Posted October 07, 2022
You can take this as my review for Mount and Blade Warband, plus the Viking Reforged and Napolenic Wars DLC.
Why am I doing it here? Well GOG's existing review system STINKS OF RANCID SHIT. The 1500 character limit is often not enough to really explain the many reasons of why some games are good or bad. You cannot change even your own reviews later, not even to correct typoes! Reviews often mysterious disappear, especially if the developers "don't like it", but saying that, I've had good reviews vanish for no reason - and with no-one at GOG contacting me as to why. Then there is the extreme toxic repping culture that poisons all GOG review pages. That usually manifests as all "bad" one and two star reviews, heck, even "fair" three stars being negrepped to shit even if they are informative, truthful and articulate, but "good" four and especially five star reviews that are utter SHIT, utter lies and fanboi ravings, or just say shit like "iz gud gam" or "tankuGOG" or "GOG is so wonderful" get nothing but pure positive reps. Said toxic 5-star worshipping fanbois also use the "report" button as a means of censorship a little too much as well. Repping is also the only pathetic way to respond to a review, there is no facility for adding comments like there is on Steam. Despite calling on GOG for years to change things on their reviews, they've done fuck all. Not even farting in response.
And well, you see, "Mount and Blade Warband" and both it's DLCs are going to fget a flaming takedown from me.
Ok, I'll try not to rant too much, but here we go:-
ONE STAR? F-OFF! ZERO STARS!
I got the original "Mount and Blade" years ago, must have been way back in '14 or '15, for FREE! I enjoyed that, though did get bogged down with not being able to progress any further than having a company sized army of about 80, and I left it alone for awhile - in fact I didn't ever go back. But when I saw "Mount and Blade Warband" and the DLCs I thought, great I'll try those! And bought them - good job they were on sale.
I persevered for a week and then had to just grab them and stuff them down the shitter, in rage...... I was having NO fun, not a drop. Just frustration, frustration, frustration, frustration. I did get to the "80 man army" stages again, but found it impossible to keep their wages funded.
- making money is possible, but the grind, grind, grind, grind, GRIND required to get up to any kind of wealth needed to maintain a 100+ army even temporarily is just simply prohibitive. All sources of income are truly pathetic whilst even a bean costs 10000 coin! It would take weeks, if not months. And NVM 100+, you need 500+ in this game. So basically, you are going to spend a YEAR of your life REAL life NOT in game time earning enough just to have this army for a few days before going broke again and back to square one.
- nothing presents you with any real kind of significant reward of any nature, even the greatest of deeds! Yet the tiniest mistakes have world shattering consequences. This is even on the easiest difficulty settings that claim to enhance positive effects and mitigate negative ones.
- not a turd in the game helps you, 99% of dialogs end in simply "GFY".
- NPCs are just....... LOOOOOL...... example, that "troll" at "Trolls Bridge" in Danmark. Even on easiest combat settings, which at first look like god mode cheats, you'll be thrashed even by a chicken in one to one combat.
- quests are broken, and simply fuck the game over after all your effort, example the "Morrigan" quest.
- controls are sluggish and just feel bad, no matter how you configure them.
- even the tiniest little jobs usually require days (REAL TIME, not in game time) of just boring tedious yomping across the map and require enormous efforts of tedium from the player, to be rewarded with 10 fucking coins. Or even just a "thank you now kiss my arse"!
- the village and town scenes are little better, having to search for "Adda" or the town physician anyone? (Those are Viking Reforged DLC specific issues - I'll get to that DLC later). I'm sure you know how BORING it gets searching and searching and searching and searching and yomping and yomping and yomping and yomping 99.99999% of the time, that really is the game, search and yomp and rip your hair out, rinse wash repeat again and again and again and again, and well, you get the picture eh?
- progress is non-existant in ALL aspects, I have never seen a game where character level ups do so little!
- how the holy scrotums you get to actually be a lord or jarl or king or vassal or even become their grooms of the stool, well that's beyond all my ken.
Except slow progress, insufficient funds and not knowing how to become a lord, I had better memories of the original "Mount and Blade". This later "Warband" has NOTHING the original does not, except all the above frustration and piss taking difficulty - as well as a whole host of bugs and general jank in every line of code....... it's a seriously LQ product!
Do the DLCs improve things?
Do they f***.
The Viking Reforged DLC changes everything, except what needed to be, and makes the repetive grind and extreme difficulty even WORSE. Now those long boring journeys you'll spend your entire existence in the game upon now cost you thousands because you need to hire ships! Buy your own, well a spare million or two might just get you enough ships of your own to get a few men and a duck across the water. Enjoy trading wool from Dorestad to Dunwich 100000x over the next 50 years to earn enough gold for your own ships!
Ships are just too slow, too low capacity and too expensive. Even changing the paint jobs can cost 20000!
The completely new feature adds nothing to the game except MORE frustration and hate.
ZERO STARS!
How about the Napoleonic DLC? It's just online multiplayer ONLY. That's it. And it's shit. ZERO STARS!
So if you already have the original "Mount and Blade", maybe you also got it free when I did years ago, DO NOT be tempted to spend so much as a tepid whiff from your backside on any of the later in the series.
Hello Falran, and Clownski!
EDIT (see? You can't do that on the usual GOG review pages :D)
I hear that the game is easily moddable, directly by changing ingame files with just "notepad"? Well, I've uninstalled for now (give me some cool down time) but may look at that in future.
And some rumours that Mount and Blade Warband is just a "paid for expansion" for the original? Well that says a lot if true.
And "Viking Reforged DLC" was once a FREE 3rd party mod that TaleWorlds just usurped (been playing their own game too much) and starting selling. Claiming they'd fixed all the bugs, but seemingly that's just bullshit.
Why am I doing it here? Well GOG's existing review system STINKS OF RANCID SHIT. The 1500 character limit is often not enough to really explain the many reasons of why some games are good or bad. You cannot change even your own reviews later, not even to correct typoes! Reviews often mysterious disappear, especially if the developers "don't like it", but saying that, I've had good reviews vanish for no reason - and with no-one at GOG contacting me as to why. Then there is the extreme toxic repping culture that poisons all GOG review pages. That usually manifests as all "bad" one and two star reviews, heck, even "fair" three stars being negrepped to shit even if they are informative, truthful and articulate, but "good" four and especially five star reviews that are utter SHIT, utter lies and fanboi ravings, or just say shit like "iz gud gam" or "tankuGOG" or "GOG is so wonderful" get nothing but pure positive reps. Said toxic 5-star worshipping fanbois also use the "report" button as a means of censorship a little too much as well. Repping is also the only pathetic way to respond to a review, there is no facility for adding comments like there is on Steam. Despite calling on GOG for years to change things on their reviews, they've done fuck all. Not even farting in response.
And well, you see, "Mount and Blade Warband" and both it's DLCs are going to fget a flaming takedown from me.
Ok, I'll try not to rant too much, but here we go:-
ONE STAR? F-OFF! ZERO STARS!
I got the original "Mount and Blade" years ago, must have been way back in '14 or '15, for FREE! I enjoyed that, though did get bogged down with not being able to progress any further than having a company sized army of about 80, and I left it alone for awhile - in fact I didn't ever go back. But when I saw "Mount and Blade Warband" and the DLCs I thought, great I'll try those! And bought them - good job they were on sale.
I persevered for a week and then had to just grab them and stuff them down the shitter, in rage...... I was having NO fun, not a drop. Just frustration, frustration, frustration, frustration. I did get to the "80 man army" stages again, but found it impossible to keep their wages funded.
- making money is possible, but the grind, grind, grind, grind, GRIND required to get up to any kind of wealth needed to maintain a 100+ army even temporarily is just simply prohibitive. All sources of income are truly pathetic whilst even a bean costs 10000 coin! It would take weeks, if not months. And NVM 100+, you need 500+ in this game. So basically, you are going to spend a YEAR of your life REAL life NOT in game time earning enough just to have this army for a few days before going broke again and back to square one.
- nothing presents you with any real kind of significant reward of any nature, even the greatest of deeds! Yet the tiniest mistakes have world shattering consequences. This is even on the easiest difficulty settings that claim to enhance positive effects and mitigate negative ones.
- not a turd in the game helps you, 99% of dialogs end in simply "GFY".
- NPCs are just....... LOOOOOL...... example, that "troll" at "Trolls Bridge" in Danmark. Even on easiest combat settings, which at first look like god mode cheats, you'll be thrashed even by a chicken in one to one combat.
- quests are broken, and simply fuck the game over after all your effort, example the "Morrigan" quest.
- controls are sluggish and just feel bad, no matter how you configure them.
- even the tiniest little jobs usually require days (REAL TIME, not in game time) of just boring tedious yomping across the map and require enormous efforts of tedium from the player, to be rewarded with 10 fucking coins. Or even just a "thank you now kiss my arse"!
- the village and town scenes are little better, having to search for "Adda" or the town physician anyone? (Those are Viking Reforged DLC specific issues - I'll get to that DLC later). I'm sure you know how BORING it gets searching and searching and searching and searching and yomping and yomping and yomping and yomping 99.99999% of the time, that really is the game, search and yomp and rip your hair out, rinse wash repeat again and again and again and again, and well, you get the picture eh?
- progress is non-existant in ALL aspects, I have never seen a game where character level ups do so little!
- how the holy scrotums you get to actually be a lord or jarl or king or vassal or even become their grooms of the stool, well that's beyond all my ken.
Except slow progress, insufficient funds and not knowing how to become a lord, I had better memories of the original "Mount and Blade". This later "Warband" has NOTHING the original does not, except all the above frustration and piss taking difficulty - as well as a whole host of bugs and general jank in every line of code....... it's a seriously LQ product!
Do the DLCs improve things?
Do they f***.
The Viking Reforged DLC changes everything, except what needed to be, and makes the repetive grind and extreme difficulty even WORSE. Now those long boring journeys you'll spend your entire existence in the game upon now cost you thousands because you need to hire ships! Buy your own, well a spare million or two might just get you enough ships of your own to get a few men and a duck across the water. Enjoy trading wool from Dorestad to Dunwich 100000x over the next 50 years to earn enough gold for your own ships!
Ships are just too slow, too low capacity and too expensive. Even changing the paint jobs can cost 20000!
The completely new feature adds nothing to the game except MORE frustration and hate.
ZERO STARS!
How about the Napoleonic DLC? It's just online multiplayer ONLY. That's it. And it's shit. ZERO STARS!
So if you already have the original "Mount and Blade", maybe you also got it free when I did years ago, DO NOT be tempted to spend so much as a tepid whiff from your backside on any of the later in the series.
Hello Falran, and Clownski!
EDIT (see? You can't do that on the usual GOG review pages :D)
I hear that the game is easily moddable, directly by changing ingame files with just "notepad"? Well, I've uninstalled for now (give me some cool down time) but may look at that in future.
And some rumours that Mount and Blade Warband is just a "paid for expansion" for the original? Well that says a lot if true.
And "Viking Reforged DLC" was once a FREE 3rd party mod that TaleWorlds just usurped (been playing their own game too much) and starting selling. Claiming they'd fixed all the bugs, but seemingly that's just bullshit.
Post edited October 07, 2022 by JMayer70