Mount & Blade

Mount & Blade is a single-player, action-oriented role-playing game, which takes place in a medieval land named Calradia. The game features a sandbox gameplay style, and though the player can complete quests, there is no overarching storyline present. The player is able to join one of the five battling factions, fight as a mercenary, assume the role of an outlaw, or remain neutral.

At the start of the game, the player is offered a set of options to customize the character. The player answers a series of multiple-choice questions about the character's past and sex, which generate the character's initial attributes. The player has the option to sculpt their character's facial features.

The game was independently developed by Armağan and İpek Yavuz as TaleWorlds Entertainment, the studio they founded together in 2005. The two began making the game in their garage, with Armağan working on code and İpek on graphics. , The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, Frontier: Elite II, and older Koei Tecmo strategy video games such as Genghis Khan, as well as historical fiction novels, particularly those by Bernard Cornwell. Prior to its retail release, alpha versions of the game were published on the developer's website beginning in 2004, and feedback was given to the developers.

In January 2008, Paradox Entertainment announced they would publish the game and scheduled to release within the second quarter of that year. The game was released on Microsoft Windows via Steam on September 16, 2008.

Mount & Blade received a score of 72 out of 100 based on 28 critic reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Reviewers acknowledged the game's potential, but also said it suffers from poor production values. GameSpot concluded that the game "feels more underdeveloped than it does flat-out bad", and Eurogamer made a similar review, saying that Mount & Blade has "foundations [...] for something really quite special, but in its current state the game is nowhere close to delivering on its promises".

Beyond the combat, little of the game was praised by most reviewers. IGN in contrast, praised the game, stating, "Mount & Blade may be the best game about medieval life ever made". GamePro also gave a positive review and calling it, "the first, great medieval role-playing game". In a review of Mount & Blade in Black Gate, Connor Gormley said its "flaws are negligible, tiny flecks of dirt on the face of one really big diamond, one that dispenses free candy canes, puppies and stops world hunger.