Mount and Blade/YMMV


 * Broken Base: Before Mount and Blade was picked up by a publisher they were operating on a buy now get a fleshed out version later without added cost deal. Similar to Minecraft and Terraria. However once a publisher picked up the game the promised improvements were never made to the original mount and blade. The improvements were to include better combat, multiplayer, and improvements to sieges and management. Instead they were made into addons that had to be purchased. A segment of the original fandom who had pre-purchased the game then were less then pleased. There were vows to never buy or instead pirate the sequels as they felt they were cheated by the deal. As the game and sequels became cheaper, members of the fandom who felt this way changed their minds and just purchased the now notably cheaper sequels.
 * Contested Sequel: The political model and multiplayer are long-requested and popular features, but the changes to combat are a Base Breaker, and the "balancing" of cavalry and infantry for multiplayer purposes is very much hated.
 * Crowning Music of Awesome: The main theme.
 * Curb Stomp Battle: When defending a castle, a well armed and armored player can almost decimate an army on their own, no matter how many soldiers you have to face compared to how many you have.
 * Demonic Spiders: Khergit horse archers, which is to say, all Khergit cavalry, which is to say, all Khergit troops. Their horses are fast, so fast they may forever elude you at first, their arrows are omnipresent and will interrupt your attacks, and they come in hordes. As you progress and your party grows, they may be downgraded to Goddamn Bats or even to Mooks.
 * Game Breaker: Anyone on horseback, from a foot-soldier's perspective. And Heavy Calvary from ANYONE'S perspective. Justified in that, as a medieval combat simulator, heavily armored, mounted troops really WERE the ultimate combat units and that mounted troops really DID have a ridiculous advantage over non-mounted troops.
 * And from the point of view of heavy cavalry NPCs, a horse-archer player. Partly due to the AI, partly due to the fact that there's no upper limit to accuracy, so in the hands of a skilled character the bow becomes the equivalent of a sniper rifle. Which they can fire with pinpoint precision on horseback at full gallop.
 * Warband's multiplayer verges on making the Rhodok faction this; warhammers will instantly kill lightly armoured opponents, do crippling amounts to medium armour users, knock the player to the ground and ignore blocking shields, crossbows are very easy to aim suffering only for the reloading time, finally the cleavers, with the exception of the two-handed variant, deal a lot more damage than most other single-handed weapons and still allow the player to use a shield. The verging part comes from their armour being mostly shoddy, with their best torso armour costing more than most players will ever get in multiplayer matches. Considering that the Khergits, Sarranids and Vaegirs lack any heavy armour with a cheap price tag, or have only light armour, it makes the damn Rhodok warhammer the bane of any players on foot from those factions.
 * In With Fire and Sword, caravan. Getting enough money to start trading some certain goods can and will make money really fast to outfit your characters with best weapons in the game and outfit mercenaries with best gear in a pretty short time. Good luck getting that much money in the first place, however.
 * Good Bad Bugs: The ammo respawn bug, which reappeared several times during the development and is still present in the final version. Things like arrows or javelins come in stacks which replenish after each battle, but the bug causes them to replenish every time the inventory screen is opened (which can be done mid-battle by accessing the baggage chest at the spawn point), thus saving a few inventory slots that would otherwise have to be dedicated to carrying spare stacks.
 * Memetic Mutation: "Where's the 'rape' button?"
 * Paranoia Fuel: Some of the mods have added large landmarks to the arenas. Combine this with the A.I. always tracking the player's location, and quite a few arena matches will devole into paranoid running away from anything large in fear that that last swordsman is about to leap out and cut you down.
 * Scrappy Mechanic: Siegeing towns and castles is utterly BROKEN. You never get to choose which method of assault you use (it's predetermined for each castle/town) and while some of them make it fairly easy (double ladders wide enough to drive a truck up) some of them are utterly worthless- trying to send 200 men up a extremely steep ramp wide enough to accomadate approximately 1 1/2 men, flanked on either side by defended towers full of men with crossbows, can teach you the true meaning of "meat grinder". It's EASILY possible to end up losing entire armies just trying to get onto the walls, especially if they're defended by a lord in heavy armour with a two-handed weapon. You generally need at least 3-1 odds to capture one and considering that towns generally have garrisons of at least 300 men... And if you try to be true to history and starve them out, you'll unfortunately find that AI opponents don't need food.
 * The Brytenwalda Mod changed this. There is a realistic siege option that gives you many choices and allows you to even starve the enemies out, using spies and your own soldiers to destroy enemy morale and food supplies. I've seen town garrisons lead by Lords surrender without a fight.
 * Also, if you are the marshal of a faction and order a number of allied lords to fight with you, you can use them to let you overwhelm the walls by weight of numbers... except they have the attention span of a stunned goldfish, causing them to wander off away from the siege or chase passing peasants just before you finish assembling the siege tower, leaving you either to storm the walls alone or wait until they're done and (hopefully) come back.
 * There's also (if you are proficient in bow or crossbow) the simple tactic of ordering your soldiers to stay far from the wall, and then sniping every archer alone, plus every soldier that isn't raising his shield (and if you approach them while climbing ladders, some drop them to prepare for the assault), so you can easily kill as much enemies as you have arrows or bolts in your inventory. Rinse and repeat until you shot down every single defender.
 * Another alternative is to have your troops fall back a bit before ordering the charge and taking the first position yourself. If you have heavy enough armor and a decent shield, you'll be able to block the enemy attacks. Then simply jump over their ranks and get out of range. Now, while your troops attack from the front, you can attack fron behind and easily massacre enemy archers and the defenders themselves. It's a lot easier with a two-handed blade, allowing you to take down an enemy with one or two blows, and since they're occupied with the troops at the front...
 * Ïf you ever get faced in a tournament against a single opponent in a jousting match (i.e. both of you wield lances) you might want to open a beer for the occasion, as you are going to spend minutes circling around eachother trying to get a decent angle to charge. Your best hope in this situation is to try to get your rival to crash into a wall...
 * That One Level: Tihr. While in all other cities establishing a foothold on the enemy wall after surviving the hail of arrows and climbing the ladder is the decisive step towards victory, in Tihr it only means you are now within the line of fire of archers on the second wall. Which you can only reach by navigating an obstacle course of rickety wooden railings, invisible walls, spike filled dikes and more ladders.

With Fire And Sword provides examples of:

 * They Changed It, Now It Sucks: The single-player campaign does not have any background choices of any kind, and the player character must always be male.
 * With the latest patch, you now have the option of either gender. However, there is still no background choices.