Despite the significant hours played on this game, i still feel it deserves a negative review. The vanilla version of the game is extremely bare bones, thin and repetitive. The end game is just wack a mole trying to conquer all cities and castles. Very little actual RPG elements and no quality or variety to dialogue. The AI is garbage, with very poor siege tactics and will make very poor war decisions such as besieging a castle in on the opposite side of the map, instead of besieging a closer castle that actually has value to the war effort. Probably 50-100 hours of my time on steam has been just trying to get mods to work to make this game somewhat enjoyable that is not dry and repetitive, with little game play of just vanilla version. A game should NOT require mods to be enjoyable and actually make the game function correctly. I can understand complete overhaul mods or troop change mods being an exception, but needing mods to make AI function correctly, mods to actually add diplomacy such as alliances and non aggression pacts, or making sure armies dont simply starve themselves to death is baffling. Without the modding community supporting it with crutches, this game would be dead

They just make the most cringe changes to slow down the early game because the end game is so shallow... Still hardly any diplomacy options 0 way to go into a conflict with allies from different factions... What the point of making friends with Lords from other nations when the end result is them "demanding" less gold from you when you meet in the field when your nations are at war. Spend 100+ hours on a file climbing to the King/Queen position in your chosen faction or your solo empire... Just so that the 16 days it takes to travel to a wack castle that you are trying to defend just for it to be taken by the time you get there and to have 1200 person army's in your faction walk right past it because I guess they are scared of the 600 man siege, and somehow I (the ♥♥♥ KING) apparently cant tell an army in my faction what their orders are??? Just another eternal EA game (even tho the devs say its 1.0) unfulfilled roadmap they will kick down the road till Mount and Blade 3 (that they will be charging AAA sticker price for)... ♥♥♥ Joke...

Honestly, this game did not live up to the hype it promised years ago.

The only justice Bannerlord has that its got nicer graphics and better battle mechanics.

Bannerlord is meant to be a Sandbox game but there really is no real content there to sink into.

Mods and Multiplayer do not even have proper support as Taleworlds continue to push out "updates" with no actual new content to Sandbox or to the story, additionally any gameplay issues that players have had since Bannerlords' "1.0" release have not been addressed but hey, at least Taleworlds patches will break your saves lmao.

abandoned game with half its intended features.

I've put a lot of hours into Bannerlord. I can recommend it for the idea of battle simulation, but as of now that is it. Quality battle simulation. I feel immersed in the action prideful of my renown earned from it.
I despise the diplomacy. It actually got worse as the updates progressed. It devolved down to money. Are you getting tribute or giving it. You used to be able to exchange fiefs, equipment, supplies, plus money for peace. No longer an option, just good old cash. This is down right stupid. If you consider diplomacy to be a tribute system you are simple. No alliances, trade agreements, border negotiation, nothing. Don't say you can do diplomacy if this is it. Its ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ lying.

Economy has potential but is wasted. Work is need to make it fully operational. I love trying to be a merchant lord in any game. Bannerlord taunts you with this, but the rewards are so paltry that the game forces you to go back to warfare. You can do it, you just wont be successful overall. You shop ownership is maxed out very quickly, same with caravans. But you can own as many Towns or Castles as you want. This is done to coerce you back to the fight.
Warfare is excellent in battle, crap outside of it. Your vassals armies are short lived and uncontrollable. You cannot direct them in a unified fashion. Sieges are ok, but I just learned that my stashes of food that I horded in my castles and keeps will be untouched by the garrison, even when starving. This is such an obvious problem that makes no sense.
Court intrigue, nill.
Ruling your kingdom, bare damn bones.

The worst of all is the campaign. I just rage quit because I learned that I "Unified the Empire" 256 day ago. This was news to me, seeing as I was in a war with the northern Empire and paying tribute to the Western Empire. This ruined my game plans utterly. The campaign punishes you for participating as well. You can literally ignore it and just play sandbox. If you play it then you are forced in to a war with the three most powerful factions against you. If you lose than all you work is gone. If you win than the game is basically over at that point.

They have released the game as completed and no longer in beta. This is unacceptable. I will not purchase any more titles from the publisher.

Abandoned game. No respect for the consumer. No respect for the work of the modders. People at TW are horrible people that took the money and ran. We want content. not random bug fixes that no one notices and breaks the mods that people put hours of unpaid work into. The game is even missing features from warband lmao.

I've played M&B Warband for hundreds of hours, bought this game because user reviews are very positive

I play M&B for the single player, but immediately I found some issues:
1. Barely any noticeable improvement (graphic-wise) from M&B Warband
2. There are some added mechanic, but those mechanic are basic and have issues (like fief voting system)
3. The AI is atrocious
4. etc...

From those point, the conclusion is if you wanted to buy bannerlord as an upgrade from warband to play Singplayer...it is not recommended, From update cadence and changelog doubt dev will fix these issues.

It seems the devs have sadly abandoned this gem

A dead game that will never have the community of Warband. Its flaws become more apparent the more you play it. Nonexistent diplomacy. Retarded skill system. Zero attempts to improve the AI or boring companions. No reason to play this over Warband.

Same game that it was when it came out into early access... just with a lot more polish. They managed to fix all the crashing and bugginess. They managed to sand and polish all the rough edges and bring it up to a good basis for an actual game. The framework is all in, the gameplay foundation is built - the engine is ready to have a game made on it. Now all they gotta do is add that game. Unfortunately - that's something that will likely never happen and the mods can only do so much.

There isn't any type of game in here, it's just a sim in that you have a world and a sandbox, but assuming you become a king and start taking over lands - there's no shift in gameplay or paradigm. You have early-stage gameplay where you build up an army and improve the character, mid-stage where you establish yourself and possibly become a lord. These two can take as short as a few hours of play. Then everything else is just the same basic loop forever.

Obviously this is all gameplay. It was mostly a snide way to indicate that the gameplay is shallow and basic. No shade on people who like the repetitive grind, but there truly is little of substance in the game. Especially without mods. After a while, most battles will become identical. The AI is too stupid and the "strategy" capabilities too clunky to feel like a proper strategy game. Without mods like Diplo, Fourberie, Serve as a Soldier, Bannerkings and a host of others, the game has nearly nothing of substance to its gameplay.

Build army > fight army > repeat.

Also - there's no real gameplay options outside of "be lord/king". You can't be a bandit lord outside of some mechanics with next to zero engagement or gameplay. Mercenary work doesn't have anything beyond being a lord... but with less options. Trading is basically like mercenary work with added spreadsheet needs. The world has literally nothing about it that actually changes up the game. Day 1 is identical to day 1000, just some borders and names have changed. It's a shell of a game that can have things added to it. Unique locations. Sub-factions. Gameplay mechanics that flesh out crime, trading, city-life and industry, factions, mercenary companies, a million other things (many of which have been previously seen in MnB as well as other games).

The posterchild of unreached potential.