It's not that With Fire and Sword is a bad game, it just feels too much like a mod than a full fledged sequel
With Fire and Sword started off a bit shaky with taking out unique aspects to M&B by taking out the background of the character, it leaves your character feeling more like a blank slate than one that's directly involved with the world.
Starting out in single player everything just feels pretty familiar. The pace of the game is slowed down greatly. Horses are slower, good weapons and armor have increased in price, two handed weapons can't be used on horseback, all which are excusable for a more realistic feel for the game. The introduction of guns is interesting, but difficult to accept almost. They are satisfying, but getting hit by one shot from a musket can be incredibly frustrating in the larger battles. It adds a more random chance than skill to the battle system.
The same can be said for multiplayer. Since the muskets have such a long reload and a fairly large cone of accuracy, the multiplayer seems a bit mediocre. I don't even feel that same satisfaction for kills or even really winning like in Warband. I feel like the slower pace also kills the competitiveness a bit especially in the sieges. For example, on more than one occasion when defending, the majority of my team was more focused on getting long distance musket kills than actually defending the doors or keeping the other team from capturing the base.
It's not that With Fire and Sword isn't necessarily a bad game, its more that free Mods like Brytenwalda and Sword of Damocles have made much stronger strides with the M&B system. Overall, With Fire & Sword just feels too much like a mod than a full fledged sequel.