A diamond in the rough. Amazing concepts, but lacking. Avoid the original and go directly to Warband where its all fixed
I am not going to go into detail, there are plenty of other places to find that. What I am going to do, is let everyone know, that Mount and Blade is sort of an unfinished game, and the finished version is Mount and Blade: Warband. It is not a sequel or an expansion. Dont waste time on the original, if you can have the full experience with Warband.
I started out myself with playing the original first, which caused me to replay quite a lot of it(All of it more or less) when I started Warband. Its the same game, except a slight rearrangement of the map and all the cool bits that Warband have.
PS: dont be scared away with the lack of story. The new additions to Warband makes up for any feeling of being lost that the original had.