The gameplay in M&B is what really makes this game great. Unlike most indie titles, it's a fully fleshed out 3D game. The game starts out with you choosing your character in a fairly generic "origin of the rugged hero" way. Simply select your type of family (son of a poor noble, son of a warrior, son of a hunter, etc.) and your upbringing and then it's off to generic RPG character creation, stats and all. This isn't so bad considering the interface is simple and easy to understand and afterwards you're put right into the game.
You start in an overworld where most of your moving around will be done. There are castles and small villages around, but not much else. You can also see other parties moving as you move on the map. Time only passes when you are moving, so as you stand still the action pauses so a raiding party doesn't run up on you when you stop to check something. You can hold space bar to pass the time if you do want to stand and wait, like patrolling. If a party of looters or sea/mountain/forest raiders catch up to you you'll be in your first battle. This is where the game really shines.
Combat can be done mounted, from a horse, or on foot. You can use many different kinds of weapons: swords, polearms, lances, bows, crossbows, blunt weapons like war hammers, and lots of stuff to throw like knives, axes, and of course, rocks. Cause I always walk around with a pocket full of rocks to chuck at my enemy.
In any case as you run up on the party you're fighting you'll have to either attack or block. The best tactic I've found is to run up on enemies, keeping them slightly to your side, and use a slicing weapon. This seems to do a good amount of damage, but by far the most devastating are the charging weapons, like lances and spears. If aimed correctly, which can be very tricky, they are very effective. If you strike the opponent just right, with your lance tucked under your arm, you will deliver deadly couched lance damage. I have yet to do this myself but have had many enemies strike me with it.
The mechanics here use the keyboard and mouse, with the typical WASD used to move the player and the mouse used for looking. This might sound clunky, but once you get used to it you'll enjoy swinging the mouse back each time you make a pass. However this is where I run into my issue with the game. Wine stops the mouse from leaving the window, limiting my view range.
My only big problem with this game has nothing to do with the game itself really, but what it's built on. Using DirectX leaves Windoze the only option to play this game natively. Why must so many developers fall victim to thinking this is the only way to go? OpenGL is just as good, if not better. In any case, the game runs great with wine. I wonder just how wine runs this demo that just came out so great. The only flaw with the game's performance under wine is that the camera stops when it hits the edge of the screen. This is frustrating, especially in the heat of battle, but I've learned to deal with it and have been playing the demo (over and over) for the last few days on Ubuntu Hardy 8.04. No crashes, no lagging, just wonderfulness.
So with a 25 dollar price tag for a license I think I'm going to pick one up as soon as I can afford it. The price goes up to 39 dollars after the final version comes out later this year, so if you're interested buy now and support the hard working development team for this game. This is a real gem that deserves light.
