Rising Lords

Frustrating game that I wanted to like. - Tutorial is very brief (3-5 minutes), and leaves out the majority of systems to know or 'how to do a specific thing'. Normally not a problem, as i like discovering myself, but it was often the case that 'this game doesnt have that, so you cant do that' rather than discovering the system. - I found the story turns rushed. First time playing, I was always against enemies with over 100+ more units than myself. When I replay the mission (knowing exactly that to expect, and optimizing turns accordingly) I could beat with ease, but it was annoying that there was little freedom to explore and play the game. I was often forced to do something in 6 turns (like get from point A to point B) and needed exactly 6 turns to physically achieve that movement. More flexibility, less "game over in T minus 3..." would have been nice. When other reviews say "campaign is on rails, and you will get crushed if you do not do EXACTLY the right thing each turn to fulfill X", they weren't exaggerating. Might as well just have every player following the same video tutorial, doing the same thing, at the same time, following the same recording, which was boring/annoying. - Story is very childish and rough. A mix of 'pick one of two irrational/childlike responses that fundamentally have no impact or meaning' and just bad writing. Regarding bad writing, some responses, such as "They are criminals!" made it impossible to tell who 'they' were (in the context you're given, it could be the knights raiding the people, the people themselves resisting being raided, the bad guys that you just ousted from the town your knights just took back, or your own brothers men). A minor thing, but it felt like AI writing. - City building, as simple as it is, often didn't make sense. It was extremely hard to tell in a given turn why you just lost 2-3 workers when health is relatively unchanged and around 50, happiness 90+, and no events ongoing. Just suddenly less workers, and the neighboring towns are less well off. Even with multiple towns/zones, it was unclear how you are supposed to plan for growth and food seasons, especially if you have animals mixed in with your crops. Only once did i get a message that people were happy and population had stabilized, and i should consider raising taxes (and the very next turn, lost workers without making any changes). I wish you could pause smithys, but nope, you have to physically drag the workers off and back on. Im going to try to give it another 7 hours, but my after my first 7 hours, i found myself wishing i could get a refund (much of that 7 hours was spent replaying the first 3 missions/2 hours of gameplay). Will update if something changes.

Briefly: Tried hard to enjoy this game—20+ hours, tutorials, everything. Story is childish and pointless, scenarios are unclear and overly punishing, UI hides key features, and resource logic is never explained. Feels more like stressful busywork than a strategy game. Details: I really tried to play this game. I spent more than 20 hours playing, 2–3 hours watching tutorials, and honestly… the experience is extremely frustrating. 1. The campaign story is childish and adds no value. I don’t want to read a long, childish-feeling narrative filled with weird character names. I can’t remember who is who, and the story provides no meaningful contribution to the gameplay. It just gets in the way and feels like filler. 2. Scenario design is unclear, buggy, and punishing for no reason. There are extremely tight time windows to finish missions, but the game barely explains defeat conditions. For example, in “Reestablishing the North,” the scenario suddenly ends without showing remaining turns or giving any warning. It feels like the developers don’t understand game design and instead created a rigid checklist, where failing one vague task = instant defeat. Is this supposed to be a game or a mission-critical workplace simulator? 3. No creative freedom — gameplay feels like multidimensional chess, not strategy. There is only one correct way to manage your lands. No alternative strategies, no emergent gameplay. Just micromanagement, cognitive overload, and a feeling of doing busy work rather than making meaningful decisions. 4. Resource mechanics are unclear and poorly communicated. Sometimes your resources suddenly drop to zero without a clear explanation. Sure, armies consume food—but how much? When? Under which conditions? The game never explains it well. 5. UI is a mess — essential features are hidden. After 10+ hours, I found out from a tutorial that lords have another hidden dashboard on the army screen. Unbelievable. They even show that dashboard on the loading screen, so I assumed it was some late-game feature. If a game hides critical mechanics behind obscure UI, that is a design failure. Conclusion: Bad game or not even a real game? After all this time, I still can’t decide whether Rising Lords is simply a bad game, or not a game at all. The potential is there, but the execution is fundamentally flawed.

Campaign is on rails that absolutely steamrolls you if you don't know the exact combo the game wants you to build up from launch.

[h1]Rising Lords[/h1] My experience with this game was dreadful in so many ways that I'm stunned I experienced so many bad design decisions and poor game play choices in just two hours. I figured I'd have been playing 5 or more hours to encounter such incompetence. Rising Lords is supposed to be a turn-based strategy game. What you get is a "hope you don't get totally screwed by randomness or lousy game design" simulator. It's truly stunning that this game has any positive reviews at all. There are really two game play modes, a campaign and a single map mode. I didn't make it through much of the campaign because it's scripted to the point that there's no freedom there at all. What the game does is dictates exactly what I need to do by when,(take X City by Y Turn) or you lose. End of story. hile I expect events to happen during a campaign, I'd also expect that the developers would allow for some player agency to explore the mechanics of the game. They don't. The very first campaign mission requires you kill your opponent within 19 turns or the game is over. So you don't even get a chance to do your own thing - if you don't focus purely on building an army big enough to take that enemy within 19 turns, you're not winning. So everything you do has to be predetermined for that singular, timed event. That's not a strategy game. That's a puzzle game. Note that what a player can build on the maps and where is also largely predetermined (more on that in a minute). Put those two together and you, Dear Reader, probably have quickly realized that you have virtually no player agency in the campaign. As a player, you can build certain types of buildings and raise an army. That's about it. There's no research tree. You can't build resource gathering spots and the handful of buildings you can build depend on those resources. And those buildings can't be built without the right resources, which you can't get without the pre-determined resource nodes. So what you can do 100% limited by the resource nodes you have in the area. You just can't build a resource node. It doesn't matter that the tile is a forest. If there's not a forestry already built, you can't build one. I bailed on the campaign because I wanted to actually play the game with some agency rather than having to play a puzzle game, So I selected a map and started a scenario. I put the computer AI on easy so I could start to figure out how to play the game. Should be fun, right? Except my city - and the next one over - had no stone. That's a bit of an issue. If I have no stone, I can't build an armory. Without an armory I can't build an army because I can't make swords and armor (beyond simple and ineffective peasants, which isn't going to beat anyone). And with no army, I can't take a city with stone so I can build the armory to outfit my army. Oh and there's no trader around so I can't buy it either. WHAT THE HELL IS THIS CRAP? Let's restart the same map and try again. Okay, the game must want me to make a lightning strike on the nearest city with stone (remember that lack of player agency?). On turn 1 - I'm not kidding here - I got an event. Someone stole all my taxes. No taxes = no army. Yep, my entire army was disbanded on Turn 1. Remember that whole "no stone, no armory, no armor, no army, no conquering cities" loop? Yeah, here we go again. I'm stubborn though and gave it the good ole' college try. On attempt #3 on the 2nd turn, a bear attacked my resource node, effectively shutting it down and killing a peasant. If this were a game on disc, I would have thrown it across the room. Three strikes and you're out. This wasn't worthy of my time, never mind my money. And beyond that pile of bollocks, let's talk about some other things that make this Baby's First Game design. The UI is terrible. - Sometimes trying to move a peasant from one tile to another will cause "sticky" peasants and move all of them instead of just the one you want to move. - Sometimes moving a peasant from one tile to another changes the tile production (had this go from wheat to a pasture field). - Clicking sometimes doesn't work at all - You should be able to scroll when you're on the map edges but you can't scroll South due to info bar being there - Where you need to click isn't consistent or always apparent, like trying to build walls in a settlement requires you to click the edge of the map tile whereas you have to click the center of the tile for other items. - The local army keeps jumping around from tile to tile. Considering it's grossly oversized and takes up about two tiles worth of space, this is VERY distracting. - The same tutorial messages every time I start a game with seemingly no "don't show this again" button. - The same 'don't exit when this icon is flashing' required every time I load the game with no opt out. - The AI must be moronic. I put a city on auto and it decided to remove all of my civilians from one of the livestock fields. If I didn't manually intervene, that would have killed all my livestock. Because sheep obviously can't eat grass on their own. - It also crashed once during launch. That's a mess of issues. And it's not like the combat is going to save this game. The (albeit limited) combat I played wasn't engaging at all. It was very basic rock-paper-scissors tile based combat that you'd find in pretty much any game. Move two tiles and attack type stuff. I didn't see zones of control or anything that might provide a more in-depth experience. The only variable is that you can have cards that provide certain combat abilities. That's been done before many times and usually that doesn't provide enough tactical flexibility to truly make a difference. This is a game where I'd be pressing the auto-combat button repeatedly because it's just not deep enough to warrant my time and attention. Folks, if you haven't figured it out by now, I think this game absolutely sucks. You should treat this like a piece of malware and never install it. Even if it's offered in a bundle for $1, buy something else. Even if you don't end up playing the other game it'll still be a better experience than trying to play Rising Lords.

The bugs in this game make it crash constantly. For the very basic graphics it uses, it seems to overly tax my gaming laptop's resources. The DLC has so many bugs I couldn't list them all in the space provided. The DLC is unplayable until the bugs are fixed.

I regret buying this years ago. Its even buggier now. After some time, you can select units any more etc. I already had this bug (different PC) before, its not fixed yet. But hey, there is a big banner that they wasted tax money on this...nice

Some parts are kinda half-baked, but at its core the game is simple fun, and it looks good. I had fun playing through the campaign story, which was interesting enough. With a little more polish, it could be a great game.

If you played the classic Lords of the Realm 1 and 2 games this is the closest thing to a proper sequel, with changes that do not take away from the originals but instead keeps the essence of what made them unique and enjoyable, while improving it in how the economics and battles work...something the 3rd installment failed to do. The battles are not in real time, but they add more strategy and tactics to the game and are a welcome change.

I loved the Lords of the Realm series (I and II) and decided to pick up Rising Lords. It adds some features to its spiritual successor, but the core idea is the same. The management element of the game works. It is not too complicated to build up your economy and an army. The combat is also turn based. You move around your units on a hexagon map and use cards to give buffs and debuffs. I liked the cardsystem to give it a bit more depth, but it's all still very straightforward. The graphics are not too bad and I liked the artstyle. I had a few hours of nostalgic fun. Give this a try If you are looking for a quick and casual strategy game in a medieval setting.

Avoid