Recent reviews by J. Purdy

This is a shotgun blast of what I believe to be issues with the game:

The nords were a good edition to the game.
But to be frank, I rather have co-operative multiplayer on the campaign map. Either dual co-operative or the usual standard four.

When it comes to the ships, the pathfinding of the AI and the AI itself in ship battles are definitely below standard; it's not normal to lose most of your guys from drowning because they can't AI path correctly to the ropes to climb back aboard. Also some weird issues with ramming (during the campaign) where I had the largest ship and it refused to calculate ram damage.

Instead of focusing on making a separate campaign, it would have been much more beneficial for them to flesh out diplomacy, and interactions with nobles. They did a little work on bonuses and negatives to your character in the form of characteristics (i.e. daring, calculated, etc) but when it comes to nobles having them, it doesn't amount to anything. They don't like you more or less based on who you are and who they are.

Settlements should switch cultures after some time when they are under another factions rule. Why would I want to be a nord taking southern lands just to be forced to replenish my army forever with foreign troops?

Multi-hit (Like Zanathars Cut Through Everybody mod) should be a toggle like fast mode.

There should be repercussions to constantly blocking. Realistic Battle Mod solves this by punishing AI and player where if they block too much and take too many hits, they take damage. This should be a setting in "Campaign Options" that can be turned on or off

To put a cap on this, Bannerlord is a wide ocean but only as deep as a pond. It lacks complexity and depth to it's mechanics or straight out lacks mechanics entirely.

After the developers reached out to the community with their latest post (August 13th) addressing the balancing issues is a good sign to me. If they're reading reviews then I'd like to leave some ideas for the game:

- Rework health on chargers or how their armor works
- Scale down how much health the Impaler has (it should not be surviving a railcannon shot or 500 Kg bomb)
- For addressing people that say "the game is too easy", consider working from a backwards perspective; create a level 20 where as soon as the party is seen and enemy reinforcements have been called, just make it endless. This mode should have its own balancing that does not infect the rest of the game as the rest of the game should be more focused on having fun with challenge. This mode should be strictly for those people so they can't complain about the game being easy
- Rework the stratagem flame thrower to work like an actual flame thrower where it shoots a long distance "jelly". The stratagem flame thrower should feel different from the primary and secondary flame thrower and I think this is a good approach to it

It comes with Integral but you can't play it. It'll ask "Do you want to go to the Steam store to download this DLC?" but it just goes to the Steam front page, not allowing you to download anything Konami needs to fix this

UPDATE: They fixed this issue; right select the game in the listing in your library, properties, DLC, and check all the DLC's.
Now all they need to do is update the graphics to be on par or better with DuckStations emulation of the game

December Update: They added a lot of stuff to match the emulation of DuckStation. I'm shocked by Konami actually putting their nose to the grindstone and keep updating this. So credit where it's due, good job Konami

What PZ needs:
- More vehicles variety and trailers
-RV's and trailers are modded in but should be base game. Have an interior space for the RV that generates outside of the map zone or something that works (there's a mod for this too)
- Add a semi-auto shotgun
-For instance, there's only pump shotguns in base game, kinda lame and will get you killed because they love to put in animations that make you unable to move (i.e. animations with pump shotguns, spears, and drag down animation). So it would be nice if there was more weapon variety that such mods like Brita's Weapon pack add to the game (but that mod pack honestly adds way too many guns that don't matter compared to each other i.e. Beretta vs. CZ pistol)
- Crafting helper
-There's a mod that creates this function but honestly, it should be main game.
- Common fixes
-For the love of GOD! DON'T ALLOW ZOMBIES TO BE ABLE TO DAMAGE PLAYER HOUSE WALLS!!! It literally causes no incentive to build a base. If a window or door isn't made in the construction THEN the zombies should be allowed to break the walls.
- Common gestures and actions
- Things like sitting, dancing, and common gestures should again, be base game but are added by mods
Lasty, they've been working on adding NPC's into the game for over a year (or longer I can't remember) and they're still not here. I'm going to assume the creators love their game and aren't spending all the money on hookers and blow so it must be an engine limitation or the engine is autistic to work with. With so much success of their game going basically mainstream, they should consider a second title with a far better and easier engine and a bigger team; you know, like what's going on with Kenshi 2.

The AI has greatly improved from other TW games. I've had the AI straight up threaten me if I didn't give them money, which was very amusing and intriguing. The "make this deal work" option was much needed and makes doing anything with the AI a much more engaging experience. Also lastly for the AI, being able to gain units that belong solely to that faction through a military alliance is so nice; you actually care about making alliances now.

The reintroduction of settlement trading is amazing, though I wish it wasn't limited. You can only trade adjacent settlements. I understand this to a degree but would much prefer it to be more forgiving to allow further and sensible trading. For instance, as the Empire, vampires were bothering me in their mountain base's, after capturing said bases, it would make sense to hand these mountain bases over to the Dwarves, but alas, no adjacent province they own.

They've somewhat reintroduced designing your own character (sort of what they had in Shogun), but it's only for a single faction, and a chaos faction (I'm not a fan of chaos, chaos-tards seething). I'm hoping they introduce some sort of character designer for other factions such as The Empire faction. Total War Warhammer has always been plagued by the lack of variety in lords and heroes when it comes to facial and gear specialization; Total War itself has been plagued by any deep connection to your characters. In Warhammers case, you'll always be attached to legendary lords over lords you recruit. So yeah TL;DR, please add character customization so we don't have to have the same joe-schmoe recruit heroes and lords (we want waifu mages and you want to add women into your games for political reasons, it's a win-win CA)

I enjoy this MW5 quite a bit but it's an incomplete game.
The vanilla game is alright but there are major changes that need to happen. Along with saying that, this game is way better with mods that flesh out the game or simply fix things that should be included.

Things that need to be added:
- RPG elements
This consists of interactions with your AI lance-mates/members of your crew. Y'know, kind of like Persona or the other Battletech game or maybe like Mass Effect (I didn't play it).

- Better spawns
There WAS a mod for this, but it's been long outdated. Vanilla has enemies spawning in the general area of you; this could be literally in front of you, or a thousand plus meters off, it seriously kills the immersion or the general fairness of the game with enemies literally spawning behind you like their name was Naruto. The old BetterSpawns mod made it so mechs get brought in via mech dropship every time. A better experience.

- Timeline extension
We want clans and clan mechs. Simple as.

- Meaningful contracts
We should have contracts from invading houses to see borders change so actually supporting one house over another is more meaningful. Hell, adding in meet-able important house members such as dukes/warlords/ruling members and their respective areas would be cool, and if that was to happen, add in a chance to throw your lot in with a house to fight for them and get a planet of your own. To keep this short, apply the awesome stuff from Mount and Blade

- Different cockpits huds
This is just a personal of mine, not very mandatory.

In summation: After writing this I'm of the conclusion that an entire new game should be made.

The game gets old on your own very badly, very easily. Yes, it's nice they make updates for this game, but the DLC's for this game like melee weapon mechs should've been base game. Mods are the lifeline of this game. (Also keep in mind that new updates absolutely wreck mods and have to be updated by the modders themselves... if possible... *looks at BetterSpawns and EnchancedHUD* yes... some mods have to be remade from scratch.