Manor Lords

​I really wanted to love Manor Lords. The graphics are stunning, the historical accuracy is top-notch, and the building mechanics feel incredibly organic. The first few hours are magical as you watch your village come to life. ​However, the main issue with this game is that nothing is moving forward. ​It feels like the game has hit a complete standstill. Once you get past the initial honeymoon phase and build a basic town, you quickly realize how hollow the experience currently is. There is a severe lack of content, late-game mechanics, and meaningful progression. ​I understand it’s an Early Access title, but Early Access implies active progression. Instead, updates feel painfully slow, minor bugs take forever to get fixed, and actual gameplay depth isn't being added at a pace that keeps the game engaging. You end up doing the exact same thing every playthrough with nowhere to go. ​If you like paying for a beautiful screenshot generator and a tech demo, go ahead. But if you want a deep, evolving city-builder, I’d suggest waiting—or skipping it entirely until the developer actually pushes the game forward. ​Current rating: 4/10 (Great foundation, but currently dead in the water).

Manor Lords is a game that has "promise". The problem is that if you look at all the positive ratings for this game, they have to be from the hopeful / "we like where this could go" crowd. I've been playing this for quite a while now off and on after each patch, and unfortunately there just isn't much of a reason to play this game, and I'll share my thoughts below: 1) City building in medieval times - This concept has a lot of promise. However, in order to fill the communities needs, you have to balance your work force and residences between gathering resources, construction, harvesting crops / trees, refining / crafting, and trading. In my opinion, this part isn't well balanced yet. It is more tedious to get your village to a comfortable state than fun. Not to mention, there isn't a great UI to understand if your tree / vegetable / animal farms are going to be producing crops and / or how many you can expect. I seem to be running blind with this, but I "know" they're needed. You will find that you need more people doing different chores, and you have to assign them accordingly, but truly understanding what the reasoning and benefit behind these actions is still vague and unclear. 2) Bugs - Look, you're buying an early access game... features aren't going to be there, bugs are going to be present, and a lot of the back-end mechanics that I know nothing of are going to be changed over time. That being said, most of the gameplay isn't really clear (and yes, I've checked the help documents), so you don't know necessarily why stuff doesn't work. Is it a bug, or is it something that you haven't done right to allow it to work? Hard to tell... However, I am never able to get my residences to have enough ale to fill their needs..... 3) Entertainment - It's just not there. I've tried multiple game plays, and I always end up in the "what is the point of going further?" state of mind. A lot of this has to do with the "manor" building process, the combat system, and the fact that the game hasn't completed most of the development points to keep you engaged and wanting to progress. The development points they have right now seem to be more punitive than beneficial. 4) Combat - It's a waste.. Seriously, it takes way to long to get enough money and / or population with arms on your end to defend an invasion. So you have to rely on militias early on. They're expensive, and you already are low on funds... BUT, if you can take advantage of the poor AI as well as eliminate some bandit camps along the way yourself, you can conquer this. But, combat is pretty pointless at this time. 5) Region control and expansion- This has to be the worst thought out part of the game so far. I'll go over the main thoughts on this, but I can probably go on and on. If you want to claim another region, all you have to do is "press your claim" for that region. It doesn't matter if the region is vacant or controlled by another lord. However, in order to "press your claim" you have to have enough favor to do so. To gain these points, you have to be victorious in battles or be tithing goods. But, let's say you've had another lord try to claim your region? How do they win? WELL, they can send their endless armies at you and then go to the "battle field" located in your region. There is a time limit on when the claim is over. The other lord will be victorious IF they win the battle OR you don't try to defend in that battle ground.... Thinking of building a defensive manor to defend your village?? Well, nope.. It doesn't matter, because that most likely won't be where the battle is taking place.... Also, let's say the AI tries to claim your territory with their nearly endless line of troops? Well, right now they don't all move together. So, if you get their first wave into the battle ground and defeat them before any other enemy troops arrive, you are victorious and the claim is ended.... I lost multiple regions because I just didn't understand the region claiming process, but it also just doesn't make sense. Ok, so now let's think about how your idea for expansion is going. You want to get a region that has resources that your main one doesn't? Great thought! However, how do you get resources between your own controlled regions? Right now, it's a convoluted trading system that just doesn't make sense. You control both regions, and I understand that the developers may not want there to be this universal "pool of inventory in the sky" that both regions can pull from to use. However, you shouldn't have to trade (must import to export) from one region you control with another. You should be able to simply export and export easily between your regions. And, in order to trade you have to assign a villager to handle this task for you. In my playthroughs, expanding was almost more punitive than beneficial. 6) Trading - Necessary part of life, right? This is specifically about trading with the "outside world", not a region you control which I already complained about. The problem here is that all goods cost too much to bring in and not enough to export. Not to mention, just understanding when they'll arrive is a challenge. If your territory doesn't have a good farming area, you have to trade for your barley and / or malt to create the ALE. But, in order to trade, you have to have $ or items to export. The trading system is not easily understood and not calibrated appropriately yet. It's just not there. Final thoughts for me - Look, I may just be trying to play the game without paying attentions to the tutorials (I can't remember). But, in my opinion, if you purchase this game at this point you're just a test subject trying to help the developer create the game. And honestly, that is OK. That being said, the entertainment and purpose simply aren't there.

I bought into the early access as soon as it went live, and in the two years since it honestly might have gotten worse. Rather than a clear path to 1.0, existing features have been reworked or regressed in disappointing ways, pathfinding and peasant AI is a mess, the UI lacks a lot of the tools you'd want from a game trying to be as in depth as this. The whole thing is full of gameplay dead ends and masked features that it's just become frustrating. Trying to get peasants to do effective farming is a living nightmare. Crop rotation doesn't work properly, the workers assigned often have a mental breakdown ploughing fields and will give up half way. Hope you rolled a good map because if you didn't you had better reroll. Baffling that is left to RNG, you can be given a region with no solid mining resources and piss poor farmland, so you become wholly reliant on trading. Trading happens when the game decides, go ♥♥♥♥ yourself, and you in which you need to sell x5 the stock to afford a single strand of wheat. I want this game to be good, I really do. But competitors are hot on its heels, and at the rate this is going, Manor Lords is going to be left in the dust.

The game has a lot of potential, but even two years after release it still feels unfinished (although I know it is being developed by only 1 to 3 developers). There are many ideas that could be added, but for now it is still a work in progress. At the moment, there is not a lot of content, but I hope the game continues to grow and develop. I wish it the best for the future.

good game development is going at a fairly slow pace though. I wish they´d post a roadmap for future releases.

Spawning 19 enemy units when you're limited to 6 yourself is stupid. Having half of them spawn behind you after you've drawn your positions is funny. Having your archers shoot for ages with the enemy healthbar not moving at all is just sad. The game hides too much info for no reason. Which doesn't sound like a big deal, but it exacerbates the jank in the game. It's fun, but i still wouldn't recommend someone get into this game until some major balance and QoL patches.

​Review Rating: 👎 Not Recommended ​Title: Incredible foundation, but trapped in an endless loop of early-game re-tweaks. ​The Good: Manor Lords has one of the most beautiful and immersive foundations for a medieval city-builder ever made. The graphics, the atmosphere, and the initial building mechanics are top-tier. If you want a casual, beautiful game to play for 15 hours, you will enjoy it. ​The Problem: We are over two years into Early Access, and development has hit a severe wall of design paralysis. Instead of building out the heavily requested late-game content, expanding the locked development perks, or adding meaningful progression, the developer is trapped in a constant cycle of tearing down and completely re-tweaking the mechanics of the first 25% of a playthrough. ​The recent proposals to turn physical, real-time trading logistics into background "spreadsheet calculations" show a worrying shift away from the very simulation elements that made the game unique. Updates are overwhelmingly dry engine bugfixes and core reworks rather than actual content additions. ​Conclusion: As a commercial product that made tens of millions of dollars, the lack of a structured, executed roadmap is deeply frustrating. The community's patience is wearing thin. I cannot recommend purchasing this until the developers lock down a firm design direction and actually deliver the missing features.

I debated on buying this game for a while. And even though this review is a yes to buy it, I have a few things I want to mention. First, the developer has created a game that is extremely accurate to the historical medieval period. This doesn't lend well to the modern gaming mindset. This game is something only a history nerd like myself can get into, I feel like your average gamer is going to get a taste of it and move on. Second, the developer has spent a lot of time making this game beautiful! You can zoom in on anything and the detail is just amazing! But I feel like because of this, things like tutorials have taken a back seat. I had to restart the game no less than six times to begin to understand some of the mechanics going on here. And I'm not going to get into the insanity that is what happens if you don't upgrade your homes! Third is the frustrating parts like, I had to figure out that "Emmer" means "Wheat". Why are there two different names for it? I had to give up on any kind of trade because it's not financially viable when you have to pay to open up a trade route for every single commodity. Got a bumper crop of wheat, I mean Emmer? Well, you can't sell it until you grease the merchant's palms apparently. Finally got the supply chain for Linen up and running? Too bad, pay the merchant before you can sell it outside of your lands. And I guess you could say that this is what I came here to say. This game is frustrating in that you have so many different hurdles to jump just to be able to get a functioning economy and to be able to field a passable militia that it's kind of ridiculous. Almost every territory is lacking in ore to the point of being laughable. My best run on this game had me using 116 ore to try and defend the village while also supplying tools just to keep the economy going. I did well enough against the random bandits, but taking another territory? Impossible. I had 3 units at half strength or less when the iron ran out and the enemy was fielding 7 units at full strength, that is until his 3 mercenary units arrived! What about economic victory? LOL, what? Even when I had the salt mine I couldn't get any economic traction because I'm paying for the trade route and then paying an extra 10 to buy anything, plus the building, plus the animals, plus the people. And for some reason salt isn't very high value? I'm a NERD, I know the meaning of the phrase "below the salt". I'm also a gardener and the thought of PAYING for seeds in an agrarian society? I still have favorite seeds from tomatoes that I planted more than ten years ago. They're still viable! Jeez, they pulled seeds out of ancient tombs and got them to germinate! I'm suppose to pay 38 for carrot seeds? Come on, get real. All of this is to say that this game is very enjoyable if you don't want to do anything with your village past getting it to be functional. Any attempt to go beyond your own borders is going to leave your troops dead on the field. And you will feel every death in the loss of productivity. If you're lucky enough to get a territory with an unlimited supply of iron from the beginning then you may have a chance. But I don't think this is what the developer had planned because I never had that happen. I think you're supposed to build up and then take a territory with unlimited iron deposits. And that would be fine if I wasn't also trying to keep the economy running by providing tools for everyone. Also, what is it with the lack of births? Why am I waiting for new families to settle all of the time? Can we have some weddings and start with the procreation? And that brings me to the timeline for things. People can build things fast and get a lot done in a short amount of time but dealing with taking territory or fighting battles in less than the first year? "Hey Bob, I see you finally got your house built now grab your spear and shield we're off to war!" Are the bandits inside the village or is it their relatives? Who is helping them steal and get away with it? We've got 7 families and everyone should know everyone else but somehow those rabbits we shot yesterday disappeared? Shouldn't a dog have barked at least? Can we not use the militia for a night watch or something? It's not like they're attacking en masse, grab the thief and cut off a finger! No, you have to spend days traveling and not working to destroy the bandit camp and possibly die. I will keep playing this game because I'm intrigued. As a medieval history nerd, this game is the closest thing to replicating actual medieval life in a game and I find that fascinating. I only hope that the developer will continue to tweak, start putting in more than one sentence explanations for things, and maybe explain things better in the tutorials. I think the bones of a truly awesome game are here, but there is still a lot of work to be done.

no tutorial, no guidance, years in development with zero meaningful gains, not sure why this game has such high reviews

I love the game but every playthrough leaves me with the same frustration. When I expand to another region I should be able to freely trade resources between my regions without being forced to use a barter system. In what world does a empire expand and not send food to a village in need.