How Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord builds on its predecessor

Coming a mere two years after the original, the standalone expansion Mount & Blade: Warband upped the ante of the series in several ways. Instead of five factions, players have six to choose from.

They could even start one of their own if they like, and its new multiplayer focused on combat in a plethora of modes all kind of gamers can enjoy (Team Deathmatch, Capture the Flag, Siege) with up to 64 players.

Taking place 210 years before Mount & Blade: Warband, Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord features eight new factions that form the basis of the ones we know and love from earlier games in the series. Its robust multiplayer mode changes things up a bit from before. Instead of using in-game money to select your class, you use points.

While Warband let you select one of three classes, Bannerlord lets you further tweak things to your liking through a series of perks.

A core component of Mount & Blade’s gameplay is sieging enemy towns and castles. Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord improves this experience by offering a bevy of siege weapons to let you lay waste to your enemies.

Ballistas, onagers, and trebuchets can all be built to soften enemy defenses in high style.

You can craft a weapon just the way you want it with the new Smithing skill in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. Through collecting raw materials, learning new designs, and using your well-earned Smithing perks, you can craft a melee weapon to strike your enemies down with great fury.

TaleWorlds has worked hard to make their villages feel more real than ever in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord. One more subtle way they do this is through an enhanced economy system.

Buying items from a town and consuming it will influence that town’s stats. Further, each town has their own supply and demand for different categories of goods.

Through careful analysis of what’s in demand where, you can make a financial killing buying and selling goods for a healthy profit.

In the single-player open-ended campaign mode, you can create characters with more detail than before. By selecting a culture, family, and story choices from early childhood through young adult, you can customize the start of the character just the way you like it.

It’s a thoughtful touch that makes your avatar more than a mere series of stats. Improved multiplayer, a richer world, and new factions all combine to make the latest entry in the Mount & Blade series the best one yet!

Dive into the Steam Early Access release of Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord with your officially licensed Steam PC key from Fanatical to see what all the fuss is about.