After a few months from Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord's last big update, the game's latest round of additions and changes is a significant step forward. Fans of Bannerlord's multiplayer component, in particular, will benefit from a long list of improvements, although other aspects like singleplayer, user interface, and performance have also received some attention.
Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord entered Early Access in March 2020 and has remained in that state with frequent improvements since then. As a highly anticipated sequel for the long-running Mount and Blade franchise by TaleWorlds, the game was first announced back in 2012. The notably slow pace of development and updating means each major patch is a big deal to the game's fans and Bannerlord's modding community. Many players forgive this pace, however, due to the game's uniqueness and incredible scope. Bannerlord encompasses nearly every aspect of medieval politics and warfare, from gladiator tournaments to the raising and feeding of massive armies to epic siege battles and cunning political maneuvering.
This latest update brings the game up to version 1.7.2, with a particular emphasis on multiplayer additions and further improvements to Bannerlord's battle system. One of the largest additions is the inclusion of a new Battle game mode. In this mode, 120 players, each with a single life, choose a class before entering the battle. Stronger class choices require more gold, which can be earned through assists, kills, and surviving each round while killing stronger enemies yields even more gold. Victory is achieved by either annihilating the opposing team or breaking their morale by holding banners. Coming with the new game mode is the addition of seven more scenes in which to do battle. These scenes range from the snowy tundra of Zendyar to the desert settlement of Sharis.
Plenty of other changes and fixes have made it into the roughly 4.5GB patch, particularly in regards to performance, crash fixes, and the user interface. Performance has been improved for numerous AI systems, such as the AI's use of siege weapons and campaign decisions. Overall memory usage of the game has been reduced, and reinforcements now spawn one by one instead of in massive batches, mitigating major lag spikes when reinforcements arrive. Quests can now be sorted, prisoners can be recruited all at once, and tons of equipment changes have been made to various troop types.
Although this medieval simulator is still in early access, the game is filled with content, and many players have managed to sink hundreds of hours into the game. Bannerlord may be improving at a somewhat slow pace, but gamers have found that to be easy to forgive once they're leading a cavalry charge full of hundreds of soldiers or climbing a siege tower to claim a castle for their empire.
Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord is available for PC as an early access title.
Source: TaleWorlds