I remember seeing this game and seeing the graphics (even back in 2016) were terrible and sitting on the fence but seeing overwhelmingly positive reviews and reading some of them and wondering "Should I buy this game?" I finally came across a review that said something along the lines that you can be a bandit, warlord, or the line that captured my attention and pushed me to buy it "a noble knight who can protect the villagers/peasants" and I thought, alright, time to buy it.

I took a chance on that alone and bought the game and got my butt kicked for quite a few hours, a bankrupt warband of angry, destitute men trying to scrap out a living and getting wasted by the nobles upon the map who had actual armies, fiefs and knew how to lead. I've restarted many times and tried different things and always had fun and actually started my own faction and took over the entire map.

There is Bannerlord out which depending on which reviews you read is a much more beautiful version than this game with a larger map and far bigger and better battles. This game is a very ugly (graphics wise) woman with a heart of gold who will never let you down.

My greatest moment in this game (I am not one of those players who can be a horse archer and take down 300 man armies by myself, maybe a dozen but no more than that) is when I engaged the king of the Rhodoks who has the best crossbowmen and spearmen in the game by far in open terrain with a band of around 160 Swadian knights against his 700+ army of elite Rhodok sergeants and sharpshooters. The battle went on for quite a while and his reinforcements eventually dwindled to nothing and 800 casualties later it was over and the king's army forever reduced to never reach those heights again (at least in that map and play-through). The reason for all of this bloodshed: in the defense of my small village the king tried to raid. I had fulfilled my oath and the draw of the game back to me.

I highly recommend this game. It is all open-world meaning there is no story line in the vanilla game (Viking DLC and mods will correct that if that is what you are looking for). So the open vanilla map will either be the most boring time or the greatest story line depending upon how you craft it in your own mind and also how some battles and betrayals and sworn oaths are fulfilled.

I figure at this point most, if not all will go for Bannerlord but I will always come back to this game, even with Bannerlord and other bigger and more beautiful battle games out there. This was a love that will never leave me. Also if you can't afford Bannerlord or you have a potato of a computer than this will fulfill those needs until you can afford those luxuries.

Good game

This is the taste of kebab at 2AM and the toilet sitting next day. Absolute beauty. If you're seeking an adventurous sandbox, where you can create infinite amount of stories - this is for you. Feeling like your nuts are about to crack from the amount of butter on them? Try out mods from the community which will get rid of the Swadians (and other factions).

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- little to no diplomacy, this is not crusader kings little guy
- repetitive early game, inviting us to use the built in cheat mode
- dumb AI, like literally dumb
- limited tactics in fights (#f1f3)

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Absolutely spankable stuff. Amazing sandbox with infinite possibilities of approaching the game. Based as flippity duck. Even if you're actually looking to play Bannerlord, I advise to give this a try. It's a complete experience and with addition of the Steam Workshop - oh boy *shivers/