If you join or end up ruling a kingdom, you can make changes like setting new tax laws – as long as your vassals approve, of course. Your clan includes your family and retainers, which can include a spouse and eventually children who can grow up and fight. “Bannerlord’s biggest new systems are the Clan and Kingdom screens. Do you want to be the barbarian at the gates, or the successor to ancient glories? While the story is presented pretty simplistically and without much dramatic flair, I could see these options providing a lot of replayability just due to the different flavor your campaign can take on based on which route you choose. Piecing together the details will eventually lead you to two significant choices: joining an existing faction or starting your own, and trying to restore the old Calradian Empire or wiping its remnants from the map.

There is an intricate political web to unravel between the leaders of the various factions, with each having a different story about what happened at a pivotal battle right before the start of the campaign that set the present events in motion. Once I got out and about and started meeting the various princes, lords, and knights, my interest in the world really picked up. You only get one small campaign bonus based on where you were born, like being able to build structures faster or reduced movement penalty in forest terrain. Anyone can recruit any kind of troops and join any faction they wish. As it stands, it’s mostly flavor that doesn’t impose restrictions that might make you significantly alter your playstyle.

I wish your choice of national origin had a little bit more of an impact, though. Each of the six playable factions has its own rich personality, backstory, and style of fighting. Set about 200 years before Warband, we see the ancestors of some of the factions we know locked in a tense struggle centered on a collapsing, Roman-inspired empire that has broken into three parts. “The worldbuilding in general is pretty great.

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