An Evening With: Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword

11 May 2011 at 13:00:00 by Peter Parrish

If you've read our review of Mount & Blade: With Fire & Sword (WFaS) you'll already know that we found the single player side of things a little underwhelming compared to the superior (and older) Mount & Blade: Warband. But the title did succeed in rekindling our interest for Mount & Blade's superbly chaotic multiplayer.

Throw upwards of twenty people into a relatively small map space, give most of them horses and the rest guns, then ask them to do what comes naturally in a videogame. That's WFaS's multiplayer in brief.

Let's see how it plays.

Game 1

Mode: Captain Deathmatch
Map: Hill Road
Team: Muscovite Tsardom (Marksman)
Score: 227-300 (loss)

It may sound more like a superhero equipped with a deadly tinderbox, but Captain Deathmatch is actually the new Mount & Blade (M&B) multiplayer mode exclusive to WFaS. In it, you're given a small squad of bots to point at the other team and have to tot up a collective number of kills before the other side does the same. The great strength of this mode is it makes matters even more frenetic than usual, because you're trying to effectively command your troops while keeping an eye on your own back. With poor captaincy, It's not unusual for these matches to turn into a frightening, multi-legged amorphous blob of infantry, horse and musketeer all vying for a clean melee hit.

Upon joining the server, it seemed the Russians were already some 100 points down on the Poles (with the first to 300 kills being the victor), so I opted to aid the ailing Tsar and lead some musket-wielding marksmen into the fray.

In WFaS's multiplayer, you're supplied with a certain amount of gold (decided by the host) to spend on upgrades like better guns, sillier hats and horses that can actually move their legs a bit. In Captain mode this extends to the quality of your troops too. After improving my arsenal (who wants to go into battle with something called 'worthless bullets' eh?) I didn't have too much cash left for this, but after some financial juggling was able to bump up my marksmen from hopeless peons to semi-trained peons.

Choosing un-mounted, musket-armed troops proved, almost immediately, to be a mistake. A lot of people on the Polish side were commanding the fast-moving 'Winged Hussars' (or 'those fucking Winged Hussars' as I came to know them). This meant they were able to close the meagre distance on this map and cut down my somewhat immobile marksmen, along with my good self, with ease. I managed to pop off a few decent shots, one of which killed the horse from under another player in spectacular fashion, but mostly just proved to be a sitting duck for any cavalry keen to rack up some points.

A handy thing about M&B is that you can re-equip yourself between respawns (taking a totally different role if you wish) or just nab handy things from the battlefield. Weapons from fallen soldiers littered the ground, so it was easy enough for me to find a horse-bothering polearm to wield in place of my musket. I'd hoped to mount up and use it like a lance, but this proved an unsuitable combination (you can't wave that particular weapon around while mounted) and I was cut down again while fumbling pathetically for a sword.

As the fight drew to a close, it seemed the Muscovites had pulled back the score to some degree (though we were still around 70 points adrift). I pulled my marksmen back to a nearby stable and tried to hold it down while mounted Hussars pounded the turf all around us. Within a minute or so, it was all over. My personal squad's stats were something of a disgrace: 22 kills with 60 deaths. Sorry, Russia.

I guess this means they won't be russian to hire me again.

(Sorry, everyone.)

Game 2

Mode: Capture the Flag
Map: Village By The River
Team: Crimean Khanate (Mounted Archer)
Score: 0-4 (loss)

M&B may have some of the most dispassionate multiplayer map names in history, but it more than makes up for it with some delicious faction names. Where else can you play as something as exotic as a horse archer from the Crimean Khanate?

To get my excuses in early here, the side was already 2-0 down when I joined this (not that I really helped a great deal in pulling that score back). I'm not entirely sure what the time limit was on the match, but it seemed to drag on forever. I only stuck around because I was able to play as one of my preferred troop-types: the Crimean mounted archer. Yes, despite guns being the big deal of WFaS, I still get a kick out of peppering somebody with arrows (at least, when I'm able to steer the horse straight enough to hit them). M&B employs the terrific mechanic of leaving arrows sticking out of people when they hit home, which is automatically hilarious when it results in guys limping around carrying more arrows than a road-sign distribution warehouse.

The main focus of this map was an unforgeable river spanning the middle of it, from right to left. Small bridges allowed passage on both sides, with a larger bridge in the middle. Unsurprisingly, there were quite a few people slogging it out in the middle portion for most of the match. That, I felt, lacked creativity. I found it much more entertaining to ride off around the sides and attempt to do drive-by arrowings of the local Swedish population on the other bank. Or, more often than not, charge in and die (as my final stats of five kills and twenty deaths will atest). It's not the most astute tactic, but for me M&B has always been about riding around like a nutter. Especially when playing a horse archer.

I'm not sure Capture the Flag really plays to M&B's strengths (especially as a lot of people seemed to be ignoring the flag completely), but this match did provide one ridiculous moment when a cunning Swede nicked our banner and I seemed to be the only one to have noticed. We engaged in a ludicrous game of cat and mouse, with him weaving, snake-like, to avoid my arrows and ducking in and out of cover taking pot-shots back with his pistol. He managed to make it across the river, while I used up my remaining arrows trying to fell him. A couple hit home, but he still made it back to base with a handful of souvenirs in his thigh. Eager to take revenge, I located him in the distance and charged across the middle bridge with no care for personal safety. Closing quickly on my trusty steed, I swung my sword at his head but was easily parried. Stranded deep in enemy territory, I was cut down by a swarm of eager soldiers with Game of Thrones nicknames.

And that ignominious end, frankly, summed up much of this match.

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