I was a tad miffed at seeing the odd graphics bug persists even two years after the release of a game a decade in the making.
Some design decisions are also hard to justify, like maintaining arenas' scale within the city proper (instead of turning them into TARDIS-es as customary for instanced spaces) resulting in them taking up a quarter of some towns' real estate.
Overall though, the graphics are competitively detailed, if not in their fundamental building blocks then certainly in their application. Instead of the old conspicuously lonely cluster of houses, villages spread out in bucolic arrays of fields, orchards, livestock paddocks even for animals not officially part of the game economy, and houses of various descriptions. Though crafters in towns only mill about unsatisfyingly as all NPCs did in the first game, villagers have now acquired quite a few idle animations.
- to the point that much as I've remarked more than once, a proper application of distance and lighting can add up to a surprising amount of prettiness, in this case running across a peaceful scene of an elder and youth praying by the side of their local river as the day winds down, basking in the god rays:
Instead of trying to find reasons to send you into various locations, Bannerlord has embraced its aesthetic side as largely optional but nevertheless appealing. You can play everything except battles (trade, quests, recruitment, etc.) from the overland map with no penalties. On the flip-side, immersive locales are there, wherever you go, leaving you to sight-see at your leisure. While not ideal, this does fit Mount&Blade's best selling point of sandbox freedom of choice. The same precept carries over from the littlest details (like the immense variety of largely redundant weapons and armor - I myself will be sporting a stylin' wolf head and bear pelt ensemble in future screenshots) to the over-arching pace of your campaign. Moving from early (questing/trading) to middle game (joining faction wars as a minor player) is entirely up to you.
Not having quite the patience to farm up a million denars as I'd mused I could last time, after building up a little capital (mostly heavy armor for my companions, over a hundred med-high-rank troops) I started sniffing around the Southern Empire for a way into the nobility's graces. I'd apparently ignored an important facet of leveling.
Each Bannerlord culture draws its own board game from real-world examples. You'll first encounter them in taverns (with an associated gambling debt quest) but I was surprised to find the nobility also keeps a game board in every castle, with victories giving you up to three minor (1-point) daily boosts to your all-important renown or your relation to the NPC player's clan. While a low payoff/time proposition in player terms, at least they're less luck-based than most RPGs' counterparts and as they take up no in-character time, they fill the same role as arena fight pennypinching as a risk-free, low-yield backup to normal character advancement. Too many games ignore such correction mechanisms to fill in the gaps between main game elements, or lean too hard on them as cash sources as with KotOR's "vingt et none" or racing minigames or Witcher's dicing. For once, I find myself enjoying such extra content instead of seeing it as a gratuitous timesink or distraction. Unfortunately, the AI's competence runs from impossible (MuTorere) to incompetent (Puluc, or Tablut where it's so focused on the king it'll let you win by attrition almost every time) but still... well played, TaleWorlds.
Anyway it's about time I stopped wallowing atop my gold hoard like some draconic Scrooge McDuck and see how my army fares against foes stronger than Sherwood's rejects. To that end I've assembled a crack brigade of Imperial crossbowmen, some cataphracts mostly to buy me time to reload, with a front line heavy on Sturgian line breakers plus some legionaries for their shields. And, of course, their fearless leader.
We'll see how it goes.
No comments:
Post a Comment