http://www.taleworlds.com/

What can I say, I LOVE this game. It probably has the best horse combat in a game EVER and is ridiculously addictive. Not only that the game itself is huge with lots of things to do, and ultimately you can role-play in almost anyway you want. Also great is the fantastic collection of mods. If you ever get board of the game, you can download a mod that places the game into history, pop-culture, or something new all together. 

http://forums.taleworlds.net/index.php/board,63.0.html

Best of all, the game is only $29.99. The graphics for the game are kinda dated, but they look sharp and serve their purpose well.

Don't listen to the so called "professional" reviews. This game is great.

The real strength of the game is the huge number of mods. I bought this when it was still in beta and it's an absolutely amazing indie game.

cool. Thanks for the info!

Downloading the Chronicles of Talera mod right now, Mount and Blade really is an amazing indie game.

Oh yeah, there's an awesome demo of it: it allows you to play the whole game up to level 7.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/22110/

The problem with the game, is that it is quite literally all substance and no style. The combat engine is excellently done, and you can make ample use of battlefield tactics like terrain and flanking, but the overworld map portion of the game just barely holds things together. Not that I mind, though, since it's actually quite refreshing to see gameplay like this come out of such a small developer. And then there's the modding community, which adds so much more stuff to it.

Right now i'm trying to take over my own Kingdom in Mount and Blade.

Tried vs the Vaegers. Then got pissed off when I recaptured my lost castle, gave it to a vassel only to find out he joined up with the Nords so i gave them a free land.

So now the Nords are my target....

I've been keeping up with the game for a while playing the betas for almost a year now. Its a great game but after a while it tends to get repetitive. I haven't played the most recent version though.

The repetativeness is helped by mods. I especially like Story Mod (even though it's a bit easy for a veteran, and ramps up the difficulty a bit too quickly for a novice).