Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword Reviews

SiCh’s stand-alone expansion to Mount & Blade continues being reviewed worldwide, and we have another trio of reviews to help you decide whether its $14.99/14,99€ price point is worthwhile or not.

Paranerds awards the game a 8.

When playing this game there are times when you truly get the sense that you are exploring a world and times when you do not. Going into a town can feel like you are reading an adventure book, with multiple options of your destination listed and you merely clicking on them. The world map on the other hand is much better. When I first saw it I dismissed the world map, on reflection after my time with the game I feel that this was a mistake. I’m used to these sorts of world maps only showing landmarks and the character that represents your party, but this game does more than others of its kind to portray its world map as a living, breathing world. You will not only come across bandits and lords, but traders, patrollers and caravans too. Each of these will give you one or more of a range of possible actions, including quests, a chance to raid or even the traditional (we are attacking you).

Gamedot goes scoreless

The most annoying parts of the campaign are, unfortunately, the quest lines. In a fashion loyal to the series they are not forced on you, and other ways of playing are available, whether it’s hiring your sword to a faction or pursuing a path of anarchy. However the quests are not only optional, they’re difficult to follow and even more difficult just to start. It’s not pointed out for instance, that only three factions have related plots, so don’t be a chump like me and follow the Swedes (or the Crimeans) around in the hopes of being swept up in an epic tale. Even once you’ve latched onto one of the luckier factions, the triggers for starting a quest are particularly obscure.

And so does Gaming Lives

The depth of the character advancement options is so much so that it would be hard to find a dedicated RPG with as many possible choices, and you’d have to look towards the heavyweights of the genre such as The Elder Scrolls series to find one. To think that With Fire and Sword is part strategy and part RPG makes it even more special, and it’s something that should really appeal to the more dedicated RPG gamers out there if they don’t mind a bit of strategy thrown in.

Perhaps the biggest problem I had encountered was with the sheer randomness of it all. Granted, a random factor here and there can sometimes be a nice addition to a game often giving that extra sense of realism within the game world. But when that random factor is as high as it is within Fire and Sword the consequences are that, on occasion, it can quite literally leave you helpless with nothing but a rage quit as you’re only option.

Meanwhile Rock, Paper, Shotgun provides us with the second part of the adventures of Captain Smith.

Every time I think I’ve reached rock bottom in this game, those rocks come bursting apart to reveal another level below them. Before I was just poor. Now I’m poor, hated and recovering from several horrific injuries, with two paltry, effeminate riflemen on my payroll who I can’t actually pay. Still, it can’t get any worse, right?

Right?

I find the mayor of this horrible city, the one I asked to lower Zamoshye’s taxes all those weeks or days or hours ago to see if he has any work for me. As it happens, he does. He wants somebody to take five hundred thaler more money than I’ve seen in my life to a bunch of bandits far to the North West, who are holding his daughter hostage. Clearly he hasn’t heard about my antics down the pub last night, and I intend to accept the work and flee before that happens. With the money delivered to the bandits, I’m to escort his daughter home. I have thirty days in which to complete the job, but by my estimation it shouldn’t take longer than a week.