Very unhappy with the critic score. The fighting in this game is unparalleled - maybe the critic dies too often.
The reviewer comes off as far too biased. He says: "If all you had to do was fight, Mount & Blade might have been a winner." Well, all you have to do is recruit men and fight. The money comes by itself. Don't like the quests? Don't do them. Wow, was that too open-ended for you?
He says there's a lack of RPG structure. Oh, sorry, no, the game isn't a direct path from start to finish. Hey, isn't the direct path the reason why this site gave Dark Messiah of Might and Magic a low score?
To sum it all up, the reviewer goes on: Removing any sort of story hook from Mount & Blade makes it only appropriate for the hardcore role-playing gamer who plays RPGs just to explore a fantasy land, not to accomplish anything or become an epic-level druid or whatever.
Oh, gosh, the point isn't to get an epic-level druid? There's no purple armor?! Great, we've got a WoW fanboi reviewing a game that isn't "autotarget - check level - you win."