Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

For everyone else, there is nothing quite like Mount & Blade. This expansive, massive, deeply immersive blend of open world, open-ended RPG and medieval strategy might be the biggest time sink on the PlayStation 5, but it’s also one of the most rewarding. The stories of heroics and failures that you can write for yourself while playing this game are positively Shakesperean, and this is one of those rare times where failure is as entertaining as success, because there’s an excellent, emergent story in that.

GameWatcherNeil Bolt

8.5/10

Mount and Blade 2: Bannerlord is very much a superior sequel in so many ways. It’s still a bit of a brick wall to get past in terms of understanding its finer points, but keep hammering away and you will find them.

Gamers HeroesBlaine Smith

85/100

There is no other game like Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. It's a fantastic experience, one unique in the gaming space. The constant grind to manage and progress with your kingdom is hard work - really hard work - but the payoff is spectacular. This is not a game for everyone but if this is your kind of thing, you're going to love every blood-stained minute of it.

DualShockersRobert Webb

8.5/10

An improvement on Warband in every possible way.

SectorSKuni

8/10

There was something missing from the popular historical game of traveling and exploring the world. But finally, there's the option to sail the seas. Just watch out for pirates!

XboxEraGenghis "Solidus Kraken" Husameddin

8/10

Despite a fun gameplay loop, I have a few frustrations with Bannerlord. Namely, the UI on console isn’t all too intuitive on a controller. As a PC first game, that’s not all too surprising and there is mouse and keyboard support for those interested. With this final release I haven’t run into any big bugs (although tactics and sieges don’t fair too well), but I have had my fair share of crashes and, in turn, lost a good chunk of progress. And lastly, end game hasn’t really got much to do once you have your kingdom set up. At times I really felt like I was playing a higher definition, more stre...

Push SquareKhayl Adam

8/10

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord is an intricate feudal relationship simulator set in a dynamic sandbox world dominated by six medieval kingdoms roughly analogous to cultures from our own. It features massive-scale battles, deep character customisation, action-based melee and ranged combat (on horseback or afoot), a living, breathing economy, and a sense of progression so powerful it can be hard to put down. Translation: imagine the Machiavellian interpersonal toy box of Crusader Kings combined with the crunchy combat from Chivalry, with battles on a Total War scale, underpinned by Skyrim's RPG me...

PC InvasionMartynas Klimas

8/10

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord comes back with improvements to everything we liked about the previous games and some new systems as well. However, it's not a perfectly polished game, so you'll have to navigate a few edges on your path to restore/destroy the Empire.

IGNLeana Hafer

8/10

It’s easy to focus on all the ways Mount & Blade II is still stuck in a rut starting out, but Bannerlord is an onion with lots of new layers that show themselves once you start to really dig into it. Especially for an early access game, it’s ambitious and reasonably well-polished, even if it still has a long way to go. And with the huge graphical and general usability improvements, a latter-day rehash of Warband – one of my favorite games of the last decade – isn’t even a bad thing by itself when you get right down to it.

Jump Dash RollDerek Johnson

7/10

Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord - War Sails, while a decent expansion in its own right, doesn’t add enough content to justify its lofty price.

TheSixthAxisJim Hargreaves

7/10

My return to Calradia wasn’t entirely jubilant, though Mount & Blade 2 Bannerlord is a game I’ll likely stick with, simply due to my love of the original. A wealth of new systems and activities help this sandbox strategy sim feel more alive than ever, though the busywork required to get anywhere can feel like a grind. Overall, existing fans will rejoice while newcomers may look on unimpressed, unsure what all the fuss is about.

Gamersky细拉

6.5/10

Perhaps Warsail's greatest value lies in providing an expansion space for various future mods, and allowing players who have almost forgotten about Mount & Blade II to come back and experience the now-remarkable base game.