Since buying into the early access of this game two years ago, I've been keeping a close eye on the development and it's unfortunate to say that the progression of what could have been an amazing game in an under-served genre has found itself in a ditch. Like many other reviews have already commented, the AI pathfinding is buggy, there is a lack of endgame content, basic agriculture like crop rotation and ploughing is buggy and fails to work half the time, etc. etc. This isn't what my review will touch on; it has already been established that many fundamental issues aren't being addressed.
What I want to touch on is the current state of the studio Slavic Magic and moreso the narrative around Greg the developer. This isn't a hate review of Greg, as I still somewhat believe in him, but this belief is slowly draining each day. Now for those who bought in at the start, you would've known Greg as the sole developer behind Manor Lords; if you played at the beginning of early access, you would've been hit with a pop up detailing this fact each time you launched the game. This is honestly commendable for having delivered what more or less is a similar version of the Manor Lords today save for the modern version having a few more bells and whistles back in 2024 as a single developer. Awe inspiring actually and has created this layer of mysticism surrounding Greg. Compound this with disgruntled players from the Paradox and Total War franchises and you create almost a messianic figure in Greg. He is our saviour, a single man set out to do what these triple A studios couldn't and we should all be blessed for having the opportunity to play this game in early access.
However, this is no longer the case. We are no longer dealing with just Greg at this point but an entire studio he has built. Slavic Magic has dedicated 3d modellers, mappers, artists, coders, etc. it's not just Greg plugging away at it on his own. On top of that, we have Hooded Horse, an already successful and established double A publisher in this genre of Medieval games aiding in advertisement and other avenues Slavic Magic no longer needs to worry about for a successful launch. Yet, despite this, we are still faced with bugs and issues that were there on day 1. I understand game development doesn't happen overnight, I understand Greg was once working at this alone and thus had to balance development, publishing, and a plethora of other factors, but come on, it has been two years how are we just now adding in stone churches?
Unfortunately, a vast majority of the community is still under the influence of Greg's messianic tale. If you go onto the Manor Lords discord and levy any criticism, constructive or otherwise, at the project, you will be met with angry fans spilling vitriol for daring to say otherwise. I'll even wager under this review there will be angry believers offended by my audacity. This is not a healthy place to be for a community and will only lead to death spirals that eventually leads to the community becoming nothing more than a husk. It is what it is and I don't blame Greg of course because how could he anticipate this success(they've made over 80 million in revenue btw) and the mix of fans that elevated him to such a position, but holy some of you need to see reality for what it is.
If you're looking to buy this game, I wouldn't recommend it for its current price tag of 40 USD. It's a decent game for a couple of hours of play, but only really that much as there is no real endgame and it gets stale rather fast. It definitely won't replace any Total War or Paradox games that you are disgruntled with if you are coming from those franchises, so I would leave those expectations at the door despite what game journos are saying. Hopefully Slavic Magic will come out of this stump and we will get a coherent path towards 1.0.
