With Fire & Sword is the thrilling sequel to the action role-playing hit Mount & Blade: Warband. Be a mercenary or join one of the five battling factions to conquer, destroy or create empires. In an open sand box world you choose your allies, your enemies, what provinces to conquer, what castles to siege and what quests to embark on.With Fire & Sword also greatly builds and expands upon the highly regarded combat system from Mount & Blade: Warband. Firearms have been introduced to the battlefield. Also, muskets and pistols can now be used as sidearms in hand-to-hand combat to quickly drop your foes.In addition to the enhanced singleplayer mode, With Fire and Sword also provides a host of original multiplayer content including the new game mode: Captain.
I kinda like the customization for troops and town, so far it's a pretty cool expansion so to say (or stand-alone if I'm wrong). But it still isn't too different from Warband as much as I'm seeing. Still these games aren't that over killing your pocket like *cough* MW2, so nothing much to trip over.
As for the new added feature storyline, I'm not even sure if that is a good idea. Mount & Blade always been about making your own history and kinda make imagination your story line as you progress. So forcing a story line into this game might hurt its re-playability. Why not include more features like having heirs, sons, betrayal...to make things more dramatic but dynamically.
i think what you just said about adding the storyline is correct! and being able to have more diplomatic options and just more options in general apart from more wepons would be a better step :)
I dont really like it that much, I have not played it much yet but the gun sounds and animations really disappointed me.