patrikc: Never played Mount & Blade, although I got it here (in 2017 according to my orders). I've been in and out of gaming these past years. Would you recommend it?
Sabin_Stargem: Honestly, no. M&B Warband is the most "polished" edition of the series, but is janky in general and often feels half-baked to me. That said, M&B Bannerlord (vanilla) has recently surpassed Warband in terms of features. For example, in Warband ladders are more like ramps - but in Bannerlord, troops actually climb to their probable doom.
If you are comfortable with early access games, Bannerlord should serve you better than Warband. The only real merit of Warband is that there are many mods available. I think there are Warhammer and LOTR mods?
M&B is very much a sandbox experience, so if you need something that is more story driven, I recommend Kingdom Come. While I hate the combat in that game, there is no questioning that much love & attention went into that game.
The last time I played bannerlord (was probably 6 months or so back) it was pretty much the same thing as warband. Sure fancy new graphics, and sieges were a bit better with more attack points. Otherwise just the same empty place to wander around. Heck the first mission of bannerlord was to walk around the whole map speaking to every lord, my that is fun! So no, I disagree. Mods in warband are a huge part of it, allowing you to change theme - there are world war mods, fantasy mods etc. - to locations, stories. You want difficult or easy, extra features, different type of combat etc. Until bannerlord actually comes out of development, which won’t be in our lifetimes, and mods start piling in, warband has the content to keep anyone happy.
