Reviews - Merceni

Review Version: 1.5 Hotfix
Rating at Time of Review: 6/10

There remains quite a notable amount of work to be done on the mod.

- The tournament scene is incomplete, still using native equipment and buggy town/forest scenes that the ai has trouble navigating. Avoid if you wish to roleplay in the time-period.
-Upon starting a new game, the players inventory may be filled with random native equipment, which may or may not work (eg crossbows, rusty medieval swords, shields.)
-One of the starting officer sabres given at the start when drawn from its sheath, still shows visually that the sword is still sheathed rather than being drawn. So you will have a sword in your hand, and the same sword still in its sheath.
-The Plains Indian Tribe Unit Troop tree is notably incomplete, coming naked without any custom armor at the moment. I am aware that the faction is only a placeholder at the moment.
-Many scenes still use the original native castle/tavern scenes as placeholders.
-Many areas of the map are void of any bandit units besides deserters, which makes the early game sandbox experience as a mercenary/bandit hunter/etc. difficult/nonexistent depending on the starting area.
-When starting a new game and checking the faction roster, there are listed 4 ‘invalid faction’ factions, which while inconsequential to gameplay, give off a feel that there is a lack of polish on the mod, in conjunction with other quips and grips noted above.

In areas where the mod is complete, such as the union or confederate troop trees, and in combat, I would say that it is about on par (average) compared with other musket firearms mods available. The uniforms and item models for rifles themselves for the line infantry are of a nice quality, but officer uniforms could use some improvement on the textures. The mod doesn’t particularly stand out in its current state, but that can change when more work is done to polish the mod in areas that it is lacking. I recommend playing if you want to help out with testing the kinks out and giving feedback, as well as to play as a commander/soldier in one of the main factions, but outside of those, as of now the mod is not a complete experience.

Good luck with development of your mod!

Review Version: 1.001

-Unpolished in a few areas, error scripts come up in certain dialogues when companions return from a right to rule mission, and from time to time on the world map.
-The troop tree appears to be unfinished or poorly thought-out with regards to the mercenary line, seemingly a copy and paste of other mods troops. Welsh Longbowmen, The crossbow line final troop, (polish)hussars, and so on. Additionally, equipment that appears within the marketplace is mismatched, spartan armor sitting next to late medieval plate, crusader shields, Ninja Kunai, and Norse/Rus helmets make for an inconsistent time-period setting. It seem as though the mod maker was just pulling whatever ’cool looking‘ items were in other mods and copy-pasting them to his own. The item models themselves are no doubt well crafted individually (credit to the original modelers), however, every time I walk through a tavern and see a plate armored mercenaries wielding two handed swords standing side by side with crusader crossbowmen and northern woodcutters, it is highly immersion breaking. The number of items and strange troops used in the mod need to be scrutinized and either modified or removed outright. As it is now, the mercenary line is a mishmash of random mods set in different time periods stuck together.
-Hired Woodsmen, as well as any other torch bearing troops create a loud fire-effect sound, which becomes overwhelming when standing in proximity of the player. The sound effect needs to be removed or toned down drastically, there is something wrong when the sound of a few torches drown out the entire battlefield.
-On a few occasions in the Vaegir territories, depending on the time of the day the snow textures can become blindingly bright, the lighting/texture needs to be tweaked in that aspect.
-When speaking to bards and asking for courtship information about ladies, some of the ladies are said to be betrothed to Unrecognized_Token.

-Positives regarding the mod is the implementation of numerous gameplay and party management features. For the most part, these features are well implemented with few notable script errors appearing, providing much needed functionality for the management of a party.
-Gameplay enhancements, such as the ability to ask guild masters for a new quest continuously, provide a welcome feature to the game, reducing the need to travel around Calradia searching for quests that don’t involve cattle and looted hunting. This is not considering the other unique functions made available in this mod that enhance the gameplay in a positive manner.
-No crashing or game breaking bugs thus far in the mod, which for a first release is a technical job well-done considering the number of other mods’ scripts merged into this one’s which probably was a pain to sort out.
-Performance wise, the mod runs very well, with a quick load up time and decent frames in battle/town scenes.

O————O
Overall, a decent job on a first release, there is “some polishing to be made and edges to be rounded” in Bannerpage, as one old TaleWorlds community manager would have put it. Good luck with progress on your mod!

Edit: Comment about sea traders removed, it appears they are functioning correctly. Mentioned Issue about bards.

Edit 2: Mod maker finally added credits for the resources he used from other mod makers, +1 rating point.