The internet is so quick to get upset about videogame news, that I was genuinely shocked to see the enthusiasm on this site for Mount & Blade: Warband’s Xbox One debut. A port of a 2010 PC game does not normally have the hardcore crowd excited for release. Instead, gamers question why the port is even necessary, and could funds be used to develop new properties.
I am in the same camp as I have not purchased a single rerelease, remake, definitive edition, or port for the Xbox One console. But the clearly favorable impression commenters left on the articles discussing Mount & Blade made my interest pique. I exclaimed, “One ticket for the hype train, please!” Too bad my destination was disappointment.
My immediate reaction to booting up Mount & Blade is that it is one of the ugliest games on the console. I chose to start off in the tutorial as I know the game is very complex and I did not want to add hours to my game time just trying to figure out basic controls. The ground was just different hues of green, yellow and brown. The sky was an underwhelming shade of blue. The character models all looked the same with only slight variations of clothing or hair style.
This did not change outside of the tutorial world. The world map is traversed in a top-down, incredibly zoomed-out view. I clicked on a location and my tiny avatar moved across the world map to other areas. The map was pretty enough, but lacked any detail or uniquely creative elements.
Once inside of a town, the buildings all used the same wallpaper to make the outside of the buildings look like stone, wood, or brick. The world had the same graphical fidelity as The Sims. Each building looked like a copy and paste of every other building in the town. The ground was without grass or shrubbery, trees were all but absent, and the town was populated by a miniscule handful of people making the world seem extremely sparse and void of life.
The second thing I noticed was that the controls are downright awful. During the tutorial, I was tasked with practicing combat, archery, and both while on horseback. Each one of these attacking possibilities are marred with problems.
Before I even discuss the problem, I will give you two extra pieces of information. First is that there is no option to switch controls to fix the problems I was having. While there are two control schemes, they basically just toggle which button brings up the map. The second is that I did eventually get used to the controls, but that in no way excuses the mess that they are.
So what is the big problem? The combat system for sword fighting uses a four-directional system to swing. I had to hold the right bumper, chose a direction with the right thumb stick, then release the right bumper in real-time. While that does not sound like a problem, let me add that the right thumb stick also controls the camera. This means that when I chose which way to swing, the camera also swung away from my target so I could no longer see what was happening. Blocking attacks followed the same format but replace right bumper with the left bumper.
For the first fifty fights, I had no idea if I was hitting my opponent or not. I would pick a direction to swing, then gaze off in the distance while my character tried to strike. I would then move the camera back and try again. Somewhere in the middle of those fights I began to flail wildly in hopes of relieving this tedious process. Eventually, I learned to flick very quickly to avoid a full turn, but after four or five shots, I always had to adjust the camera back to start.
Another flaw I experienced in my time with Mount & Blade was the sound design. Basically the lack of sound to be exact. Music would pop in and out more than the building textures. While I ran around the town clicking on merchants to try and gain quests, I would sometimes be greeted with a loud, orchestral score. Other times I would have utter silence to listen to. The music was either jarring or forgettable, and never added to the storytelling or atmosphere.
The actual gameplay of Mount & Blade is actually very fun. While the presentation is terrible, the minute-to-minute grind is quite enjoyable. I would go to a town and speak with a merchant or lord that gave me a quest. I had quests that involved securing a few militia men, training soldiers at a small village, hunting down a seasoned criminal, stopping a band of thieves, and finding lost items. The quests were always varied and came with a good bit of prose that was written on scrolls. This is because there are no voice actors in the game, except the ones who do war cries while running into battle.
Each mission has multiple ways of approaching and completing the objective, though a time limit is usually imposed. Depending on how I completed a mission, or failed to complete it, the quest giver, the town where the mission played out, and the town where the quest giver lived all would have a different reaction. If I killed a ruthless criminal instead of capturing him, the town where I found and killed him may begin to fear and dislike me while the town with the quest giver would reward me with gold. Each decision pushed toward a larger narrative that was only realized after many, many hours of play.
Summary
While the presentation and controls for Mount & Blade: Warband clearly fall flat, I think there is a shred of hope for this series. Releasing a six-year old port onto the Xbox One without reworking the graphics will probably keep this title from any hope of success and the control scheme shows that this game still feels at home on PC, especially while on horseback. My only hope is that a sequel to this game will be released for the current generations that allows the mission system to shine. Until then, I can only recommend that you skip this title.
Joshua was a regular ICXM contributor between 2016–2017, publishing 42 articles across game reviews, and Xbox news. Their work focused on hands-on reviews, platform commentary, and breaking-news reporting during the Xbox One X launch year and Microsoft’s wider Play Anywhere / UWP gaming initiative.