Two years ago now, the TaleWorlds studio offered PC players to discover Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord in early access. Since then, the game has come a long way, enough for the studio to announce its official release. The final version of Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord is available since October 25, 2022. The game is not only released on PC, since it is also available on PlayStation family consoles (4 and 5) as well as on Xbox Series and Xbox One. A console version that we had the opportunity to try (PS5 version), which allows us today to offer you a test of the game.
In Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord, you are dropped on a huge map with a few gold coins in your pocket and enough men to hope to survive for a time against bandits who prowl and who do not hesitate to plunder the weakest. The goal is to gradually climb the ladder to try to reach a high level of command and build your own kingdom. If you begin with four-man battles on vast plains, the game ends up being over the top by simultaneously displaying hundreds of soldiers brandishing swords and spears, protecting themselves behind thick shields, on foot or on horseback and throwing themselves headlong into battle.
The app offers two graphics modes on PS5. One favoring the visual and the other the frame rate per second. In performance mode (the one we chose to play), the graphics are certainly less fine, but we gain significantly in fluidity. And it must be said, the optimization of the game on PS5 is a real success. Most of the time, the framerate remains very high even in situations where hundreds of soldiers (on both sides!) clash on the battlefield.
You also participate in real-time clashes, it's not just management that the game offers. You lead your own army to lead your clan to victory by giving orders and fighting. You can equip weapons & armor to your character and assign him a horse. The sensations of battles are excellent, it really feels like being in the middle of a medieval conflict. You can rush through enemy infantry with your horse, slashing your sword or sweeping through a line of soldiers with a polearm. The feeling of the first moments of a meeting is always something very satisfying.
As the campaign progresses (or in a sandboxed game), you have the option to enter into conflict with any faction of your choice that appears on the map. Or you might as well strengthen your ties with neighboring factions in order to unite against a particular lord. Regardless, to win the war against your sworn enemy, you must consider all the possible options that are allowed by the game. Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord gives you all the cards in hand to be able to create your own kingdom and try to dominate the world of Calradia.
But be careful, you are not alone in gaining power. The world is constantly in motion which forces you to predict the actions of the other realms around you. The AI, which is very well managed by the game, continues to build itself economically by using trade routes via the caravan system or by forging new links with other lords. Faced with the advance of the enemy (and if you are not strong enough), you can just as easily become a mercenary for hire and swear allegiance to a king or queen to gain access to almost unlimited resources before betraying and stabbing in the back whoever has reached out to you.
If your thing is to behave like a real warlord who doesn't need others, that's also allowed by the game. The TaleWorlds studio has thought of many options to let you play as you wish . Climb the ramparts of a castle with your own army and take control before claiming to be the leader of a new kingdom. Here are some of the possibilities that are available to you in Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord, and it works great!
Before starting your epic, you choose your culture which influences your starting position on the map. The game gives you the option to join one of six cultures, each allowing you to get two bonuses and a starting penalty. Then comes a really advanced character editor that allows you to create a character in your image. You must then answer a series of determining questions for the allocation of your starting statistics points. There is a slight role-playing aspect to this system, your character gains experience by using weapons, trading, riding horses, etc. This allows you to unlock very useful skills. We would have liked to give you an opinion on the online multiplayer part of Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord, but during our various test sessions, we did not find any active parts.
The TaleWorlds software certainly does not have the best graphics in the genre, things are also quite uneven at this level. If the environments display something correct and can even sometimes offer very beautiful panoramas (like the colonies), the characters very often have rather coarse features and exaggerated facial expressions. But in a way, it's so fitting with the atmosphere of the game that we totally miss it. It's always very funny to cross your enemy on the map and see the army leader put on this desperate expression when he sees you. Or when you intercept one of your companions whom you have designated as group leaders for customary checks and he greets you by declaring "to be under your orders" while displaying a bitter expression, as if deep in he hated you from the bottom of his soul. We end up suspecting him of planning a betrayal.
In the different settlements that can be visited on the map, you can plan your next moves. When you are stopped in this kind of place, the game pauses allowing you to think for a moment. In the colonies you can recruit new troops, trade and equip your character (or one of your companions) or you can simply choose to walk around the city (on horseback if it's a small town). When you explore a place, you can talk to the locals, listen to their problems and offer them help. If you do, you can strengthen your ties with them or nearby nobles and of course earn some gold and fame, a point system that helps determine your clan's level. You can ask to set up a commercial caravan or buy a workshop.
It will be criticized that the exploration on foot in the large colonies is very slow, the character that we control is not very fast... It sometimes takes several minutes to reach a workshop that you want to buy or to talk to a character accurate. Also everything seems very static when you explore towns and villages, which makes it a bit monotonous. However, the developers had the good idea to show you the list of important characters before entering a colony. Allowing you to select the one you're interested in and talk to them without having to re-enter the colony, which still saves you precious minutes and a few loading screens along the way. Our favorite part of the big settlements is the arena where you fight for glory and also great rewards. Depending on the number of nobles who are present on site and participating in the organized tournament, the reward obtained is better. But the presence of more nobles also means that more challenges are to be expected.
We might have hoped for a more advanced campaign mode that offers a story worthy of the battles we are fighting. The campaign serves only as an excuse to introduce you to the basics of the game and allow you to make the most of the sandbox mode afterwards. Regardless of the culture selected at the start of the game, the path is always the same in the campaign. You put the pieces of a banner together and choose to build an Imperial or non-Imperial kingdom before taking on your enemies if they don't crush you before you do. The heart of the game lies mostly in the sandbox mode which lets you play as you wish, thus making each new game different since you can become a different kind of warlord.
★ In conclusion, should you play Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord on console?
Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord is certainly one of the best strategy games released on the home console to date. If you've always dreamed of playing a knight conquering castles with his army and building a kingdom in medieval times, then Mount And Blade 2 Bannerlord is definitely the game you've been looking for. Everything is done with surprising freedom of action. The most difficult thing is still to get used to the maneuverability of the controller. We feel that the game is above all designed for the PC, which makes the first hours spent in the world of Calradia quite destabilizing the controller in the hands. After this, we take real pleasure in enjoying an authentic experience that masterfully combines the elements of an action RPG and a strategy game. The biggest frustration you may feel after spending tens or even hundreds of hours on it is that you can't install mods on console, which can make things less interesting than the version that came out on PC.
Mount And Blade 2 Banner Lord
Game rating
8 
