This game has been in beta since forever but recently (er, couple of months recently) the final version was released and holy crap is it good.

Mount & Blade is an open world sandbox action adventure roleplaying battle simulator game (man what a mouthful).  The best way to describe it is Sid Meier's Pirates with actual gameplay.  You start off creating your character and then you're thrust straight into this large world that's practically at war with itself.

You can do whatever you want; build an empire through trade, raid settlements, fuck over everyone else, play in tournaments, siege castles, etc.  As you grow in strength, you build up an army and renown.  As you increase in popularity and army size, you're given land and a castle to call your own.  

Battles are the games highlight and I've never played a game with a system so simple but so intuitive.  Huge scale battles between multiple sides feel really cluttered and hectic and skill as well as leadership will see you through the day.  You use experience to level up and further improve your skills allowing you bigger armies or better fighting abilities.

Yeah, for 20$ this game is pretty amazing and if you like this kind of stuff then you have no excuse NOT TO get it.  

Screenshots





MODS
This game's modding community is ridiculous and there are mods that transform the game from being set in the crusades, to a realistic adaption of Britain in the 13th century, to a fantasy mod, Middle Earth, dungeon crawling traditional RPGs, and even a tax/economy sim.  Here's my list of "must haves" for beginners.

Battle Size Changer: Increases the size of battles.  Default game restricts battles to 100 troops both sides but this can max it out up to 1000.  I have set to 500 as I've never encountered an enemy troop of prodigious size and it would probably crash my computer.

Graphical Enhancement Pack: Makes the graphics not suck.  There's optional mods like HDR which make things look better.

Huge Vocal Pack: Lots of new sounds.  Makes the game sound more realistic.

Native Expansion: Upgrades the Native campaign (that's the default campaign M&B comes with) with added options and tweaked gameplay.

As far as fights go, I found a couple mods that balance things out.  They basically take into account speed as vanilla M&B makes everyone from a naked warrior to a full plate wearing two-sworder the same speed.  There's a bigger strategic element when you realize that it's near impossible to walk up even the smallest hill while wearing heavy armor.

is this game cool in the same way the gothic games are cool?

if so no thanks

I'm a little surprised not to see The Last Days mod listed in the first post, but then again I think they're still working on the 1.x port.

Also as soon as they fix the shitty siege mechanics I will start playing this again. Otherwise I think I've experienced pretty much all there is to experience as the game stands.

Granted there is quite a bit to experience.

hero reminds me of Barney Rubble 95

hero reminds me of Barney Rubble 95

Imagine what you could do with some mod making tools and some Flintstones MP3s.

you guys have been spoiled by the modern rpg.

i'm throwing out all post 1990 consoles and playing the oldies instead.  no "story" there.

Does this game have multiplayer? now that would be awesome!

There's a good reason I'm not playing it, and it's not because it's the best game.
It's because it isn't.

... What?

I've been playing this for a few years now, it's a great game. It's a bit glitchy and there's not really any story or anything but the combat is incredible and it's definitely a one more round kinda game. I need to try retail - is it worth picking up?