Mount & Blade (in Off-topic)

Basically it started out as a horse combat simulator a few years ago, and has since grown up to be a real RPG-ish game similar to Total War, except in third person.

You begin as a lone mercenary and must recruit followers to win battles and tournaments. If you want to you can join a faction and eventually become a vassal to the king, owning lands and castles that you can manage.

The game features horse combat (obviously) as well as on foot, any number of weapons including bows, crossbows, swords and polearms.

The mod community is absolutely thriving and already a few really good mods have popped up for the 1.x retail release, for example one called Native Expansion ('Native' is the name of the vanilla module) which allows you to start your own kingdom from scratch and adds over a hundred new units and weapons, and a graphic enhancement mod that actually makes the game look really good (http://imagesocket.com/view/mb654df6.jpg).

It's available on Steam for $20!

Does anyone else play this fantastic indie game?

Rave not know of such game! Rave smash!

So I got it and it's very fun indeed. So far I'm just fooling around as a mercenary captain with a band of 25 soldiers that I am training up. They started out as stupid kids with nothing more than feeble weapons, but now they are hardened warriors!

I have to admit that the mounted combat was extremely well done. Horse archery, polearms, swords, axes, shields, and even lances! The lances are pretty cool because they're basically an instant kill, but you have to target it just right like in real life.

Ah the feeling you get when you are charging head on towards your enemy alongside ten of your finest horsemen and trampling your enemies is like no other. This is a brilliant game.

Played it before, loved it, bought it.

Also, the game gets extremely boring after a few hours of gameplay.

Slayer, I thought you might like it... =P

If it gets boring, then increase the difficulty. Also, you can own your own towns and castles and stuff, and even rebel against your king. I don't think you could have done all that in a few hours of gameplay. =P

Max difficulty, 200 man army of max field troops, 3 cities, 7 hamlets, and 4 castles owned by me, each garrisoned with a couple hundred archers and heavy infantry.

Oh I also forgot to add, for all of you out there who don't know slayer too well, he only likes probably seven games total, one of which is not even out yet. xD

If slayer says it's good, then it sure as hell is.

The trick to this game is to get a horse, a good lance, and a sword with some decent range on it, then you can fight big hordes of low-power troops and win with ease, bringing in tons of loot to get cash.

THEN - focus your companion characters around the "Trainer" skill - this allows you to upgrade troops without losing some in battle.

I highly recommend the Native Expansion as originally suggested. I played the original until it got stale and then I installed the mod and it was a whole new level of interesting.

Absolutely!

I started a new character last night and to begin with, starting out in Native Expansion is much easier than in vanilla. I decided to go with Vaegirs and Khergits and wipe out the Rhodoks to start my own kingdom (if you're not a vassal to anybody and take over a castle, it automatically starts your own kingdom).

I also discovered the beauty of short spears + shields. Nothing sweeter than charging a bunch of weak archers and lancing them in the face. :)

thanks to this just managed to remember the game and then buy it on steam for only $7.50 due to a weekend give away. started playing already and luv it

and thanks for that tip ^
I figure for less than the price of movie heck yeah I'll giv'er a whirl.

I've seriously spent more time on this game I paid $20 for than several games I've bought for $60 together.

I played it a little bit today. I got frustrated when I got two hit by some enemies, who then followed me around in order to steal absolutely EVERYTHING I had spent hours on obtaining.

"What!? No! You just killed and robbed me six times. YOU'RE NOT GETTING A SEVENTH, DAMN YOU *alt-f4*"

Stupid game.

I'll probably give it another shot sometime next week when I feel less rage towards it.

Eh, my laptop has a ATI Radeon X1200 graphics card. What's the likelihood that I'll be able to play this game?

System Requirements
OS: Windows 2000/XP/Vista
Memory: 512 MB of RAM
Graphics: Graphics card with at least 64 MB memory
Hard Drive: 700 MB of hard disk space.


High XD

It's not graphically intensive.

Unless you install the graphics enhancement. :) Even then it's not very bad.

Also, Daz, you might want to consider lowering "Damage done to player" to half or even 1/4 if you're having trouble in the beginning.

I almost forgot a very important thing: there's another small mod out called Battle Size Changer which does exactly what it says: it lets you raise the total amount of people on the battlefield up to 1000 (which doesn't work on anyone's computer unless yours is capable of powering the Pentagon). I have it set at 200 which works great both gameplay- and performance-wise.