GB Feature: Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword Review
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With a new era comes more than just an overhaul in backstory and appearance. The most obvious addition of this title is that of guns, albeit fairly primitive guns that take ages to reload. In the mid-17th century, we're talking about flintlock pistols and muskets, that pack a wallop but are very hard to aim accurately and take ages to reload. Additionally, SiCh has added grenades, whose destructive power is offset by their incredibly high price.
Guns are a game changer in the way combat works. While a cavalry charge in Mount & Blade would cut through waves of arrows and reach the lines with few casualties, a line of musketeers will mow down cavalry-men like nobody's business. This makes it absolutely vital to have musketeers of your own, and this in turn makes the old (for glory!) charge of M&B impossible. Even if you gather an all-cavalry group, the fact is that any chance bullet can take you out even when you finally get better armor. This reduces your role to more careful and in the background rather than the crazy man leading the charge, if the latter was your style of play in M&B it certainly was mine. What's more, this adds a high level of chance to fights as it feels very random whether or not you get knocked out, especially early on, and in sieges a perfectly executed siege can be ruined by a lucky shot when fighting goes to the streets or castle.
The developers also changed how a lot of the other equipment works. Crossbows are gone, as is the power throw skill for throwing weapons its place taken by grenade skills. Bows are there but significantly less important since they only deal a fraction of a gun's damage. Heavy armor of M&B's type (full plate) is very rare, and most people move around in lighter armor. Equipment in general is more expensive and harder to get, add to which the fact that there are no more tournaments in With Fire & Sword and you basically need to own a town and some villages to get enough money for serious upgrades.
