Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword Previews

A couple more sites stepped into the Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword press demo and come back to share their impressions with us. GameDot.

The second change is the big one. By relocating the game to the 17th century, Taleworlds have been able to introduce a major new combat element: guns. Pistols, carbines and muskets are all in. At first this appears fairly worrying, since Warband’s three main classes cavalry, infantry and archer were excellently balanced, a situation which gunnery could damage. In multiplayer the effect of gunpowder weapons is yet to be seen since this feature was locked in the preview, but in solo games they look to be a strong new addition.

These weapons are tremendously powerful almost guaranteeing a one-shot kill every time, but are woefully inaccurate, particularly from horseback. In smaller engagements they’re great fun to play around with and provide some thrilling moments, particularly when pulling off a difficult shot to take down a lone enemy. However I’m concerned as to their use in larger battles. It’s easy to imagine a few musketeers dominating all before them which is perhaps historically true, but those who still wish to use swords, bows and spears may find themselves compelled to move away from their favourite weaponry and field an army full of gunners. Luck also seems more important than skill in the current build as regards aiming, whereas archery in Warband was a great example of an .asy to use, difficult to master’ feature.

Strategy Informer.

There’s some other changes to the game as well mainly the way you recruit your army. Instead of being able to just go to any village and pick up peasants, you have to go to mercenary camps and recruit your units there. There’s only a handful of them on the map, and they are located and themed upon the faction they’re closest too. At these camps, not only can you hire what type of unit you want, you can also out-fit them with whatever weapons and armour you want, given you increased flexibility. You can also hire mercenaries in taverns much more cheaply, so between the two changes your armies can be more mixed and diverse.

Hooked Gamers.

The graphics are very similar to Warband, which means that they are no eye candy, but they aren’t trying to be either. The graphics serve well to immerse the player in the world presented, and nobody plays this game for its graphics. We play it for the highly immersive combat system. The guns do feel a bit over-powered at times, especially to begin with. Riding hard against a group of musketeers with a pistol in one hand while wearing a cotton suit is a very sure way of getting yourself killed. Whereas ‘Ramboing it’ in Warband proved not only successful, but a hell-of-a-lot of fun, in With Fire and Sword a bit more thought is needed when it comes to combat, as everyone and their grandmother appears to be packing heat.

The guns are, however, not the holy hand-grenade they appear to be at first glance. They are very inaccurate and have a dreadfully long reloading time. They are also more uncomfortable to use in long-range situations, as you can’t use the first bullet to judge the rate of fall as you can with bows and arrows, making every shot a proverbial ‘shot in the dark’. When that bullet finally hits however, a bandit, looter, or a low ranking soldier will go down in one shot. The higher levelled ones, wearing metal armour, will take a few more shots to take down. Too bad I never got to experience that for myself, as reaching level 6 triggered a message stating that if I wanted to advance further in the game, I would have to activate it. This made me realise that the ‘preview’ version distributed by Paradox was nothing more than a trial. Tsk-tsk Paradox. That is just lazy…