"The Last Days" for Mount & Blade. Intro

Mount & Blade was a medieval combat simulator where you're a wandering mercenary in a war torn region. The gameplay was somewhat innovative when it came out (originally 2008), but as far as story and setting, it was kinda meh. But the great thing about it were the mods, and by far the best mod was "The Last Days," a total conversion mod that lifted all the mechanics but put it in The Lord of the Rings.

These nerds put so much detail into that mod, it was incredible. I didn't know half the factions existed. The map goes beyond Gondor and Rohan and even Rivendell, it goes all the way out to the goblins of Mt. Gundabad fighting against the men of Dale. Each location has tons of detail, some of them are truly massive, and they pushed the limits of the base game with trolls and giant spiders and things like that. Each individual faction has their own faction strength, so you have to think strategically about where to reinforce. The differences between how each factions' units fight on the battlefield is more emphasized, and tbh the combat is a bit better balanced.

It really hit the nail on the head of what to do with the game engine, and then put real passion, creativity, and effort into making it work (seriously, the last update was in 2017, new stuff was being added after nearly a decade. And there's comments on the page I linked as recently as 10 days ago, so people are still playing it). Next to it, the base game feels a bit more like a proof of concept. The open world nature of the game really allows you to take in the setting and experience the story from a different perspective, rather than following the heroes from the books. It really made the setting come alive in a way I haven't found in really any other LotR game (although I'm not super into the setting and haven't played a ton of them).

The mod was for the original game at first but it update when they put out the sequel, Mount & Blade: Warband, so if anyone decides to check it out, get that one rather than the original.