Majorly addictive and plain fun
Mount & Blade starts off by having you create a character with customizations from gender, class, weapon proficiences, and skills. After that's done you can model your character's face. Here you'll notice the faces look bland almost lifeless. Don't worry they blend seamlessly to the game world.
You'll start off with specific items based on your class. Here off your allowed to explore the small but fun world. (The game's still in beta so don't expect it to be completely the best. When you head into a city you can buy armor and weapons and recruit party members from taverns. You can also buy trade goods and sell them at cities where it's worth the most. Party members ragne from generic soldiers who fill up the mass of your party and hero companions which may be customized from head to toe they also cannot die. You may also recieve quests and join the 1of the 2 factions at war which is sort of the main quest. The quests are standard stuff deliverign cargo, capturing prisoners, raising men, and esorting carvavans.The cities look a bit bland and have not alot to do in such and empty space. I'm sure the developers were planning to add other things.
When your engaged in combat with an enemy you'll have the choice of fleeing or surrendering based on the situtation (Example: Fleeing from horsemen bandits is not possible). Once your engaged in combat you'll spawn with your men. If both parties have over 20 men not all of them will appear on the battlefield. Here the game gives you simple commands ofr your men to do like holding positions or just charging. You can also give individual orders to a certain type of unit. Speed plays a major bonus in combat. If you have a horse and you hit an enemy charging it'll probably do alot more damage. The faster you go the more deadly you are but it will much harder to maneuver the terrain which ranges from forest,plains, to mountainous regions. Your soldiers may win or lose the battle. The good thing with the game is if you lose you never *die* your either taken prisoner ir dragged out by your men depending if there are any left. Combat AI is still suspect as most of the time your soldiers just chase after everything blindly. Mounted horsemen fair much better but crash to often into terrain like trees or rocks.
After you win a battle you may loot items and armor and capture prisoners or have freed prisoners of the opposing party server under you. So somtimes it's necessary to attack certain parties for the sake of getting better units. After the battle you and your men will get exp depending on how much they fought and how much you fought. If your exp hit's the limit to get a levelup and your men may get upgraded to more stronger units. You add one attribute point that all affect customization for example : Adding Intelligence points give you another skill point while agility adds more weapon proficiency points.
A couple bad things to note about the M&B. The graphics while lagging in climatic battles are still quite balnd and reused. Textures seem to look like muddy spots. The enemy combat AI and your own men's combat AI is plain horrible even set on the best. The game's annoying healing system real akes it hard to enjoy some scenes. You only heal from resting in taverns or staying out of combat. The game suffers from long load times even with 1gb of ram and the settings toned down. And there are mroe than your average share of bugs but it's still in beta.
Still M&B stand's to beat game's nowadays made by lazy developers who give too much into graphics than gameplay when instead it should be a balance of 2.