Mount & Blade vs Northgard
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.
Northgard
Northgard is a rather unique city-builder/strategy game that allows you to lead a group of Northmen to unknown new shores in hopes of making a life there. Like most city-building games, you'll need to help them set up a home, assign your Vikings to perform various roles, ensure there is enough food to feed the entire village, and amass a small army to help defend your territories from other hostile clans. The strategic aspects of the game may not be obvious at first but you'll quickly realize that new territories that you discover (you don't exactly need to conquer it for this to work) will present new strategic opportunities for your clan to expand or grow, be it new sources for food or a nice place to set up a new trading post. There are many victory conditions as well, so it's not always "kill or be killed" in this game.Northgard offers players a single player experience by playing with AIs with various personalities or with their friends online. However, many players have reported that the game does have a somewhat flawed AI-player relationship. Even if you're best buddies with an AI's clan through healthy trading relationships, their clan members will still attack your people, which frankly feels a lot like a betrayal. It'd be nice to have a tutorial as well.
That said though, Northgard is an impressive game especially if you enjoy a bit of city-builder/strategy game like Valhalla Hills.