Much better than WoTR, but M&B is still worlds beyond. It was quite laggy yesterday, don't know if it was the server lagging or everyone, I saw people (and myself) warping all the time. Hit detection was strange at times, sometimes the guy who killed me didn't even have his weapon close to me, now I'm not sure if it was lag or just bad game. The animations could be a bit more smooth, they often looked choppy and weird.
What made me really lol was when I picked up an archer, archery in this game is on Warband Native levels or even worse. Laser accuracy with massive damage, was 2 shotting tincans with bodkin arrows (1 if it's a headshot), you can move and still have good accuracy meaning you can easily shotgun people. Way too easy to kill people, had a KD of about 3 and I'm not even good at ranged.
There's two good things they have done with archery tho, the follow arrow camera is awesome and archers have about the same movement speed as other melee, meaning you can't kite.
The whole blocking system isn't that awesome, it really is just right click to block, maybe sometimes you have to adjust your camera a bit but that's it. Kicking someone looks ridiculous and unrealistic, it just pushes him back like you had the force. It looks like the skill ceiling isn't nearly as high as Warbands due to how the blocking/attacking/stamina works. Most of the time you're outnumbered (even if it's only 2v1) you're probably not going to come out alive.
I'll give them that chopping those limbs off or just mutilating a corpse feels awesome.
I did like the "game modes" a lot too, much more life-like if you have to kill peasants, ram a door and kill the king instead of capping a flag or a point.
Overall it's not a bad game, but I reckon it would get boring quite fast due to small size battles and shallow combat system.