Mount&Blade - With Fire and Sword Review @ Gamebanshee

Brother None was able to get his hands on a press demo for Mount & Blade: With Fire and Sword. Here is his two page preview from playing the demo:

Noting that my experience with the game was limited due to multiplayer being inaccessible and the level capping off - locking me off of the additions to siege works and multiplayer - my main concern about With Fire & Sword lies in the question of how much it actually adds to the experience. Mount & Blade has an active and creative modding community, who have long since added firearms to the game and have provided an assortment of alternate total conversions and multiplayer gameplay mode mods for Mount & Blade and Mount & Blade: Warband. Warband had the advantage of adding multiplayer, but With Fire & Sword doesn't shoot for any such game-changing alterations. It will no doubt be worth it for hardcore fans - such as your humble author. For others, just adding guns and grenades is a bit underwhelming considering the potential of the setting's era. This is a bit constrained because of the region, but when I think of transporting Mount & Blade into the 17th century, I think of opening up political machinations on the story side and massive ship battles on the battle side. Considering the potential, I can't help but feel that With Fire & Sword just might underwhelm.