Recent reviews by Dyremose

as of 11apr20.

should you get into early acess? depends on
if you have played the earlier games to death and crave the new new :
yes absolutely. what you will find here is a much more refined combat system, whole new mechanics and some very fun multiplayer modes.

if you are new to the franchise but are considering trying it out:
i would say wait and buy warband instead. to get into the games style. even though the game has been in development for many years, it is clear that there is a reason for early access. early game in singleplayer works decently enough. patches has made the game rather stable for most, and there is a very solid foundation here for something spectacular. that being said what bannerlord currently lacks compared to warband, is flavour. many features in warband and mods are nonexistant when it comes to political actions and NPC relation options. not to mention the function and features of making your own kingdom in the late game is pretty much nonexistant at this point. you will find yourself suddenly becoming powerfull enough without anything to progress to about 2/3rds into to your playthrough, since late gameplay in the series normally focuses an managing your kingdom and subjects.. play warband mods instead for a while. learn the games mechanics, and once you get enough of that, im sure bannerlord will have implemented the same features (since you can literally spend thousand of hours in warband).

now if you are already fairly sure that you will like it, then sure, go ahead and buy it especially if the release discounts still applies for you, but be aware that you are investing in the future. again a very solid foundation, but still lacks the smaller touches that keeps you hooked.

lots of potential here, but since the singleplayer portion is lacking in content , it is dissapointing to see that the multiplayer has some real balancing issues. the game is generally favourable to the axis in a big way. not only has the axis nearly impenetrable and numerous armor wherein the equivilant allied companies cannot keep up, but even in the air, more specifically in the luftwaffes tank buster planes that can nearly guarantee kill any allied tank and still have enough fighters to win the air war. the allies have the best bombers for soft targets, but this doesnt help much when what you desperately need is a way to kill the german armor.. this turns into a match where the best the allies can hope for is to secure the majority of territory in phase a and then hold it. but this requires an axis player that is very cautious for it to work. right now the best thing you can do to hold their tanks back is to make them fall back through bombing runs as even most of your anti tank guns cannot penetrate their panthers, tigers and koenigstigers.. i think this game can easily be saved by adding some more high armor piercing units to the allies.. but for now expect to find a match lobby where the axis team is full and the allies team is empty.

jan. 2nd - 17

this is a game very close to a full reccommendation. in the beginning hours you are glued to your computer, the "just one more turn" philosophy in these games are as present as ever. smart changes such as the road system has been inplemented and builders now create tile improvements instantly while now having limitided uses instead. this creates new options for optimizations of your empire. one major thing holds this title back though. its the AI. both in terms of combat and diplomacy. the ai will declare random wars and denounce you galore, but unless you are really far behind it it doesnt even try to mount attacks, and if you yourself takes one of their cities, everyone will think you are a warmonger aand denounces you, even though you were the defender

this leads to later games where everyone hates you, but it takes nothing to defeat them since you can sit back and declare a ceasefire after x amount of turns without the enemy even having touched your borders. making allies in this is tough and not even usefull since they are so inactive anyways.

your first impressions are gonna be great, but this shortcoming is propably gonna ruin it for you after 20 or so hourse, when you start to seee these things.

that being said. everything else just works and it feels like, in terms of features that this game has already had the content from the civ 5 expansions packed into it. so the foundation is good and i would dare say that when firaxis finally decides to get the AI to work this will be one, if not THE finest vanilla civ game to date. untill then though, go play civ 5 with the expansions and you have a better product there, purely because the AI works there. then check back later and you can propalby grab this for a lot less by then for a product you can enjoy not just in the beginning, but to turn 5000 aswell.

would really have liked to reccommend this. is odd how a game can be so close to perfection and yet so broken because of one thng.