Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord - War Sails

Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord allows you to live as a leader, warrior, businessman, and much more in a medieval society. You start in a world where empires are collapsing and others are taking their place and you create your character entirely yourself and decide what that character will do in this world. You can do everything from leading huge armies with thousands of soldiers, besieging fortresses, becoming rich through trade, and ruling kingdoms. You do all this in first-person or third-person view. This is what makes the title unique. Many of us have always wondered what it would be like to lead troops into battle or participate in sieges of castles, however, War Sails is mostly about boats and naval battles.

A big change when I started the title was how the world had changed. More lakes, more water, and some new islands. This fits well with the expansion's new gameplay elements and features and the training mode allowed me to test everything new in a good way pretty quickly. It's still about saving your family, but it offers voice acting and teaches you the basics. I'll be honest and say right away that I think Mount & Blade is clunky to play. However, I like the concept of leading thousands of troops into war. War Sails, like the base game, is a mixture of cool features that are not always perfect in execution.

I think the strength of the series is the ability to get swept up in grandiose situations. These can be sieges or large battles, and the sea battles are also impressive at times when many ships collide. You can have up to eight ships to command, all filled with soldiers who can board and fight ship-to-ship. It often becomes unparalleled chaos, but it's extremely entertaining. Bannerlord needed a little more variety and if you choose to view the expansion as part of something bigger, it's better than if you look at it solely on the basis of its content in a vacuum. The strength of the package is that it gives you, the player, more tools to dominate this sandbox world.

The graphics, sound, voice acting, and music won't impress anyone in 2025. However, I think it allows me to do a lot in a world without overdoing the complexity. I would compare Bannerlord to the X series and Kenshi without all the deep gameplay systems. You start in a large open world where no one likes or hates you. You are nothing, and the goal is to become whatever you want to be in this world, and to this end, War Sails offers you a few extra tools in its toolbox. You can now become a pirate, a mercenary on the high seas, a merchant, or use your fleets to blockade cities in addition to everything else you do. The game is challenging, but it never becomes impossibly difficult as one strength is that it's fairly quick to learn the basics.

Although the ships are valuable and quite expensive to operate in the game, I am a little disappointed that you cannot besiege with the ships. I remember early trailers for Total War: Rome 2 and how cool it was to see ships landing troops while cities were under siege. The ships themselves are quite fun to control, but they are expensive. I suspect that the ships are a way for you to spend your money in a fairly simple economic system. In that sense, Taleworlds has succeeded. The large ships cost enormous amounts of money but are usually worth the price and the downside is that the larger your ships become, the more difficult it is to catch enemies out at sea. I understand that there must be a downside to having large ships, but at the same time, perhaps increasing the level could counteract the frustration this creates.

That said, you get roughly 20 unique ships in three categories. You have light and fast ships, plus medium and heavy ships. The latter are the slowest, but offer the most soldiers on board and the best artillery to fire at the enemy, and it's also possible to frame opponents with significant damage. I think they look good in their design, they seem to be directly inspired by real ships, and I like all the ones I've tested. Unfortunately, their design suffers from the fact that the game itself is not a graphical heavyweight. Unfortunately, there are also quite a few bugs, one of the most memorable of which occurred during a full battle with eight ships. I sailed towards the enemy ships in the middle of all the chaos and then the ship flew over the enemy.

If you're expecting something new, there's a fairly substantial expansion pack with new content to be found here. However, you need to be willing and eager to interact with it if you're going to get your money's worth. It reminded me a lot of Man O' War: Corsair - Warhammer Naval Battles. There's something good beneath all the technical problems, and even though the interactions between the base game and the expansion are not huge, there are things to appreciate. I like how the lakes and seas have become larger and some bridges have disappeared to make more room for the boat battles. For example, there is an island ruled by one of the new Viking-based factions and the only way to get there is by water, and if you want to rule a kingdom, it's quite smart to take over the island at the beginning of the campaign. Your computer opponents have a hard time making good use of the seas, and you can easily use this as a starting position for world domination or raids on the continent.

Bannerlord isn't perfect; it's buggy, unpolished, and clunky. At its best, it's grand, powerful, and engaging. War Sails adds a little more of that feeling without fixing the title's major flaws. The basic gameplay systems that were clunky on land are just as clunky at sea. There is also a lack of precision in everything you do, however, that is somewhat of a hallmark of the series. At the same time, I can't help but smile when I frame the enemy's ship and board another for close combat. It's fun, entertaining, and sometimes quite grand. Although the boat aspects don't dominate the experience, they are there in the background for extra variety in an otherwise fairly comprehensive sandbox experience.

It should be said right away that if boat battles don't appeal to you, this is not worth your time. The content adds to the whole but cannot stand on its own. The variety offered by this package is good enough to continue your campaign. With an acceptable variety of ships and new opportunities to do what you want in the world, it's a good expansion for those who like battles at sea. I have enjoyed the expansion despite numerous problems and if you are like me and enjoy the basic experience and can overlook flaws and shortcomings, I think you too can enjoy this content. It's not perfect, but it expands the world and what you can do in it. If naval battles and life at sea appeal to you, this may be worth your time.