Dark Ages in the British Isles were a fascinating, dismal time of constant wars, in which people fought for survival. A dark age with a deep blend of cultures. The 6th and 7th centuries were a time when invaders (Saxons, Angles and Jutes) tried hard to forge their destiny in a new world with the steel of their swords, shields and spears. The ancient peoples tried to resist, while they saw their kingdoms defeated and conquered by the “barbarians”, and sorrowfully saw how their beloved world slowly disappeared off the face of the earth. But other people must not be left unmentioned, like the Picts, who have always inspired great interest. Or to the west, another island as complex as Britain: Ireland in which many people were fighting for a piece of land, their clans, livestock and supremacy. In short, it is a world we know little about, yet a magnet for history lovers: a time of war and great deeds, where few kings (almost none) died in their beds.
When I first installed this mod it took 20 minutes to load up, I'm not sure why and it never did that again, but I was a bit cheesed right off the bat by that. But when it loaded up and I saw Britain and Ireland I was absolutely blown away. My eyes were in love, all the Celtic and Welsh names, it was amazing. I also really liked the character creation (a lot better and more in depth than Warband), how it showed your story changing as you chose different options. But as I started getting into it I started to like it less. There was, of course, the usual beginning to any Mount and Blade game (or mod) where you get abducted and sodomized by bandits for couple of weeks, but that wasn't what did me in:
The names; All the names, names, names. When I first saw the Welsh and Celtic names I was excited, but after a while I started to get a headache by trying to understand just what was happening in the game. The screen full of multicolored, never-ending, scrolling text didn't help much either in the head-pain department. Just trying to follow a single conversation was difficult.
Female characters; And I mean the player character. This might be a bug, but I doubt it. All of the dialogue referred to my character as "Sir", prostitutes called me handsome, a lot of the armor had only male meshes. After the amazing character creation and the long-*** description of my character I was assuming the RPG elements of playing a woman (at least in dialogue) would continue. They didn't.
The bells/wolf howls; Every night and every mourn, some to misery are born. William Blake must have been describing this game because wow are those annoying. The wolf howl actually does hit that pitch where it does physically hurt to listen to.
It's amazing, the attention to detail, but as far as "fun" goes - not really.