Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord is such a great game and I find it a lot of fun, but more so than just being that, it allows us to play some medieval-era battles on a huge scale. Now, the graphics in the game I find are good, although, some may find that they aren't the best. Considering it is developed by essentially an indie team is the reason for the lack of graphics, that, and also the fact that creating something of this scale with top-of-the-line graphics would be near impossible, or at least difficult to run.
Taleworlds. I think they're a great company based on this game and the previous one in the series, Mount and Blade: Warband. When they first released Bannerlord, I remember the original date was sometime in April, and then all of the Covid stuff happened and the lockdowns started. Taleworlds released a statement saying that because of all the uncertainty they wanted to give people - who were now stuck inside - something to be happy for. So, they released it early. They even said that not only would they be releasing it early, but they would also give a 10% discount considering the bugs, and a further 10% discount for anyone who owned the previous title. So, I ended up picking this up for 40 euros instead of 50, which was great.
There were a lot of bugs and issues, but they were quick to patch a lot of the problems within the first week or two, which was great. By this stage, about 3 years later, playing this game on Steam compared to when it was released is like a night and day comparison. It's all well and good for the Steam version, but what's the console version like?
The Console Version
Initially, I was excited to see a port of Bannerlord was coming to console on the 25th of October; I had been raving about this game to some friends of mine who aren't on pc and a bunch of them were excited to try it out, and when it released I was tempted to buy it but held off. I'm glad I did because it came to Gamepass on the 14th of this month, and since then I have been playing it a fair bit. There are some problems with the game that I've noticed though.
Bugs
I first played this game through the initial release bugs, so I'm pretty used to problems in Bannerlord. The console version, however, I think in a way is actually worse than the pc release.
One main problem I've been having with the game is the audio. Let's say you are in a battle by the sea, I'll hear the waves, people shouting, swords clashing, horses galloping, and the music. Then without any warning, all other audio will drop and you'll be left with only the sea audio.
It's really immersion breaking and I was hoping that since the game has been out on console for a fair while, I assumed these issues would have been patched. It's been out on console for almost four months, and I see some of the reviews for it name many issues and have no doubt turned people off an otherwise great game. In all honesty, if this is what it's like now, four months after it's console release, I'd hate to see what it was like when it first dropped and I'm so glad I didn't buy it then.
There are visual bugs too, like people's faces morphing and just looking horrible. To me though, that's fine. I do find though that there is this weird issue that seems to happen occasionally.
I'll do my level-up, or upgrade some troops, finish up, and then notice a few minutes later that the changes didn't register, which is kind of weird. All those issues are quirky but are fine, the audio though is a serious problem and really needs to be fixed.
Non-Bug Related Issues
Loading times are really annoying, now I'm not playing on new-gen, so I don't know if the newer consoles have any serious loading time issues, but I have found that these issues are a bit of an annoyance.
Also, the controls. They're pretty hard to get used to, I found getting into the game was easy and what I do in-game is fine, but when I try to micro-manage my troops and formations I have a real problem. Most of the time I just have to set my units to charge, which has lost me some battles which I wouldn't have lost if I was able to set them up in formation quickly and effectively.
I get that trying to dumb down the controls of the game onto a controller is a challenge, but I hope there is a better way for them to change to set up or something because the way it is now is a bit of a chore. I have no idea how someone with no experience in this game would react to the controller setup.
Other Than That Stuff
All of that being said, I do really enjoy this game and hope some of the major issues are worked out soon. I doubt there is anything that can be done about the loading times or controller setup, but the audio bugs have really irritated me.
I'm happy to see more of these pc gems being released on console because there are so many great games there, that are cut off from such a large market of gamers who by this stage are getting bored of the usual games.
Fingers crossed that some of these problems get fixed soon. In the last week, I haven't had any updates for it, so who knows, maybe there's one coming out soon.