Mount & Blade - Warband was developed by Tale Words, but published by Paradox Interactive. It is an action/strategy with various RPG elements. The game is set in the middle - ages. The game is actually quite original, I have not seen any of these games in a while. This game should definitely be checked out!

*Gameplay*

Your story begins with choosing yourself a background, this determines which empire you join. After that you have to customize your character. The moment you've completed the character's details, you will immediately be put in combat. You can choose whether to fight in first- or third-person view. After that one of the tavern keepers comes to you with a quest. This is the very first beginning of your story. After doing some quests, it is time to recruit some villagers or to hire mercenaries to get yourself an army. When you are traveling the game is projected in some kind of RTS view, from far above the map. You click to move your party. When you are traveling you can get into numerous battles such as, bandits or armies from the other empire. You get experience points and so you can train certain abilities and increase your skill with different weapons. Slowly you actually get a higher status by winning battles with the enemy or conquering their villages and castles. You are now on the road to become a king!

*Combat*

When you start a battle you go back to the character's point of view. And I love the combat, it could feel a bit slow, but it feels as if you got control over your weapon. If you swipe to different directions with your mouse it does different swings with your weapon. This is a good aspect of the game and it improves the variety in combat. When you start your battle with the two opponents, both starting on one side of the map, you can charge and kill them all or you can use some tactics if the fight is difficult to win. The combat is all by all really fun, but like I said it could be a bit slow.

*Graphics*

To be honest, the graphics aren't that good. It is definitely not a game which has great graphics or effects. The textures are simple and not really good. This is the game's weakness, but this does not ruin the fun, the gameplay already compensates this, in my opinion.

To conclude, this game is graphically not the best, but it definitely has great gameplay and combat. The game is original and is quite unique in its kind. I would recommend this game to anyone who is appealed to such gameplay and the atmosphere.

Minimum required specifications :

OS: Windows® XP
Memory: 512MB RAM
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.0 GHz or AMD 2.5 GHz
Graphics: 3D graphics card with 64MB RAM
HDD: 100 MB available space