While the AI seems a little more advanced than the original's, I haven't seen an improvement worth sacrificing both graphical effects and the spectacle and challenge of bigger battle scenes. Sieges in general are a highlight, but the stakes make it extra frustrating when the AI flubs it. I even used 'how many M&B stabmen can it handle' as my litmus test for PC upgrades, so it's disappointing that my generally adequate machine still suffers distracting choppiness and input lag in large skirmishes, even with most options dialled down. I've always turned the detail down in Mount & Blade in order to crank up the battle sizes.

Overall performance, however, is still lacking. There are still noticeable delays here and there, particularly on inventory and army/prisoner management screens, and I'd expect to see further improvements before a 1.0 release, but the difference is enormous. Previously, even a conversation with an NPC would waste time loading a full 3D scene, but now we simply get their character model on a static background (which has the bonus side effect of making life a little simpler for modders) in most situations. Coming back out of a battle could still be better, but it's short enough now to shrug off, rather than actively discouraging me from doing anything that might end in violence. Where once a full minute of waiting might bookend every fight, there's now a mere moment or two on the way in. The loading times in particular are dramatically better. After a year of patches that's hardly surprising, but it's still a relief. Bannerlord now runs a hell of a lot closer to how any game of its size should. I was lucky enough to avoid most of that, but its performance, and particularly loading times, were dire. Crashes were frequent, as were less serious bugs and annoyances. Identifying and fixing these is half the point of an early access period, but for a game whose development began in 2012, it was in a poor state for a lot of players. Let's be rational, and consider Bannerlord's biggest problems at launch: its plethora of technical issues.

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