Mount & Blade Review
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Battles. These are the meat and potatoes of the Mount & Blade experience, and it shows. These are not your dad's five-on-five simple military excursions either. And you won't be watching any of it from some hovering balloon in the sky, either. You'll be right alongside your men, bloodstained armour and all, as you and your fifty-man army charge toward the enemy. This game manages to create a truly electric combat environment, filled with all the chaos and carnage that you'd expect from such an event. You'll charge through groups of men with your horse, leaning down to take down a few in the process with your sword; chase down archers on the outskirts of battles; take a lance to a mounted opponent, throwing his horse to the ground; the experience created is quite something. Then there're the siege battles, when you're either taking down a castle or defending against someone who wants to do the same to you.
But you're not just some grunt, you're the commander, and that means commanding. You can use some fairly simple commands to relay orders to your three groups of units (infantry, archers, and cavalry). Choose the right tactics and it can mean the difference between a crushing defeat and a victory without a single man down. The AI works well, though their skill in the combat department is questionable, since usually the majority of kills will be made by you.
Unless you're taken down; you should avoid that. Falling in combat won't necessarily mean a loss, but it will mean being forced to watch from the sidelines, hoping that your men are competent enough to win a battle. Sometimes they aren't, and you'll watch a 2:1 lead over the enemy's numbers quickly get whittled down to nothing before you're tossed in chains. It can be frustrating. There's also an issue with the combat AI when it comes to tight spaces; this is especially true with horses. More than often enough I see units charge into corners, apparently unable to navigate the complexity of the command to turn around so that they can see the blade coming for their backside.
