These also inject a bit of worldbuilding and moral ambiguity in some interesting ways. Aside from old mainstays like escorting a caravan or hunting down poachers, you might be called on to resolve a blood feud or help merchants secure permits to sell their wares in a major town. These missions have a good deal of variety, which is nice since Warband could often feel like an endless loop of the same small list of tasks. There's still a fair amount of jank on display.So naturally, the early gameplay will be pretty familiar to Mount & Blade veterans: You ride around the countryside doing missions and fighting bandits to gain gold, equipment, and reputation. There are a lot of little things that really don’t feel modern, which are especially noticeable next to all of the ones that do. The controls can be unwieldy, especially on horseback. Targeting and interacting with items and characters in towns and on battle maps is still imprecise and sometimes unresponsive. Especially early on, it’s easy to get the feeling that you’re just playing Warband with better graphics. For something that’s been in development for about eight years, there’s still a fair amount of jank on display, which is probably why it’s got that Early Access caveat. Not everything else about Bannerlord does, though.

But it’s still such a huge step up from Warband’s janky interface that it feels like a big breath of fresh air. There are also a few screens that are difficult to get to and don’t even have a hotkey you can look up in the keybind menu. However, there are certain things that don’t have tooltips which I wish were better explained, and there’s a significant amount of lag when switching between menus that kind of gets on my nerves. It’s visually pleasing, well-organized, and easy to work with. The interface has been drastically improved as well. And they’ve done away with the weird, blocky, edge-of-the-map geometry blobs that made Warband’s map look like the gods hit a certain point and just gave up. The level of detail really makes me feel like I’m in a living world. The lighting, textures, and terrain are all impressive.

The map looks gorgeous, allowing you to scroll completely seamlessly from practically right over your character’s shoulder all the way up to a high-level strategic view. On one hand, it’s a whole lot prettier than its 10-year-old predecessor, Mount & Blade: Warband. Since it launched into Early Access this past Monday I’ve spent about 20 hours with Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord so far, and it definitely makes a mixed impression.

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