It's a fantastic little game developed by a husband and wife team. It's basically a medieval combat game where you jump into big battles with lots of guys and fight with either thrown weapons, crossbows, bows, polearms, two-handed swords or blunt weapons, or one-handed swords/blunt weapons, either on foot or on horseback, and you recruit various persistent, experience-gaining units to fight alongside you, including some named ones who you can outfit and choose skills for. Then you run across a big overworld map, take quests, develop relationships with various kingdoms and lords, swear allegiances, trade goods to various cities, and all that kind of thing. Eventually it escalates into bigger combat scenarios and castle sieges, and you can start fighting with other actual armies instead of random bands of barbarians, and you can also become a vassal for a particular country and tag along when friendly armies of other lords invade other territories. I'm even at the point now where I've been given a little bit of land, so I have a little measly town to call my own, which I can now upgrade with stuff like a watchtower, mill, or school, and you can do quests at these little places that cost you money, but earn you favor with the people that live there. You can also enter tournaments (where you can bet on yourself and earn renown), and other various non-combat quests. It's incredibly awesome.
There's a fair learning curve to it. I couldn't even beat several of the tutorial missions, which was pretty sad, and I spent the majority of my time in the early game getting beat up, taken prisoner, dragged halfway around the map, and eventually released with almost no money, no horse, and no men. That was pretty frustrating. But eventually I leveled my guy up a bit, got a bit more used to the combat mechanics, and finally managed to pull together enough recruits to win a few decent fights. I managed a steady increase from there. I highly, highly, highly recommend this game.
A lot of complaints have come around about the graphics, but I think they're actually pretty extraordinary for such a small team. This is not an unattractive game, though it isn't a high-tech one. I'd say it's at about the level of
Morrowind except the people look more consistent and are animated much better. There are also tons of mods for the game, including a number of graphical overhauls.
Some stock shots:
With the Graphical Enhancement 2.5 mod:
