Mount & Blade: With Fire And Sword Review

Those who have never experienced the Mount and Blade series before may be taken aback by quite a few aspects of the game. The graphics aren't quite top notch, and the general framework of the game can feel a little strange for those who aren't quite familiar with a similar series like Might and Magic. Similarly it's latest expansion With Fire and Sword can be equally hard to simply pick up if one is not accustomed to an older style of game design. But despite all these issues, Mount and Blade remains to be an extremely engrossing series, one which has an amazing amount of depth to offer players.

Much like typical RPGs of any style, players start off by choosing the typical character traits, facial features and hair color. Players also get to select an impressive string of statistics, all of which highlight attributes that will make a character more effective at various skills. Base stats can be levelled up and made more effective, which then increases the maximum level that trade/trait skills can be trained from in addition to providing players with more options for weapon skills. Keeping the three sets of statistics separate allows players to clearly see what impact they'll be having on the development of their character, which is quite handy as the variety in game can make things a bit daunting to start with. This isn't because some skills are naturally more complex than others, or because the game requires a certain level of skill to play, but because all the skills have a particular situational utility that makes them all valuable at one point or another.

For example, players can choose to specialize in various means of negotiation ranging from trade haggling to party building; and assuming that players have nothing they would like to invest in when it comes to these secondary skills, there are plenty of combat skills to invest points in as well. It's completely possible, as a result, to create a character tailor made to handle just about any kind of scenario. Couple this with a pretty large, although repetitive, amount of quests in game and players should find an extremely deep and engrossing experience that will vary greatly depending on what path an individual takes.

Set in the 17th century, With Fire and Sword gives players the opportunity to fight for control over Eastern Europe by allying themselves with one of the few local factions. Building a reputation by doing quests to help the locals, warding off bandits and generally just by making decisions will help players on their quest to unify the region. While none of these things are particularly new to the Mount and Blade series there are a few interesting additions that WFAS has to offer. First and foremost being the addition of guns, which replace bows as the ranged weapon of choice.

Priding itself as a fairly realistic combat simulator of the era, it's fair enough to say that the gun is slightly overpowered. Assuming it hits, it's an instant kill and rightfully so, considering how damaging a bullet can be, and though loading it can take a little while players will naturally find that success in the game really orients around how well one manages combat around the gunplay. Picking off enemies as they ride or run over to you is quite effective, but likewise the enemy will have no shame in firing on your position as often as possible, provided of course they have access to the weapon. Learning when to hold ground and fire, and when to actually charge the enemy defines victory in a series that previously allowed the use of both range and melee quite liberally, giving WFAS a very different feel.