Manor Lords Early Access Review – Strategy Game of The Year Candidate… In a Few Years

Manor Lords Review on PC

I haven’t been hyped to try a city-building game for years, ever since my Frostpunk obsession died down. Now, the review copy I got of Manor Lords has reignited my passion for them, though the fire is still low.

A single person is developing the game, and it is still in early access, meaning that it has a ways to go before we get to experience all its features. Considering how recently it entered it, we might be in for a few years of wait. Whatever it may be, we aren’t gonna talk about what the game might look like in the future. Instead, let’s see what’s so good (or bad ) about it right now.

The most important aspect of Manor Lords is city-building. The placement of roads, fields, burgage plots, markets, and many other structures is customizable, giving you all the freedom you need. This flexibility allows you to make truly medieval-like towns that don’t look like they were designed by Manhattan’s city planners.

However, most buildings do have a predefined plot shape, but it’s not like you’d want your forester’s hut to be a five-story mansion anyway. Also, the logistics and the resource management needed for building add an extra layer of complexity. This part is very well balanced and not in the least crazy, like in Europa Universalis, for example.

Another thing you’ll have to tinker with is agriculture. Unfortunately, it’s very unbalanced at the moment. The difficult part is that you have to find fertile soil for specific types of crops, work the land, harvest it, and everything else that goes with that. However, you’ll quickly realize that you can import everything, saving you time and resources and, in turn, making this whole part of the game redundant.

Talking about trading—yeah, it’s OP. It’s also what makes the game boring at times and made me start another save where I’m not going to trade at all. Otherwise, I’d just speedrun town development until I reach about 30 burgage level 3 plots and then start conquering with my infinite supply of everything I earned by trading away roof tiles, coal, eggs, and other random things I manufactured.

Now, with all the gold I accrued with trading, it’s time I start paying mercenaries and taking over land, right? Well, the conquest part of Manor Lords is simply bad. Still, the game is in early access, and I’d say city building was the main focus of the dev, so I can’t blame them too much.

However, I have a huge problem with diplomacy. You can’t do anything but exchange pleasantries and declare wars and peace. Like everything else, it is a WIP, but it might be the lowlight of all the strategic aspects of Manor Lords.

Combat is also very far away from being Total War-esque. There are no generals, cavalry, or advanced combat systems you can exploit. I don’t know. Maybe the TW games have spoiled me too much at this point, but combat is the thing I like doing the least in Manor Lords.

I do enjoy that your own townspeople go to battles, making you concerned for their lives (something I’m yet to feel for my Dreadspears in WH3). This makes you want to strategize, but again, there isn’t much of that yet.

What’s also cool about Total War games is replayability. Now, know that I’m the type of guy who has played 100+ WH2&3, Rome II, Shogun, and Three Kingdom campaigns in the last few years by using only five factions in total. So, having the same start and fighting the same enemies doesn’t really bother me. 

The real issue is that when you reach critical mass, there is nothing to do anymore, and the same is true for Manor Lords. The thing is that in Total War, you need at least ten hours for that, and in this game, you need at most two, making replayability extremely limited. The only way I’ve managed to convince myself to make new saves is by making up custom challenges for myself, such as no trading allowed.

Now, you’re probably wondering about the graphics, music, and world of Manor Lords, too. Well, the graphics are stunning, though costly. Therefore, I suggest locking your FPS to 60 to save on your GPU’s resources while keeping everything else as maxed out as possible. The music will for sure place you in that medieval groove, but it’s somewhat repetitive.

Finally, the world and the map are beautifully designed, but there are improvements to be made. The most important ones are more factions, a bigger map, and fewer out-of-the-map locations such as traders. It instantly breaks the immersion, and that’s what this game is all about.

So, to conclude, Manor Lords is probably the future of medieval RTS games. However, that future is still a couple of large hourglass flips away. The early access version is fun for the first 30 hours or so, but after that, you’ll probably be jumping right back into HoI IV or whatever strategy game you were playing before you jumped into Manor Lords.