Mount & Blade Reviews

[GameBanshee News]

GamePro and Game Industry News are both offering reviews of TaleWorlds' newly released Mount & Blade. GamePro goes with a perfect 5/5:

Where Mount & Blade really shines is in its actual combat gameplay, far and above the best rendition of medieval warfare yet put onto computer screens. Most types of weaponry are available for the player to use, ranging from crossbows, poleaxes, swords, axes, and spears - though there is a distinct lack in the various types of blunt weapons or flails. Battles are usually small, on the order of twenty to forty men on each side, but can accumulate to far larger numbers when more than you take on another vassal from a rival kingdom. Players take direct control of just their own character, who, on the whole, are no more powerful than most of the men under his or her control and can't generally take on more than two or three enemies at once. Therefore the emphasis is on leading one's infantry, archers, and cavalry properly - setting them up so that they play to their strength. Archers behind infantry on top a hill might be more ideal than charging onto the battlefield Rambo-style, for example.

And Game Industry News gives it a 4/5:

One of the coolest aspects of the game is that your followers are all treated like real people in that they too get better with experience. When you first recruit a group of men or women they might be peasants with pitchforks and hoes. But as they gain experience, if they survive it, they can level up. Generally you have the option to control the path they take, be it towards an archer, footman or cavalry soldier. One skill that I would highly recommend you take is called training. Training allows you to impart some experience to your troops every day, even without battle, until your follower’s levels match your own. As a good trainer, you can quickly turn your green recruits into seasoned veterans, and keep them alive a lot longer.
Not your castle!

There are also NPC characters in the game that can join your army, though only a few. Most NPCs are shopkeepers or guards but a very few have names and will join up. These are kind of like backup characters for you in that their skills contribute to your group’s skills, like if you hire a good tracker or merchant with more skill than your player. They also can’t be killed (just knocked out) and you can advance them very much like you advance your own character. You can even change out their equipment. And they seem to randomly move around the world from tavern to tavern, so you might find one very early in the game, or perhaps not at all.