Enter the realms of Calradia!
In Mount & Blade, the player is called upon to create his/her character and venture forth in the continent of Calradia. A place ravaged by war and conflict among five kingdoms offering promises of rich, fame and fortune. Surprisingly enough, there isn’t a background story in Mount & Blade, meaning that it’s an open world game. The player is free to make a character, start adventuring and more or less craft an adventure in its own right through the fires of medieval warfare. A rather refreshing note to all those ‘RPG’s on rails’ out there.
WASD and mouse will get you anywhere.
Although an RPG in its core, Mount & Blade’s interface follows the minimalistic approach at least within combat sequences which take most part of the game. Prior to a battle, the player is confronted with the entire map of the continent, where by point and click can travel almost anywhere while using the WASD keys it’s possible to change the focal point. When the player enters a town, village or castle there’s a dialogue window presenting the main options ranging from walking to the city’s streets, requesting an audience with a lord or looting a village. Apparently low development budget prevents the use of video sequences or even voice acting most of the times.
Moving on to Mount & Blade’s most interesting part, the battles, there is little to nothing means of an HUD in this, which is not necessarily a bad thing. There’s the main action window, the character’s back and a couple of small gauges, with bottom right showing the amount of the player’s health and ammunition left in case that a ranged weapon is equipped. Other than that, there is the constant message and combat log alerts floating at the left side of the screen which unfortunately seems to be overlapping itself, producing a few confusing dialogues and reports. When starting a battle, the F keys are used to issue orders to your troops, separating by type and action. It’s possible to have your archers hold ground at your last position, have your cavalry follow you and advance your infantry a few paces. It would have been beneficial to have more ‘advanced’ tactical commands for your troops, such as telling your horse archers to harass the enemy or your infantry form a shield wall. Nevertheless, troop commands become second nature after a while and in case of a macro keyboard, your life as a commander becomes that much easier.
The main interface breakthrough of Mount & Blade is definitely the combat mechanics. There has been a PC action game way back who’s name eludes me at the present time that had almost the same way of inflicting damage to your foes. In short, movement is controlled by the revered WASD configuration but strike direction and power is controlled by the mouse by holding LMB and moving the mouse you select a blow direction with a subsequent release of LMB results in a strike. Whether it will find a target and the amount of damage that will cause is dictated by your opponent’s blocking action, direction and your character’s statistics. Moreover, blocking is controlled by holding down the RMB and moving the mouse to the desired direction. Having a shield of course makes things easier until it’s broken of course but still, a very intuitive way to control melee combat. Undoubtedly Mount & Blade’s selling point in terms of combat is the immaculate and precise mounted warfare. At the present time, this is the most accurate, realistic and fun way of participating in medieval combat.
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Mount & Blade 
