Mount & Blade vs Total War Battles: Kingdom
Mount & Blade
Mount & Blade is the first game in a highly popular game franchise that boasts of being an RPG with one of the most sandbox-like gameplay ever. In this game, you can play as anyone you like be it a lone adventurer, a military commander or even the "mayor" of a small town in Calradia. The game also provides a rich and open world, allowing you to travel anywhere you like and discover all manner of points of interest ranging from farm villages to massive castles. You even have the freedom to interact with hundreds of characters, some of which will likely be hostile towards you. Due to this, the game provides you with an intuitive combat system that includes both sword-fighting and fighting on horseback that you can use to dispose of the hostile.Mount & Blade is an old game, and as such, its graphics may be a bit dated and its controls feel rather clunky. Thus, the game by itself might not be worth the money, but if you can get it along with Mount & Blade Warband or Mount & Blade With Fire and Sword - the two other and much better games in the series, then it'll be worth getting it.
Total War Battles: Kingdom
Total War Battles: Kingdom is the free-to-play version of a Total War game that is available on the mobile platform. Set in the medieval times, the game perfectly captures how things were back then - an era filled with almost constant skirmishes and conflicts between lords and fledgling kingdoms. The gameplay mechanics are pretty well-done despite being somewhat restricted - you can only bring a maximum of 9 battalions into battle, for example, and it does retain most of the Total War archetypes like city-building, army training, and battles.Unfortunately, Total War Battles: Kingdom definitely pales in comparison to any of the games in the main series mainly because it fell victim to one of the worst pitfalls in the free-to-play gaming industry: microtransactions. Don’t expect to get far into the game without spending real money first, but if you still choose to persevere, it would probably take you weeks of constant playing to get your kingdom somewhere solid enough for you to hold your own.
That said, the game is still a pretty decent albeit casual installment of the Total War series. Fans of the franchise or of casual MMO strategy games on the mobile platform may want to give the game a try.