.

JFarrell71 said:

This is a perfectly good post until you get to the end. Leave off stuff like "got it?" It makes you seem like an ass.

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Not surprised as he writes like a non English speaking 12 year old troll.

Anyway I'm growing tired of the announcing a game is releasing only to find it's on Early Access. It goes without saying it's usually the prologue only if your lucky.

Now Bannerlord has been in development for 7+ years already, and looks like it will need another 3-4 to be content complete. So let me know in a review at that point.

TLDR get of my lawn I hate early access games.

Capt. Huggy Face said:

Taking an example from another Early Access game, This Land is My Land is similar to M&B, but I didn't hesitate to buy this ambitious first attempt still patching and proving itself.

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This Land is My Land seemed like an interesting game but the more I read about it's basically an open world game where you do anything you want with no story/campaign.

Sadly that's not my cup of tea as I prefer the Far Cry formula.

Cacheperl said:

PS: I did not watch the (p)review, but "my favorite game of 2020 so far Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord." seems pretty accurate to me.

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Now that has to be sarcasm as the game is not even content complete yet. For reference a game is complete to me when it finally has a beginning, middle, and end.

I counter with Wasteland III and Cyberpunk 2077 as my 2020 GOTY.

This Land is definitely sandbox. I compared it to M&B already, but I could do the same with Kenshi and X series of space games. If it helps, there's a real touch of Far Cry, too, just not much story. Although, I haven't played it in a while, and I read in the patch notes they were fleshing that out a bit. I'm not expecting much in the story department, and that suits me fine.

Capt. Huggy Face said:

This Land is definitely sandbox. I compared it to M&B already, but I could do the same with Kenshi and X series of space games. If it helps, there's a real touch of Far Cry, too, just not much story. Although, I haven't played it in a while, and I read in the patch notes they were fleshing that out a bit. I'm not expecting much in the story department, and that suits me fine.

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Yeah it sounds like those survival open world games CRPGNut loves to play. I always try to play them with an open mind, but without story/direction I get bored easily.

Mount and Blade Warband has become so bland even with mods also.

Couchpotato said:

Now that has to be sarcasm as the game is not even content complete yet. For reference a game is complete to me when it finally has a beginning, middle, and end.

I counter with Wasteland III and Cyberpunk 2077 as my 2020 GOTY.

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Semi-sarcasm, maybe. I had 120 hours of fun with Bannerlord. There's a chance I will have zero hours of fun with Cyberpunk. This year.

Not a great year up to now, I'll admit.

Count me in the camp that is sick and tired of seeing steam release dates, reviews and sale pitches about Early Access games that need still 1-3 years of development. This cancerous trend needs to end.

I think EA is legit. Especially for smaller companies it can present great source of testing, community feedback and additional income. Who knows how many games would never make it to release without EA. And concept is well known and understandable, its not like somebody would make you buy games before final release against your will.

It's immoral on several levels, but especially on two points:

Firstly, most of them announce "release dates" for a product that is not in release status. Just check Steam, check release date for say.. Vagrus, the Riven Realm. July 22nd. That is not the release date, that is the Early Access launch, which give you a flawed, incomplete product under development, god knows if it'll ever be complete at all. False advertisement is a crime where I live.

Second, testing early stages of a product to get feedback is something companies in all sectors have done for decades. Only you get paid for doing it, since it's a flawed, untested, or incomplete product, and that's the key factor. Only the gaming industry can scam you this way and you'll have people defending it.

We could speak about how greedy developers want to cash in even before the game is complete, how stuff that would have belonged to the main game now gets branched off as DLC to get more money off their Early Access supporters since they're running out, and they have already paid for the game.. might as well milk them further. That and a thosand other shady practices of something that as I said, only the gaming industry gets away with. I can't imagine a pharmaceutic corp saying "Hey, we got this new untested, unfinished drug, that in theory, will make your senses sharper if you have 3 doses a day. Wanna pay me what would be its final release price with a 20% discount and on top of that test it for me, tell me its side effects, and provide me with feedback to make it better for all the people that won't risk dying to it when it's finalised?"

It's just absurd.

"But nobody forces you to buy early Access!" Yes, and nobody forces fathers to enter the gambling houses and ruin their families. The fact that something isn't forceful does not make it morally acceptable. And of course, nobody is going to ruin their family for paying 20$ for an early access game, but there are immoral practices behind it, the same way as there are immoral practices behind selling lootboxes or XP boosts in single player games, and nobody forces you to buy them. It just shouldn't be a thing because it damages our gaming culture as a whole.

That's a rather puritanical stance. I'd be willing to bet many of the types of games I enjoy wouldn't be made without some form of crowdfunding. Would Pierre have been able to continue his routine of gathering roots and berries to eat until the completion of Knights of the Chalice II? I'd bet that particular guy just might, but he might be an extreme example. The point is crowdfunding, it seems to me, has increased the variety of games available, particularly the oddball ones I like.

Just to note - crowdfunding I'm fine with, much as I'm with preordering. It's Early Access what gets me because it leads to deceptive advertisement.

And besides, the whole bait of a lot of the Early Access campaigns is "help us develop and decide the game's direction as it gets finalised". Screw that. A professional developer should have a vision and stick to it, and mostly ignore the playerbase. I'd be damned if I had to play games shaped to be how most of the internet idiots would want them to be.

Most every one of my EAs just feel like devs struggling to get their game out, but I really don't do that many of these things anymore. I have been burned by bad ones in the past.

Nereida said:

Just to note - crowdfunding I'm fine with, much as I'm with preordering. It's Early Access what gets me because it leads to deceptive advertisement.

And besides, the whole bait of a lot of the Early Access campaigns is "help us develop and decide the game's direction as it gets finalised". Screw that. A professional developer should have a vision and stick to it, and mostly ignore the playerbase. I'd be damned if I had to play games shaped to be how most of the internet idiots would want them to be.

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Indeed.

Another point on EA: Let's not forget the famous 'If the EA sales are not good we drop the game, have fun without your refund, losers' as it has happened many times.
Some of those games like Spacebase DF-9 are still sold as legit games even if incomplete and abandoned.

Nereida said:

And besides, the whole bait of a lot of the Early Access campaigns is "help us develop and decide the game's direction as it gets finalised". Screw that. A professional developer should have a vision and stick to it, and mostly ignore the playerbase. I'd be damned if I had to play games shaped to be how most of the internet idiots would want them to be.

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Agree. For some game developments in particular Mount & Blade, beta/early access is in their pedigree and integrated within the development cycle due to the scope of the game and aspects involved in testing (and indie nature). Sometimes this is also reflected in their pricing as well. On the other hand, some well established developers and game houses produce/announce DLCs for their supposedly finished games sometimes even before the actual game release or very shortly after which can indicate cut content.

Things have certainly changed in game development over the last couple of decades and will continue to do so, driven I think mainly by (greedy) economics rather than fairness and morality, and complicated by many factors such as hardware, licensing, publishing, .. etc.