An indie game thread and nobody talked about
Mount & Blade : Warbands ?
A pure sandbox game mixing a slice of RPG, a (small) pinch of wargame and a generous dose of action and large-scale battles, in a medieval world where you start as a recently arrived foreigner in a part of the world divided into six culturally-themed successor kingdoms of the previous equivalent of the Roman Empire.
You can be a bandit, a mercenary, a lord, a wanderer, a jouster, a merchant, and even carve your own kingdom. The feudal nature is well exploited, you can upgrade your soldiers, recruit adventurers, marry, siege cities and castle (each one works in the same way but have an unique layout, and there is DOZENS of them), trade, participate to (and host) feast, play diplomatical games of alliances and enmities, gear you and your companions, ransom people, liberate them from prison...
The gameplay is surprisingly pleasant, with very well developped hand-to-hand combat, well-done aiming mechanics which differenciate between bows, crossbows and thrown weapons, and the first actually fun and rewarding mounted combat I've seen in a game (you can really get the feeling of dominating superiority of the knigh on horseback compared to the lowly footman as you slice your way through the lines of foes).
It's overflowing with content, it's pretty hardcore (you can't ever really die as you're just knocked out, but the game doesn't pull any punch and is pretty realistic so if you're unarmoured you're down in one or two hits), it's letting you completely free to decide how to play and it can last hundred of hours before you can consider a game "done".
I've spent less than 10 bucks on it, more hours than any of the formulaic AAA released this year, and more fun than all of them combined.
