Recent reviews by Durendul

Note: This is single player Review of M&B2

Updated April 5th:
Wow 5th update to this game in 6 days, major fixes and balance improvements. Enough for me to change negative to a positive allot of chances for the better. Obviously the Devs are putting work into this one. There are still things that are not perfect but already allot of improvement. It still has allot of work to be done before it can leave EA but as a well-supported EA tittle id give it a up vote now.


TLDR New M&B Players:
Play M&B Warband or Viking Conquest and Wait

TLDR Long Time Fans:
Its still Warband with a fresh coat of paint but with allot more polish. Its undoubtably more of the same but its building off a solid base. ATM (April 5th) there’s still some major key features that don’t work. And some limitations of the game engine still worry me long term for things like Sieges.

Is it playable: YES, but expect it to be rough around the edges, with many new features not working or poorly fleshed out.

Is it worth 50$:? NO, unless you’re a long-time fan and want to see what’s new and come along for the EA ride


Lack of Innovation in Gameplay: it’s more of the same as WB, which is admittedly pretty good but it’s nothing new. It looks like teleworks is trying to flesh out allot of things like diplomacy, but atm those details are a work in progress

Sieges are Broken ☹: Updated: Still broken but not game breaking now. Ultimately, I worry about the AIs pathing, I hope the devs can fix this.

Battle AI is stupid The battle AI is not that dynamic; fights are a spectacle to behold but large groups of troops get stuck on things and don’t handle well

Limited Quests/Events: The Dynamic quests are very limited.

Diplomacy still limited: largely the same diplomacy system as M&B WB tho this is getting fleshed out. still very very EA

Sounds Effects: Same recycled sound effects as the first game. The new additions are great, but they are few and far between there have been sound fixes

Crashes: in 15+ hours I’ve had 2 crashes on loading screen, one which was bandit camps looks to have been fixed in a Day one hotfix! Lots of updates way more stable

Limited Maps: I’ve found myself fighting on the same hill far too many times, (there are allot of maps, but you can end up on the same one allot if your defending near the same place) this could be improved by different spawn points on the same map


Good User Interface: Allot of care has gone into the User interface and it works well and looks good, In my opinion TaleWorlds knocked this aspect out of the park

New Weapons: The new gear looks great and adds allot more variety loot, fees far more extensive then WB

Horse Arches you owe it to yourself to make a army of horse arches. They are a spectacle!

New Units: New Units and Classes, feels much deeper than WB!

Character Customization: Extensive Character Customization, while not industry leading is enough to make your character yours

Graphics Improvement: while still dated, the new graphics are a big improvement over WB, Character models have seen a massive improvement armor looks very nice. When this game looks good it looks amazing just don’t look to closely

1v1 Combat: Still M&B Combat, it’s the same as warband though it feels like it has slightly better hit detection. Also, you can chain attack, which does not feel that useful but adds some depth.

Spectacle of battles still great to witness a cavalry charge or your archers firing volleys at the enemy some times breaks dues to pathing

New Music: its great and fitting

Poor Optimization: Running on a high-end rig (4.6 ghrz OC 6700k/1080ti/Multi Raid 0 SSDs) the framerate grinds to a halt sometimes. Still a surprisingly demanding game, but for me at least performance is stable since updates, mileage may very

Bad Textures: Not game breaking but consistent problems with bad textures popping in (Big purple Squares on the ground) Fixed

Lots of Loading: As many other reviews have pointed out LOTS of loading, minimized by having High speed SSDs personally its only a slight hindrance with my setup, I can imagine this game would be a poor experience on an HDD

Missing Sounds?: Updated, Game still fells quiet, though the sounds seem to work now. Hopefully they add more

July 2014
Avoid, don't waste your money


Not finished... not even close, developer has added next to nothing, and the game is broken at best. Other reviews have done a better job of summarizing what’s wrong with this game so I’ll leave you with simply another negative review. if it somehow turns around ill happily update this, but I doubt it.


Update: July 2015, its been one year i will give it another shot and see
Update: May 2017, still nothing
Update: Sept 2019 you think its updated now, you know better.