Mount & Blade Preview
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Mount & Blade features open-field battles between large forces, where you can fight bandits or enemies from opposing factions. You'll also participate in sieges, where you either defend or lead a charge against a castle or walled city, using a ladder or siege engine to mount the wall and penetrate into the interior. Battles can be very large, with armies of thousands facing each other. It'd be a chaotic slaughter if all these men fought simultaneously, so open-field battles are handled in several pitched battles, in which forces of 20-or-so men face each other. Sieges are handled in much the same way, and in both fights reinforcements will arrive for you and for the enemy when losses mount up. There are no save points in between battles, nor are there any healing potions, so you can expect plenty of casualties. You have to be careful how you handle your all-important main character, too, as he serves as your commander by giving orders to infantry and cavalry to charge or stay back (orders which don't occur if said commander is unconscious). If you choose to let your troops continue fighting without their commander, the results of the chaos tend to be more negative than if you just let the battle take place in front of your eyes, even if you don't get involved at least, this is the case if you're using heavy cavalry (hired blades and knights).
One thing I should mentioned here is that the world has 5 factions (Swadian, Vaegirs, Khergit, Nord and Rhodok), and while your party can include any type of fighters, the majority of their armies will consist of their own men. While Swadian and Vaegirs have heavy cavalry, Khergits have only light cavalry and Nords and Rhodoks, to their detriment, no cavalry at all. The game balance is set to give mounted warriors a big advantage in open battles, meaning that a team of 60 mounted hired blades or knights can take on an army of 500 Rhodok infantry in an open field...and win. The Khergits are so weak that they will barely damage heavy cavalry, but because they keep riding away from you on their fleet-footed horses battles with Khergit armies can become really, really frustratingly long.
You go through all these motions as a freelancer in a fairly open, dynamic world, as 5 factions have carved up the kingdom of Calradia amongst themselves. As you progress, you can affect the way the war goes more and more, but even without you the world moves on, the factions conquer castles from one another, towns are besieged and the prosperity of villages and towns can increase or diminish.
Even without joining a faction, you can maneuver between towns and factions, hunting down bandits, solving quests or even simply buying up wine in one town and selling it in a town where it is much more expensive, getting a hefty profit for your effort.
The Meat
When all is said and done, Mount & Blade is a pretty empty game. There is no overarching plot and I'm not even sure if there's an ending (or how you'd reach it possible by eliminating all opposing factions). NPCs all act the same way and the ones that can give quests (lords, guild masters, village elders) just randomly generate them from a set list. I personally wouldn't have it any other way, since this is just the type of game Mount & Blade is, and too much narrative would ruin much of the game.
Rather than being driven by any kind of narrative, Mount & Blade is driven by a feeling of advancement. You start as a simple adventurer with a succinct background influencing your skills, and gather a small band around you. Doing small quests for lords or guild masters, fighting in tournaments for fame and money and hunting down bands of robbers, your character advances strongly in equipment and skill. So the progress goes naturally from individual progress to group progress to town progress.
