Manor Lords review: "Brimming with the potential to exceed its already broad horizons"

2024-04-24

Early VerdictManor Lords enters Early Access as one of the most impressive, ambitious city builders yet. Dynamic management systems provide in-depth control over everything from the largest structures to the minutiae of sheep farming, all before you engage with the game’s RTS combat elements. While some of these systems could use clarification, Manor Lords readily rewards curiosity, challenges creativity, and hints at the boldness of mechanics still to come.Pros+Granular management systems reflect style and theme+Realistic impact of seasons and weather+Highly-customizable gameplay scenariosCons-RTS combat can feel unclear and less integral

Early Verdict

Manor Lords enters Early Access as one of the most impressive, ambitious city builders yet. Dynamic management systems provide in-depth control over everything from the largest structures to the minutiae of sheep farming, all before you engage with the game’s RTS combat elements. While some of these systems could use clarification, Manor Lords readily rewards curiosity, challenges creativity, and hints at the boldness of mechanics still to come.

Pros+Granular management systems reflect style and theme+Realistic impact of seasons and weather+Highly-customizable gameplay scenarios

Granular management systems reflect style and theme

Realistic impact of seasons and weather

Highly-customizable gameplay scenarios

Cons-RTS combat can feel unclear and less integral

RTS combat can feel unclear and less integral

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There is something about Manor Lords that feels both baffling and patient at the same time. Do I want to create a custom setting, ascribing my own winning conditions, bandit raid frequencies, starting supplies, and more? Or do I want to simply click one of three set gameplay scenarios and run with it? Either way, I get to design my own lordly coat of arms and live out the most lavish of land baron fantasies.

FAST FACTSEarly Access release date:April 26, 2024Platform(s):PCDeveloper:Slavic MagicPublisher:Hooded Horse

FAST FACTS

Early Access release date:April 26, 2024Platform(s):PCDeveloper:Slavic MagicPublisher:Hooded Horse

Except, no I don’t – not immediately, anyway. This is a city builder that leans into the realism factor, with weather patterns, seasonality, and total headcount dictating the speed at which my townships either thrive or falter. Starting out with a trio of tents is a humbling experience, but it speaks to the sense of size, scale, and untapped growth potential that Manor Lords kindles so brilliantly as it enters Early Access.

Training grounds

(Image credit: Hooded Horse)

Manor Lords Early Access building

In my initialManor Lords hands-on impressions, I described the solodev project as “Ye Olde Sim City with battle tactics”. But after spending more time with the game, it’s clear that there’s a lot more to Slavic Magic’s medieval city builder than constructing clay-thatched towers to defend.

As it stands in Early Access, Manor Lords already facilitates your every creative whim while leaving room for new ones. Its gridless building system provides the perfect landscape for experimentation, even for aSims 4fanatic like myself who found the concept of unrestricted build potential almost overwhelming at first. Instead of having a shell to fill out, spoon-fed suggestions of where and when to place various structures, Manor Lords trusts the player to decide the shape and feel of the world around them and eventually learn from these choices.

The depth of urban planning only deepens the immersive experience of Manor Lords as, slowly but steadily, your budding township accrues higher settlement ranks and attracts more villagers to move there. These settlers aren’t silent as they go about their work; zooming in from an isometric viewpoint allows you to hear their clamoring for yourself, chatting away to each other in legible English while going about their everyday pastoral lives. You can even opt to stroll about your village from ground-level as a visiting noble, controlling an avatar like you might in a third-person action game, thanks to the promising Visit tool currently in development.

(Image credit: Hooded Horse)

Manor Lords

Harvestable resources are replenished at certain times of year, and it’s possible to hunt animals to extinction if you don’t set a population limit. Want to establish a trade route? Go for it, but be prepared for it to take a great many in-game days for your tradesmen to make the return trip via ox or horse. Manor Lords succeeds in helping players build a world that responds authentically to the choices made– and that applies to the rule of war.

Warring pieces

(Image credit: Hooded Horse)

Manor Lords Early Access

Manor Lords succeeds in helping players build a world that responds authentically.

One Manor Lords mechanic I find especially interesting, even at an unfinished stage in Early Access, is the ability to correspond with neighboring lords and bandits. Selecting a paragraph of text to draft into a letter can spell the difference between neutral inter-region relations – perhaps someday, amicable ones? – or igniting a hostile feud. This is where Manor Lords' smart straddling of the city builder and RTS genres comes into play.

(Image credit: Hooded Horse)

Manor Lords

This is partly due to the lack of baked-in combat tutorials in Manor Lords, leaving me to scour all my construction and management tools for the quickest fix (hint: there isn’t one). I still don’t fully understand how I managed to conquer my first few battles, as the RTS combat elements themselves feel almost deceptively simple: you rally troops in a specific location, command them to either hold ground, press forward, or flee, and start praying. Compared to the density of its city builder mechanics, the RTS elements can feel like a functional, albeit well-intended, afterthought. Combat doesn’t feelbad, but rather fairly rudimentary in its current state – which makes sense, since the game is very much still a work-in-progress.

I have hopes that progress, it shall. Manor Lords doesn’t make any promises outright, but it’s clearly brimming with the potential to exceed its already broad horizons. It’s a winner for any ardent fan of thebest city builders, creatively reworking the genre to suit its period-relevant management systems, and makes a strong case for its real-time combat to catch up in the near future. All of this coming from a solo developer is nothing short of wildly impressive, making Manor Lords a testament to an ongoing job well-done that still feels brilliant to play in Early Access.

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Early Verdict

Training grounds

Warring pieces

Contents