Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord Catch-all (EA out now)

That's so much less jank than I was expecting.

So, they've changed the release date ... to March 30th.

https://www.taleworlds.com/en/News/322

Also, 10% discount for everyone and additional 10% discount for Warband owners.

Great news! Campaign mode will be available from the start, which is the only thing I am interested in (no interest in multiplayer skirmishes), so great news here too.

These discounts will be available for 2 weeks, I will wait for the initial feedback and, if it's not terrible, I am planning to take advantage of them.

If my last few weeks of playing Warband is any indication, this is going to be the time sink/cut yourself off from the world game that people need right about now.

Rat Boy wrote:

If my last few weeks of playing Warband is any indication, this is going to be the time sink/cut yourself off from the world game that people need right about now.

I'm not normally one for early access, but I think I agree with you.

It's out. Took me a few tries, Steam is struggling under the load.

Downloading!

And you can have my axe...er...downloading.

Downloaded. Waiting until 5pm is a true test of my work-from-home ethic.

I'm just about done with Ori so I bought this. Didn't realize how big it was going to be so I cleared some games I haven't played in a while. I said it needed 50 - 60 GB of free space for installation but the download was only 30 GB.

FYI, if anyone hasn't gotten the game yet, it looks like greenmangaming is the cheapest place to get it right now. Normal price is $50, and you get a 17% discount at GMG. But, if you're registered with them to get promo emails, you can get a VIP code for another 11% off. Final price is $36.84 USD.

This deal seems to last for the next 6 days.

Be aware that when you start the game, you'll get a white screen for a bit, then stuff will start to happen. I get the sense that the game isn't well optimized, but very playable and still very M&B. I'm digging it.

Sundown wrote:

FYI, if anyone hasn't gotten the game yet, it looks like greenmangaming is the cheapest place to get it right now. Normal price is $50, and you get a 17% discount at GMG. But, if you're registered with them to get promo emails, you can get a VIP code for another 11% off. Final price is $36.84 USD.

This deal seems to last for the next 6 days.

You don't need the email, you can go to the VIP area on their web site and get the discount there.

I didn't get any white screen at the start, the game played well for about 3 hours and then it crashed after I've lost some battle (not my first lost battle either :)). But yeah, some people report various issues on various hardware, even though it works fine on mine.

I'm getting lots of crashes. Not super surprising, but still disappointing. I can't attack hideouts without it crashing.

I'm within the recommended system specs and it occasionally turns into a slideshow on me.

So far so good. Basically exactly what I wanted. Want to play more but have some group games set for the day.

Is there a pause button during the combat? I want to see what options I have available to manage my troops but with all the battles ending within a minute it's kind of hard to do.

And also, what's the loop here? Am I supposed to be buying low selling high in the beginning, hunting bandits or what? I don't have much experience with Mount & Blade.

I am surprisingly stuck on the two handed sword training. It seems like when I attempt to switch block direction it fails most of the time. And the cheese of waiting with an attack ready until they move no longer works.

Aha, now that I came to compain, I think I finally figured out lots of movement will get the AI to miss enough to allow some attacks in.

Well, crap, there's Juggalos:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/LXkOq2p.jpg)

A few helpful hints for beginners:

* Couched lance damage requires a lance with a Couch modifier and a horse that's fast enough; the starter spear and horse don't qualify. In combat, gallop up to full speed and press the X key to switch from thrust to couch.

* Right click on a portrait to open up the in-game encyclopedia to access everything you need to know about settlements, kingdoms, characters, etc.

* Upgrading troops to become cavalry require buying the appropriate horses on your own. I guess they don't want you getting 80 knights rapidly.

left-alt is your friend in taverns.

I've been convinced for awhile that this was at worst vaporware, and at best going to be a huge disappointment. I was wrong on both counts. So far this is exactly what I wanted and hoped for in a sequel. It still feels like Mount and Blade, but everything is bigger and prettier.

What's the experience like in towns? Much to do and see? Trading seem robust? I always liked the idea of travelling and trading being a bigger part of the game (I may be the only one!).

Downloading now. Planning on letting this devour great swathes of all the extra free time I have at the moment

I started playing last night but couldn't figure out how managing the troops gear works. I thought I remembered doing that in the first game.

Got through the tutorial last night and so far the game is great. My only real disappointment at this point is that I will be stuck with a shield for the foreseeable future because the devs removed the auto parry directions and lance couching. Hopefully it will get patched or modded in quickly.

EvilDead wrote:

I started playing last night but couldn't figure out how managing the troops gear works. I thought I remembered doing that in the first game.

I don't remember managing the gear for regular troops, only the companions you could recruit. I may be wrong since I never got super into the troop commands in Warband since it was largely unnecessary.

troubleshot wrote:

What's the experience like in towns? Much to do and see? Trading seem robust? I always liked the idea of travelling and trading being a bigger part of the game (I may be the only one!).

The little villages all seem to offer food and at least (maybe at most) one trade good. They seem to actually start out with a little money, so selling garbage loot can be accomplished there.

The cities are larger, and while kind of fun to wander around so far, using the TAB menu to actually get to places works better. It looks like there is room for some fun with trade. After awhile I started seeing prices on good in other areas when looking at a particular trade good; it seemed to be giving me the top two buy and sell prices amongst places I visited, but I think I saw that there could be other sources of pricing information (maybe rumors from tavern keepers or some such). Once you have some money, you can also start up caravans; I haven't had enough money yet to try it out. With the large world map and potential fun around caravans, I think acting as a trader should be fun. But getting started is slow, since getting money early on has been slow (for me at least).

EvilDead wrote:

I started playing last night but couldn't figure out how managing the troops gear works. I thought I remembered doing that in the first game.

You can't directly control most gear of normal troops, but can control the gear of any 'hero''s. When looking at the party screen, if you have any other main characters you can switch between them using arrows at the top of the screen.

OK, thanks. I thought I was missing something but must have been miss-remembering the first game. I must have just had a lot of companions I was managing.

I got bored chasing looters (I hope they adjust bandits' speed to slow them down a bit) and started a war with Western Empire. Maybe it was a mistake, we'll see.

I really like the game so far, there are some rough edges obviously but it seems like a lot of fun and the world is huge.

I played about an hour last night and have some mixed reactions. I fully recognize that this is Early Access.

My biggest takeaway is just how little has changed on the surface. It sure is Mount & Blade, right down to knowing exactly what menus were going to offer what options, exactly where to find the village leader in every village (hint: look for the guy standing in front of his house at 3AM), etc. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it does raise the question of why it takes so many years to produce something so similar to what they've already made a few times over. I get that they implemented a new engine, but I guess I expected more evolution with time.

The graphics and sound design is pretty. I'm especially tickled at being able to alter the pitch of your voice (hobbit army FTW). I am very intrigued by the skill system, which looks fairly interesting and different, but I can't really tell yet.

I need to spend a lot more time with it. I look forward to future patches improving things like going to a loading screen every time you try to do anything. I'm also struggling with performance in battles of more than 10-20 people.

I'm sure I'll be sinking a LOT of time into this....