Yup, sums it up pretty well. Thank God this game has an active modding community. There are in fact free mods for Warband that add more content and enjoyability into M&B than Fire and Sword.
It is strange what they decided to take out from Warband.
Not only is it difficult to capture prisoners, you don't get any good money for prisoners anyway.
One of the weird things is that during the tutorial you cut down a fence with your sword and shoot a lock off a gate, which made me a little excited about destructible (in some sense) environments for the game. But that's the only part of the game I have ever cut down a fence or shot off a lock. Maybe I'm missing something?
Also the change to how you recruit an army isn't quite as bad as CB paints it to be. The Mercenaries you can recruit are roughly equivalent to how much villagers cost in the previous games. You can also now upgrade the equipment of the mercenaries you get from the camps making them immediately stronger instead of having to wait to train them up. However this is costly, and getting a large amount of money is frankly a PITA.
I kinda like how the battles are now, strategically placing your army makes a bit of difference. Forcing your riflemen to spread out makes them better against concentrated fire, but leaves them vulnerable to cavalry and pike charges. It would be sweet if you could organize your troops better. For example being able to split your "marksmen" into smaller groups like regiments, which would give more flexibility with formations. Controlling your army in M&B was never very intuitive and this expansion just recycles that same system unfortunately. The rifle and pistol have become (almost absurdly) the most important part of combat. Both can kill almost any soldier with a single shot and kill horses with 2.
There are lots of other little changes as well. The arena is replaced by activities at the tavern where you can engage in endless bar fights that give you 50gp each time you win. And you can insult a drunken patron to initiate a 1 vs. 3 fight where if you win you get either 500gp or some decent gear and if you lose you lose stat points(!)
For me the game isn't a complete let down, and Jokke raises a good point about the mod community. But I would also recommend that unless you effing love M&B games to try a demo first or just steer clear completely.
WTF? Glad, yet sad, to see that my decision to just stick with the original M&B has still been the right one. The mod community has been putting out better stuff then anything the official developers have since it's origin.
Also the change to how you recruit an army isn't quite as bad as CB paints it to be. The Mercenaries you can recruit are roughly equivalent to how much villagers cost in the previous games. You can also now upgrade the equipment of the mercenaries you get from the camps making them immediately stronger instead of having to wait to train them up. However this is costly, and getting a large amount of money is frankly a PITA.
Am I remembering it wrong? I was certain that getting farm-boys from the villages was completely free in the base-game.
It depends which merc camps you go to, but basic recruits are usually around 20 denars. In the older versions it always cost 10 denars for each recruit you get from a village.
Also mercenaries you can buy at taverns are relatively cheap in Fire and Sword.
i feel like you haven't really played this game properly. here's a couple things wrong with your review. 1) once you join a faction you can once more hire from villages, this is a adjustment to make it more historically accurate, as it's no longer local lords, but is now countries, and you can't just hire soldiers in villages in this time period. 2) couched lance damage is still there, there is just more differentiation between the cavalry lance, and the pike. 3) there are still blunt weapons, and there is seemingly some way to turn muskets and pistols into blunt weapons, although i haven't worked that out yet. In general, it's your continual starting over that has made this game suck for you, if you had just a bit more patience, and took the quest route, and also at the beginning avoid the troops of bad guys instead of aiming for them like you did in the original M&B, you'd soon be playing a very different game. It's just historically accurate for the time period that when you start out you would avoid those bandits that quests don't make you fight. if you really don't feel like doing that just set it to easy, and learn how to aim with the pistol. concequently, good point winfrey on the destructable enviroment in the tutorial. i think maybe it was originally intended to be for when you storm the gates of the town, and it says after you've killed x% you can open the gates, but as i've never managed to kill x% in that, and i usually go for blowing up the walls instead, i can't tell you.
i feel like you haven't really played this game properly. here's a couple things wrong with your review. 1) once you join a faction you can once more hire from villages, this is a adjustment to make it more historically accurate, as it's no longer local lords, but is now countries, and you can't just hire soldiers in villages in this time period. 2) couched lance damage is still there, there is just more differentiation between the cavalry lance, and the pike. 3) there are still blunt weapons, and there is seemingly some way to turn muskets and pistols into blunt weapons, although i haven't worked that out yet. In general, it's your continual starting over that has made this game suck for you, if you had just a bit more patience, and took the quest route, and also at the beginning avoid the troops of bad guys instead of aiming for them like you did in the original M&B, you'd soon be playing a very different game. It's just historically accurate for the time period that when you start out you would avoid those bandits that quests don't make you fight. if you really don't feel like doing that just set it to easy, and learn how to aim with the pistol. concequently, good point winfrey on the destructable enviroment in the tutorial. i think maybe it was originally intended to be for when you storm the gates of the town, and it says after you've killed x% you can open the gates, but as i've never managed to kill x% in that, and i usually go for blowing up the walls instead, i can't tell you.
You might be right: but the thing about that is this: I shouldn't have to play a game "properly" to have fun. The way it had changed: If I hadn't been playing it to review it, I wouldn't have played past the first couple hours of not getting anywhere. Perhaps you have to do things differently to get somewhere compared to previous M&B iteration, but the game didn't make that clear to me, and I just kept failing until I was bored.
Of course, part of it (a larger part than I make clear in the review), was about the lack of female characters. If there had never been female characters to begin with, it wouldn't have bothered me, but the fact that they removed the option from the game, made me feel like I couldn't really have the character I wanted - the character I'd made for the previous M&B games. That gave the game a bad taste that I never truly got rid of because I could never bring myself to care about these dumb characters. I even ended up giving them stupid names like "Dumb Guy" "Wishi Wasachic".
The extent to which one cares about their character can have a big impact on a game. If I had been allowed to recreate "Phoenix Manawaker" the light-eyed, raven-haired beauty who I had taken through hundreds of hours of the original M&B, I likely wouldn't have given up on her so quickly, and maybe I'd have enjoyed the game more.
Something a friend told me which I haven't been able to find a source to is that Warband is actually the expansion that was to come after fire and sword. It apparently uses a new engine and for some weird reason fire and sword was released before warband in europe but never made it to the US until now. Again this is shit my friend said so take it with a grain of salt. I'm too lazy to go looking up to see if it's legit.
"Warband" was released before "With Fire and Sword", at least in Norway. WFaS was released before Christmas in some Eastern Europe countries, but still half a year after "Warband"
"With Fire and Sword" is also the name of a mod for Warband, so that may have caused some confusion?
It's a shame that you get bored by the game. At first I was exactly like you but I tried hard to understand the games mechanics and now I'm really having fun. Yes it is really different from Warband and most of the old strategies doesn't work anymore. I think it is more difficult and that's why I enjoy this game now, more than Warband. You can't find any tips on internet and you have to find your own way to make money and be powerful.
Warband was a fictional-medieval game contrary to Fire and Sword who is a realistic-post medieval game. That explain a lot of points : you can't have a female character because female could never ever fight in the army at that time.
You can still have blunt weapon : just press "x" with any gun or pistol and it is used as a polearm blunt weapon. To do it with your army, tell everyone to use blunt weapon (tell the cavalry to unmount if they don't have blunt weapon equipped because you can't use a gun as a blunt weapon if you are mounted). You can have a full cavalry army with good blunt weapon by changing the equipment of Cossack or Moscovites mercenaries cavalry. You just talk to the Mercenary commander and change their equipment.
I think that now, it is more valuable to sell to the slave master than the randsom guy.
Comments
Not only is it difficult to capture prisoners, you don't get any good money for prisoners anyway.
One of the weird things is that during the tutorial you cut down a fence with your sword and shoot a lock off a gate, which made me a little excited about destructible (in some sense) environments for the game. But that's the only part of the game I have ever cut down a fence or shot off a lock. Maybe I'm missing something?
Also the change to how you recruit an army isn't quite as bad as CB paints it to be. The Mercenaries you can recruit are roughly equivalent to how much villagers cost in the previous games. You can also now upgrade the equipment of the mercenaries you get from the camps making them immediately stronger instead of having to wait to train them up. However this is costly, and getting a large amount of money is frankly a PITA.
I kinda like how the battles are now, strategically placing your army makes a bit of difference. Forcing your riflemen to spread out makes them better against concentrated fire, but leaves them vulnerable to cavalry and pike charges. It would be sweet if you could organize your troops better. For example being able to split your "marksmen" into smaller groups like regiments, which would give more flexibility with formations. Controlling your army in M&B was never very intuitive and this expansion just recycles that same system unfortunately. The rifle and pistol have become (almost absurdly) the most important part of combat. Both can kill almost any soldier with a single shot and kill horses with 2.
There are lots of other little changes as well. The arena is replaced by activities at the tavern where you can engage in endless bar fights that give you 50gp each time you win. And you can insult a drunken patron to initiate a 1 vs. 3 fight where if you win you get either 500gp or some decent gear and if you lose you lose stat points(!)
For me the game isn't a complete let down, and Jokke raises a good point about the mod community. But I would also recommend that unless you effing love M&B games to try a demo first or just steer clear completely.
Am I remembering it wrong? I was certain that getting farm-boys from the villages was completely free in the base-game.
Also mercenaries you can buy at taverns are relatively cheap in Fire and Sword.
You might be right: but the thing about that is this: I shouldn't have to play a game "properly" to have fun. The way it had changed: If I hadn't been playing it to review it, I wouldn't have played past the first couple hours of not getting anywhere. Perhaps you have to do things differently to get somewhere compared to previous M&B iteration, but the game didn't make that clear to me, and I just kept failing until I was bored.
Of course, part of it (a larger part than I make clear in the review), was about the lack of female characters. If there had never been female characters to begin with, it wouldn't have bothered me, but the fact that they removed the option from the game, made me feel like I couldn't really have the character I wanted - the character I'd made for the previous M&B games. That gave the game a bad taste that I never truly got rid of because I could never bring myself to care about these dumb characters. I even ended up giving them stupid names like "Dumb Guy" "Wishi Wasachic".
The extent to which one cares about their character can have a big impact on a game. If I had been allowed to recreate "Phoenix Manawaker" the light-eyed, raven-haired beauty who I had taken through hundreds of hours of the original M&B, I likely wouldn't have given up on her so quickly, and maybe I'd have enjoyed the game more.
I guess we'll never know.
"With Fire and Sword" is also the name of a mod for Warband, so that may have caused some confusion?
It's a shame that you get bored by the game. At first I was exactly like you but I tried hard to understand the games mechanics and now I'm really having fun. Yes it is really different from Warband and most of the old strategies doesn't work anymore. I think it is more difficult and that's why I enjoy this game now, more than Warband. You can't find any tips on internet and you have to find your own way to make money and be powerful.
Warband was a fictional-medieval game contrary to Fire and Sword who is a realistic-post medieval game. That explain a lot of points : you can't have a female character because female could never ever fight in the army at that time.
You can still have blunt weapon : just press "x" with any gun or pistol and it is used as a polearm blunt weapon. To do it with your army, tell everyone to use blunt weapon (tell the cavalry to unmount if they don't have blunt weapon equipped because you can't use a gun as a blunt weapon if you are mounted). You can have a full cavalry army with good blunt weapon by changing the equipment of Cossack or Moscovites mercenaries cavalry. You just talk to the Mercenary commander and change their equipment.
I think that now, it is more valuable to sell to the slave master than the randsom guy.
You can skip the tutorial by pressing tab.
If you still want to play a female character, just Google it. I found this :
http://forums.taleworlds.com/index.php/topic,168704.0.html
Now you can attack merchants without loosing honor to make a lot of money, it's the best so far for me.
GG !