Recent reviews by UnlimitedAmmoNoReload

Dead game

(PC specs are at the bottom of review)

The things I like:

-Familiar to the Warband diplomatic formula while adding a layer of depth with more complex character interactions and internal faction clans and such (akin to Total War Medieval 2 or CK2)

-Adds a whole host of different skill trees and redesigned leveling up system

-Melee and ranged combat is amazing.

-New UI is great

-Graphics are acceptable as an upgrade from Warband. Character creation and NPC character generation are standout and really helps to give more life to your character and the NPCs you encounter.



What needs fixing:

-Performance. My PC meets the recommended requirements (except for my CPU, which I acknowledge might be the problem if other players aren't facing the same issues) and the game feels laggy/stuttery at points even with 120fps and big siege battles just totally tank my FPS. Settings are all on Medium. Loading screens are generally short, but they're annoying as someone who's used to the instantaneous transitions in Warband. I understand that the graphics are better, but I would really like the game to have these loading screens be nonexistent. My PC fans also start going full speed. Might be my hardware or the game has memory leaks or optimization issues.

-Dialog and quests. The quests given by village elders is varied but you start seeing a pattern after a while and they get old kind of fast. Nobles have more quests to offer though. The dialog feels lacking compared to Warband because many of the options are absent, or you have to go through an extra step like clicking on a character portrait to learn their location. Some is also poorly written with grammar mistakes, inappropriate lowercase letters, repetitive dialog (Stuff along the lines of "You have defeated me please have mercy" then the next dialog is "I am at your mercy"), incorrect genders when referring to female characters, etc.

-This might be specific to me but I really don't like how you have to pay your troops every single day. It makes the early game really difficult and your party loses morale really quickly if you go broke. Maybe balance the money system so you get less denars from trading, fighting etc but also pay your party less frequently. I also think that the leveling up feels really slow and I can't seem to improve my perks as rapidly as I'd like to.

-Sound. Voice acting is VERY sparse and there is little to no ambient sound in villages or cities. Even just having NPCsblurt out some canned voice line upon encounter would be way better, and it's one of the things that most people remember about Warband.

-I have seen a few weird graphics bugs but not incredibly gameplay breaking. i.e. starting off in first person in battles will show you the inside of your head and you can see your eyes and teeth (switching to third person then back to first person fixes this) and I've noticed weird blue boxes appearing in ground textures. Sometimes captured enemy lords appear as a huge mess of polygons in their portrait and character model. I haven't had a ton of crashes yet and my character saves haven't been corrupted.

- I have a whole laundry list of things that I could complain about but they're mostly things like not being able to accompany caravans and having to repeatedly click next to them, or random diplomacy features that are slated to be added in the future anyway.



I missed a whole lot of things that I either like or dislike about the game but that's the general idea of how I feel. It seems like I pointed out way more negatives than positives, but I don't have a lot to write about all the things I like because I enjoy them a ton and I can't say much other than "They're great".

I'm pretty optimistic for the development future considering that they have a dev team that is far larger than the one that was dedicated to making Warband. Bannerlord as I see it now is pretty similar to Warband with a lot of new in depth features, but also conspicuously missing a few key mechanics from Warband. I stuck with Insurgency: Sandstorm through all its undelivered promises and god awful optimization and it's a much more enjoyable game now. I also find the 8 year dev period as a criticism to be flimsy, they wrote a whole new engine, scrapped and redid a lot of stuff and I believe some of the programmers went to college for 3 years, so the dev cycle was really around 5.

Overall, I've been enjoying Bannerlord and I'm excited for the future of the game. I just hope Taleworlds doesn't go full Bethesda and just rely on modders to complete the game.
I'd recommend this game for people who are big fans of M&B and wouldn't mind playing what is essentially an upgraded (in some aspects) version of Warband.
I will revise this this review as the game is updated.

My PC specs:
Radeon RX 580 Sapphire Nitro+ 8GB DDR5
i5-6600K @ 3.50 GHZ (does not meet recommended specs, I know)
16GB DDR4 RAM
Samsung SSD 840 PRO Series

SaltierSquad Deathmatch

In multiplayer, led an army of men wearing loincloths and wielding spiked clubs into a castle against skilled, fully armored archers and footsoldiers and successfully captured it.

11/10 would experience again

Stay away from people with the phase orb gun and you'll be fine.