Reviews - BLW

Coultchorn, "Cultshorne", is a refreshing new campaign mod for Mount and Blade Warband. New lore, new factions and everything under the sun has been overhauled. As of 1.1 beta the mod is stable and solid, so the bugs mentioned will hopefully be fixed in later iterations.

The positive aspects I've noticed right now are the emerging factions provide a lot of challenge. They roam the land and will vanquish just about any early game army you put forth. Some are very fast, which means certain part of the map are almost inaccessible, which creates a mysterious feeling which is nice. There are several end game goals, as is seen in Prophesy of Pendor where you have to kill a set of these neutral generals with god-armies which will no doubt provide ample fun.

There was one new quest that I got when visiting a tavern. A military man asked me to kill of a band of Witchmen. When I returned to the quest giver I couldn't progress and claim my reward, which is odd. I don't know of any other quest, but hopefully that will be looked into as that is one of my favorite parts of other mods like A Clash of Kings.

The campaign map looks quite nice, although it feels a bit darker than normal native candy land. There is a lot of snow and mountinous area. A small island to the south have an interesting scene with closed off areas. I'm very curious about what will come of this place later, it seems very mysterious. There are a few bugs and exploits as of this version.

Trade is not supported well. I didn't seem to be able to make any profit. For example I bought the most expensive new trade goods are introduced to the game for 15 k, but when I tried to sell them I only got 500 or so gold from other cities. Another trade bug, the new neutral island town sell wares for very cheap, but buys them for enormous amount of gold. This basically mean you can buy, then sell. Re-enter the shop and you will basically be able to buy their entire shop full of legendary weapons in a handful of rounds with 0 trade skill.

In the end, CoC 1.1 beta is a refreshing campaign in a new land full lots of new units. The combat is very hard, but also rewarding. The campaign map is interesting with a dark atmosphere filled with different cultures. The economy needs some work and a quest is bugged, but other than that a very enjoyable play through all in all.

This is a review of A Clash of Kings 2.0 I have three good things and three bad things to say about A Clash of Kings 2.0 ( 'Too Long ; Didn't Read' at the bottom of the review )

A discalimer first. If a mod is **** I'm not going to give it 5, I'm actually going to give it 1. I'm not part of the group of reviewers that think 5 is the lowest grade of a review.

- The quests. Apart from the bugs that may happens around quest givers, the quests are of good quality. Special music are used for atmospheric reasons, the dialog is witty and the results on Westeros ( emerging factions ) are a welcoming addition to the game. They can be quite hard to complete, but also give you unique loot as well. Over all, one of the best quests I've ever seen in Warband. 2.0 adds a couple of new quests.

- The map is huge and looks very good. You have many factions and Westeros is in full turmoil. Many famous characters you remember from the HBO series dots the landscape and Castle Halls like Gregor Clegane, Stannis, Renly, Tyrell, Rob Stark and many more. Every port and a few town have small lore descriptions from the books to enrich the RPG feeling of the playthrough.

- Units and items. The amount of local items and soldiers is a solid refreshment. There is a wide range of weaponry, soldiers and items in A Clash of Kings 2.0. You can hire everything form Unsullied units, to iconic Casterly Rock men. Volatene silver shields to quality carpets from Qohor or gold chalice from Lannisport. Almost every major town and port have unique small mercenary companies that you can hire. Many of the new custom items ( like carpets, wine and so forth ) as well as non-collectible items have been added to castles and quest scenes which amplifies the quality of the mod quite well.

- Lack of quality assurance. Cozur loves to implement new features in the mod, which is parts of the reason why it's good. Unfortunately, he seem to negligee the idea of testing these features to check if they actually work properly. For example every new fortification that I've encounter have so massive bugs that the two armies don't connect with each other, but instead gets stuck all over the siege map.

- Fixed diplomacy. The diplomacy is fixed. What is meant by this is that who goes to war with who is scripted. Most of the Westeros factions are going to wage war on eachother, but all the eastern factions in Essos are completely peaceful. What I mean is that Baavos, Pentos, Myr, Qohor, Norvos and Lorath do nothing all game. There is no reason to go to Essos except a few quests. Except for a few quests, half the map is going to be untouched the whole game.

- Massive frame drops in large battles. I've played all the other versions and 1500 hours of Warband, but non of them made battles lag this much. Some of the quests in the North are thus unplayable and I was forced to reduce the battle size quite considerably to skirmish size. This is quite unfortunate.

TL;DR
Should you download it? Yes.
Good: Quests, the map, units, items are very good.
Bad: Becoming a king and controlling large armies, conquering towns while waging war on the world is not fun because of the many bugs.

This mod reminds me of Rome 2 Total War. Many parts of that game were excellent, but unfortunately the QA was so horrible that it's not worth dealing with in the long run. Seeing bug after bug just ruins the fun.