YMMV / Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

• Broken Base:
  • The game's initial "full release", as it was clear the game was nowhere near finished by October 2022. Supporters were glad the game finally got a coherent release and left the Perpetual Beta, which at the very least gave the modding community a solid base to work with. Detractors argued that the game was still in Perpetual Beta in all but name, and it being declared a full release would inevitably slow the pace of updates or maybe even kill the incentive to finish it for good. Thankfully, the second part proved to not be true and the game has continued to receive regular patches and updates.
  • Over the subject of generic looters. Like Warband, Bannerlord splits its bandits into a generic "Looter" troop tree and region-themed Bandits, but in the newer game the Looters are considerably more common and regional Bandits considerably rarer. For some, it makes the game manageable, unlike Warband, where the region-specific bandits could easily turn into Demonic Spiders, particularly later on, when spawning with dozens of troops. For others, the extreme ubiquity of the looters when compared to the region-specific bandits and how trivial they are to deal with beyond the first 2-3 encounters is a downgrade in the general game design.
• Come for the Game, Stay for the Mods: As with the precedessor, the many alternate setting mods are a major part of the appeal.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • If you're not starting off as a horse archer, it's generally agreed you're playing the game wrong. Everyone starts off with a horse, as a cheap bow and a lot of arrows can be procured quickly and easily, and mounted archers are the only type of character that can take on low-level enemies without relatively-expensive backup or casualties.
  • Conversely, if your army isn't composed in 2:1 ratio of archers and all the other unit types and your infantry lacks shields, you are fighting your battles wrong. Having lots of archers and in the same time being able to protect against enemy projectiles of all kinds makes a difference between easily winning with minimal casualties and having to replace the majority of your troops with fresh recruits.
  • Rising as many skills as feasible to as high values as feasible without spending a single skill point into them. This also covers companions. As result, you can potentially access useful perks and, more importantly, turn your companions into good (or at least far more versalite) captains. In particular, Medicine and Athletics are two skills that regardless of circumstances are always worth getting to at least 25, for very useful HP bonus.
  • In early game, ignoring entirely hiring any units and just going solo after bandit packs. Being a rider (or even better, a horse archer or at least crossbowman) allows to easily take down entire pack on your own, get all the experience there was and also greatly increasing Renown reward (since on paper, it was a hard battle against overwhelming enemy force). Few such encounters in a row allow to rise clan rank with zero effort (opening mercenary contracts), while also gaining few levels and rising related skills by 100 or more points. For comparison, hiring even a small handful of recruits will dilute the experience gain and reduce the Renown into decimal values, making rising up the clan rank a pointless grind - and you will also move slower due to hauling around bunch of infantry, making chasing the bandits a chore (while they will always try to attack a single rider on their own).
• Demonic Spiders:
  • While everyone joining a tournament is given the same basic weapons and shields, participants are now allowed to bring their own armor. This can make high-tier infantry nearly invulnerable in the early game.
  • Forest bandits in the early game, as in Warband. Feeling confident fighting looters and mountain bandits? Prepare to die to these guys. They use bows rather than rocks and they're incredibly accurate with them, able to snipe someone halfway across the map while they're on horseback unless they constantly vary their speed. They have 150 Bow skill, making them better shots than anyone other than the Battanian elite archers they can upgrade into, who get their own entry below.
  • Steppe Bandits ride on horseback, and their speed is often faster than a low-tier player's, similar to their Warband counterparts. This can make traveling through Khuzait lands utter hell if you don't have the troops to dissuade them, and it also makes actually chasing them down for quests or simply to loot supplies fairly difficult too, since more often than not, they simply flee until you cannot track them any more. And no, their hideout assault forcing them to be on foot doesn't make them easier, as they are still highly skilled archers and melee fighters.
  • Battanian archers in general, Battanian Fians in particular. It's discovered that while the best archers of other factions have only 130 in archery, Fians have 260. And use the longest range bows. Be ready see a constant stream of red on the right side of your screen as you face an archer-heavy Battanian party. Even militia archers deployed by Battania have have better bows than most factions, along with two quivers, making Storming the Castle painful, since there will be 120-200 archers that can shoot all day for decent damage.
• Game-Breaker:
  • Smithing in its current iteration. Unlocking a few high-tier parts will allow the player to make weapons that vastly outperform most stock armaments, cost a few hundred denars in materials while selling for tens of thousands, and level up the player's smithing skill by 10-20 points per item. It's possible to craft javelins worth more than the entire liquid assets of a major city. And because the acquisition of new smithing parts happens at random, and there are no hard restrictions on inexperienced smiths using high-tier parts (other than a few points off the final item's stats) it's possible to acquire an Infinity +1 Sword and a small kingdom's treasury within the first half hour of the game.
  • Battanian Fian Champions are hard to come by, but even a group of 10 of those can wipe out few dozens of other units - before anyone else can even get within their range to start shooting back. On top of that, they are one of the best melee units in the game, armed with BFS allowing a One-Hit Kill of whatever troop that will finally getting close to engage Fians. All while wearing heavy armour. Their more "accessible" version, the Forest Bandit, is no slouch either since it already can out-perform archers of almost all factions. Any party that has more than 50 of either of those guys can with minimal effort face an army of 400-500 units in it, assuming it doesn't come with their own cluster of Fians/Bandits. Both original Disciplinarian, and replacing it Veteran's Respect perk, make grinding Leadership worth it solely for Fian spam it unlocks, allowing to upgrade pretty common bandits into very uncommon elite units.
  • Each kingdom has a special bonus. The majority of those are a filler with no bigger impact on the game... except for Khuzait and Battania, who get respectively +10% movement speed on map for troops with horses (which is their speciality and potentially the only troops in their armies) and -10% penalty when moving through forests. This leaves other kingdoms quite literally far and behind, allowing easy chases and even easier escapes. Compounded by both kingdoms having easy access to a plethora of strong units and being well-protected from outside invasions and it's no wonder that in "off-hand" games either of them ends up conquering the whole map.
    • Battania other bonus is +1 militia in their towns and castles. While it doesn't sound like much and the AI can't use it at all, in player hands this allows to easily take over and stabilise new places, along with eventually ignore the requirement for garrison, since free militia units can easily fill in.
  • With the right perks, mounted archers, an already Demonic Spider type of unit, go from "very good and lethal in the right hands" to "just surrender already". It's possible to increase their damage by 20%, accuracy by 70, negate almost entirely the penalty for shooting while mounted and make them significantly better at riding in general. All while using handful of low-tier Bow and Riding perks, majority of which can be accessed right from the game start if your own character is made to be a horse archer. This goes so far, even crappy units like Khuzait Tribal Warrior suddenly become as competent as if being almost two tiers higher.
• Good Bad Bugs:
  • When pressing R during character creation, players are able to use the child model in-game. While your character eventually becomes an adult after some time, many found the notion of a bloodthirsty army leading child hilarious.
  • Pre-release verions of the game, right from the first build, had an elusive bug causing all the gear to be fixed and all the lame horses healed if specific circumstances were met^note Either by checking your inventory after resting in a city after a reload or upgrading an unit, then pressing "Reverse" and "Done" buttons, depending on game version. This was not an intended or planned feature of the game. However, it helped a tonne, especially when you gained post-battle some extremely rare gear which unfortunately has a negative modifier - just wait for the bug to trigger or force it and you get the item in full quality. It got fixed in one of the final patches prior the full release of the game, in the process finally adding positive modifiers to equipment.
• Goddamned Bats: Low-tier units. They do very little damage, but getting damaged at all often makes the victim flinch, canceling any attack. They can also block just as well as any other troop, so it's entirely possible to have a two-handed sword being swept down by an armored knight charging at full speed completely blocked by a peasant with a stick. This got taken up to eleven in the 1.05 patch, where Looters, the beginning-level enemies, become uncannily accurate with their thrown rocks and could easily flinch-lock slower players to death until it was fixed the next day.
• Low-Tier Letdown:
  • Sword sisters are considered to be the worst troops bar none, with both lines suffering from the usual crossbowman issues of low ammo, as well as never wearing a helmet, causing them to instantly die from shots that the male troops of the same tier can easily shrug off. Even if you discount these issues, their equipment is still weaker than any other horse archers and crossbowmen. Their only saving grace is the fact their mounted variant is the only cavalry in the game that is even remotely useful in sieges, both assaulting and especially defending, but they are hardly worth their price to get there for something a regular crossbowmen, not to mention archers, can do twice as good.
  • Due to the nature of the early access, a few skills qualified - the majority of which have been long rescued, but some still persist. The biggest current offender would be the Throwing skill, along with thrown weapons. When compared to bows thrown weapons travel slower, have a much higher drop-off, and even at the highest levels with all the perks you get very few of them. Some of them even do less damage. Not helping matters is the fact a single quiver contains 4 of them - and you can't pick them from ground or dead bodies. If that wasn't enough, a shielded enemy all but laughs at javelins.
  • Possible companions are grouped in a class-like system (identifiable by their name). This means there are a few different starting levels for various specialists, like three variants of a siege expert or four different horse archers. This obviously means that the least effective one in a given "class" will be severely outmatched by someone from the top of the line.
  • A variety of perks is useless to pick for the player character, as they affect governed towns and their villages. Your character can never be a governor.
  • Any given perk that affects damage dealt to mounts, especially when the alternative would increase the overall damage dealt. Even the worst horses have at least 200 HP and it only goes up from there. A super-resilient human, including a horse rider, will have at best 120 - and usually just the regular 100. Do the math on who is easier to kill, especially since once the mount is dead, you’ll still have to deal with the rider.
  • Kicking and shield bashing are both intended as temporary stun in combat. They both have shorter reach than pretty much all weapons and, more importantly, to land a kick or a bash, you still have to do it properly, meaning you could just use your weapon instead and deal damage directly instead. On average, your enemies will require three-four hits to be killed, so enjoy wasting time on a stun that won't last long enough to finish them of - or even hit at all. But Wait, There's More! Since damage cause flinching, you don't even need to stun anyone, simply hitting them is more than enough to disrupt their attack.
  • Thrust-only weapons, especially polearms. In PC hands, they require significant skill on the player's side to be used properly. In companions and soldiers hands, they require the enemy to stay at a specific distance (which obviously never happens), or else they are completely useless. All while dealing pitiful damage, even when used properly. And not offering any real benefits of spears, pikes or lances, but all their disadvantages. Made even worse when combined with shields, since AI has no idea how to use polearms with shields, being in constant defensive up-close. Thus, any type of troop that's armed with spears and, God forbid, spears and shields, is utter trash that can be trampled with ease.
• Memetic Hair: Looters have a minor notoriety in this regard, as they're often generated with afros. It was even worse in earlier patches, where every second looter seemed to have an afro.
• Memetic Loser: Senator Lucon, along with the Northern Empire he rules over, are mocked within the playerbase as complete pushovers. Northern Empire is usually the first imperial faction to be wiped out and is one of the least successful nations in off-hands gameplay, consistently being unable to not only expand, but even simply survive. Short from extremely rare and lucky RNG regarding starting workshops (and thus long-term economy) and few key early battles, Northern Empire will be wiped out within first 5-7 years, with Lucon being a prisoner 90% of that time. A running joke about the Neretzes' Folly quest is that you can't ask Lucon about his take on the battle, because he's doing time in some dungeon, while the game prevents conversations with prisoners.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • BANNERLORD WHEN?!^Explanation Screamed by the community due Bannerlord's long development schedule.
    • BANNERLORD THEN!^Explanation Finally when the Early Access date was announced, the community switched to this.
    • It's (almost) harvesting season.^Explanation "It's almost harvesting season" is a common line back in Warband. The community turns this into a phrase showing how close Bannerlord is to release and eventually how it's finally released.
  • Butterlord^Explanation A portmanteau of "Butter" and "Bannerlord". Butter was a meme in itself and one of the food items that would give most morale to troops in Warband and the original game.
  • Simpire / Empire of simps^Explanation Jabs at players who join the Southern Empire solely because of Empress Rhagaea and Princess Ira.
  • HRRRRRRRRRMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM/Why do I hear Mongolian throat singing?^Explanation The Khuzait, just like their descendants the Khergit, are based on the Mongol hordes and, like their inspiration, devastating against players (or the AI) who don't know what strategy to apply when facing them.
  • Diplomacy sticks^Explanation Some player named crafted javelins "Diplomacy sticks" and used handful of those to barter for a fief with other lord. For reasons unknown, crafted javelins fetch an absurd selling price of over 100 thousands, while being made from scrap bought for maybe 200 ducats. Due to their value, they make an excellent bartering item.
  • TaleWorld Mathematics^Explanation Via extensive playtests and outright data-mining, players figured out that certain scripts and game mechanics don't work in the way as described in their prompts and manual, nor the values interacting with them match the supposed results. Ever since, any mechanics that ends up with results wildly out of supposed or intended result ranges or even cascading rounding errors that bend the results are labelled as "TaleWorld Mathematics"
  • "Your most important piece of equipment is your shield! If you must make a choice between a sword or a shield, take the shield!"^Explanation Troops with shields, not to mention player character, have significantly higher chances of surviving a pitched battle, be it against lots of ranged troops or in melee. It is oftentimes more efficient to get shield-carrying infantry with an inferior weapon than some badass unit with a two-handed weapon that will get mowed down before even closing into melee.
• Obvious Beta: The "release" state of the full game by October 2022 was somehow worse than an open beta build that preceeded it, up to the point the main complaint became the game simply didn't run at all. This was reflected horribly in a sudden spike of negative reviews, even from long-time fans, because the game just wouldn't launch for the majority of players. And if it somehow did manage to launch, it was so unstable, running it for just a few minutes was an achievement in and of itself. Thankfully, most of the issues seem to have been fixed as of 2023, and the devs have even introduced the long-avaited Steam Workshop support.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • Perks in general. When introduced, they were very poorly balanced, many were bugged and just as many weren't implemented fully. Gradually, over a handful of patches, the whole thing was refined into a working system of useful bonuses and secondary options. Up to the point where certain perks are among must-haves or certain combinations of them affecting the way how your entire army behaves in battle. Plus there is a reason now as to why even bother rising your skills above 80-90 points value.
  • Patch 1.8 managed to salvage another aspect of perks, since it added ability to respec them for companions. While there is a hefty price-tag to it, it removed the extremely annoying situation where first hunting for a specific companion (especially for governors), only to get them with the "wrong" perks for their jobs.
  • Athletics skill. With introduction of perks for it, Athletics went from pointless skill (governing how fast you move on foot, a thing best avoided) to one of the most fun and important to have as a great way to help your troops. Athletics perks are so good, they aren't even divided into "good vs. bad" choice - they routinely have two just as viable perks to pick from.
  • Crossbows as a weapon class and the related skill. Prior to few extensive reworks, crossbows were barely present in the game and were extremely unwieldy^note To make it worse, early on they required obscenely high skill to even equip at all, making it impossible to learn the skill unless starting with a high default. Then new models were added. Then aiming mechanics were changed. Then perks for crossbows got introduced and rebalanced. The end result is a weapon just as good as bows, and significantly easier to learn even without any starting value than any other weapon skill.
  • Originally, only a handful of companions were randomly generated at the campaign's start. This meant you were stuck with whatever the game gave you, often requiring a restart if you didn't get even the worst medic, anyone capable of being a governor or similar. One of the post-release patches changed the rules for companions, generating a single instance of every single "class". While this still leaves various companions outmatched by a superior variant, at least it doesn't create a glass ceiling where you might not get any companion in a specific field.
• Scrappy Mechanic: As is normal with an early-access game, there are always some, in ever-changing pattern. Some of the most notable and persistent:
  • The skill and leveling systems aren't very well-liked. The major criticisms of them involve how slowly and unevenly skills gain experience, how glacially slow leveling up becomes after a while due to the way the system is designed, and how little a difference there is between a low skill and a high one most of the time and how there is no other reason than perk unlocks to grind certain skills at all. This makes the system both tedious and unrewarding in the eyes of its critics.
  • Bandit hideout fights, as in Warband, artificially restricted the number of troops you can bring, you can't choose which soldiers follow you, and if your player character goes down you automatically lose. The same wasn't true for the bandits. This has led to absurd fights such as the player and 9 tier 1-2 infantry against 100+ forest bandits.
    • This was eventually fixed along the development. The restriction on number of troops stays, but player can chose who to bring and plan ahead around the bandit type (so bringing archers against those armed with bows and armored infantry against melee ones), along with making the bandits spread out and in relatively small numbers, even if all assembled in a single spot.
  • Militia troops can't be upgraded - neither to their "veteran" version nor into units from the same faction they come from (like bandits can). On top of that, if you put them into garrison, they qualify as such and thus will require a pay. And even the veteran versions, short from two exceptions, are still underpowered and underarmed. Short for pocket change they pay as ransom money, militia units are best ignored entirely.
  • Pommels are one of the least-important parts of custom weapon design but also one of the most abundant, with some weapons having more pommel choices than every other part combined. Further, while pommel designs are largely shared among most of the major weapon types they have to be unlocked separately for each one. Since the smithing system requires a smith to unlock all parts of a tier before they can gain parts of the next tier unlocking the weapon parts they want often means grinding to unlock dozens of pommels they will never use.
  • The conspiracy part of the main quest is fairly unpopular. Once you reach it, a steadily growing progress bar appears and upon completion, either every imperial or every non-imperial kingdom in the game will declare war upon your faction at the same time. You can slow progress down by doing periodically appearing sidequests, but these tend to be very repetitive and remote from your current location and will leave you with little time to do any actual conquering.
• Tear Jerker: Battania's theme sounds somewhat more melancholy than other factions. Of course, by the events of Mount & Blade two centuries later, the kingdom of Battania has been wiped off the map and it is implied the people have been reduced to living as Forest Bandits, with much of their cultural identity gone.
• That One Level:
  • Any battle that takes place in a village producing olives is the easiest way to rid yourself of your party, especially when commanding it in the field. The orchard provides an excellent protection against cavalry and all ranged attacks, and the AI always spawns in the middle of it, so good luck trying to soften enemy with arrows and cavalry flanking. All while being pelted with arrows and javelins yourself. And when the AI eventually starts a counter-charge, it can easilly corral your army into nearby structures, making the combat even more hectic and disorganized. Maps that are set in wooded hills and crags aren't as tough as the one set in a peaceful orchard village.
  • Steppe bandit hideout. Bandit hideouts by default are tough, but in this particular case you have to deal with well-armed, well-armored, high-tier archers (actually horse archers force to be on foot), further supplemented by decent melee units. Forget forest bandits, where knowing terrain and bringing shields/own archers can save you. Here you start in a kill-box with 5 archers taking potshots from all directions.
  • Prison breaks are purely a Luck-Based Mission. The prison guards you will face are randomly selected from garrison, so you might be lucky and face low-tier fodder, or nothing but max-level elite troops. How everyone is armed also comes into play, as you have to fight in tight spaces. And, probably worst of all, you have no way to check how much HP the prisoner has. If it's full, fine, but they might have barely enough HP to be conscious at all, so they will go down after just a single hit. Unless you really need someone out of the dungeon, it's usually better to just wait for their escape.

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