Zed said:
Warband is a lot better than this game. Guns are basically insta-kill railguns with the same reload mechanics as crossbows, and the same shooting restrictions (you can't aim to your left on horseback). completely retarded. A lot of the writing is copy-paste as well. Most models look like cheap ugly shit. Quests are exactly the same.
I've got the same impression. I don't know how much of a game-changer guns were in reality, but in this game they do change everything. It's obvious they are just a reskin of crossbows, in the way they work, with reloading, the horse shooting as mentioned, and the fact that in the character screen, you can replace "crossbow" with "firearms" and that's pretty much what Fire&Sword does.
Other annoying things: it is now impossible to distinguish cities from certain forts. New Games start with a dumb tutorial with voice over. There seems to be no longer a difference in equipment you start with. The game is no longer about YOU because if you draw attention to yourself you will get instakilled by a lucky shot. (personal preference, I admit) Performance is pretty crappy for such an ugly game, even on my good pc, but the bad performance is mostly LONG loading times, framerates seem good. Still, the loading times are way too long. Cities are huge but empty.
About getting instakilled: even if you have a large army to back you up, it is unwise to charge guys with guns. They WILL target you and you WILL get hit and you can only take 1-2 shots because... even a lowly pistol does a whopping 61
piercing damage. The kind that penetrates armour, so even armour is of little use against firearms. Imagine yourself in warband riding naked, and charging straight into a band of longbowmen. That's how dangerous F&S is, all the time. This basically turns the best tactics of the game into "get as many marksmen as you can and let them shoot stuff". Since cavalry makes for a big target, cavalry is less useful than before.
Interesting things: The prices have been jacked up and there is a more steep increase in price as quality goes up. The cheapest two-handed weapon I could find was a chipped poleaxe costing 2000 thaler. Would make for an interesting game of survival, especially since guns are so dangerous. The cities are big, it is pretty interesting were it not for the fact there is little to do there.
