Recent reviews by ruby

Dude, it's good. Just play it.

Charge into battle. Ride into legend. This non-expensive sandbox masterpiece brings together the opportunity to do anything, from being a sellsword bandit mercenary trader to a kingmaking politic-intrigued warband-leading vassal, into strange places such as Calradia's three bickering kingdoms, its adjacent horseloving khanate and the neighbouring haughty sultanate. This game is full of surprises as battlefields change depending on your map's terrain and your party's location.

Inspiring one of the largest modding communities, Mount & Blade holds a great module system which prevents mod conflicts unlike other games (ahem BGS) and lets you fall on your knees to worship the old gods. You could go on an adventure into 1257 where religious war spreads its flame throughout the middle east and engulfs eastern europe, where the golden horde still scours for tribute in places where no king is seated, and where blood and steel would make a peasant into one of his lordships. This module would be one of my personal favorites.

Of course I've left out one of many people's favorites, the multiplayer of Warband. Whether it be cRPG, Napoleonic Wars, or just the native module, the multiplayer experience is enjoyable. Personally, I'm not a big fan of the multiplayer (probably because I don't have anybody to play with) since there are always other games when I want to be competitive. Therefore, I won't say much on multiplayer.

Are you still reading this? Man, you either must be really bored or really skeptical. I would have bought this game right off the bat after I read the words "non-expensive sandbox" but you know, that's just me. If you're into medieval galore, this game is a must buy. If you love sandboxes or maybe games which allows you to build armies and lead them into battle, this game is definitely for you. If you're into steampunkish or cyberpunkish games like the bioshock series and the fallout series respectively, then this game might not be for you. But who knows? You might like it.

If you tried EU3, you MUST try this. It's a whole mountain-fold of progress forward from its predecessor and acts truer than what was expected of it. However, if you never tried EU3, you could easily pick this one up as the User Interface became much lighter and noob-friendly.
The gameplay aspects overall are amazing as the game is by tenfolds much more balanced than that of EU3, which was a great game as well (expect the fact that it was ridiculously hard for new-comers). If you ever want to try it out, I have a free key that could possibly still be used as it wasn't yet activated on steam (EU3, that is -- sorry if I got your hopes up)
The price is definitely worth it as the game could quickly immerse you into the eyes of a world leader and throw you towards a fight among the greatest nations from their European intrigue, towards survival against world powers, into one's own world conquest.