Manor Lords Review (markysam)
First off, I want to remind anyone reading that this game is currently in Early Access, so whilst I'll list things which seem broken or missing, I am not marking them down at this point as it's not even in Beta...
TLDR at the start...
The good - Beautiful to look at, the building mechanics work nicely, the combat whilst basic is pretty good but to me not the core gameplay for this this title ( more an added bonus ). For someone like me who was disappointed by the Guild 3 this one REALLY scratches the itch of a good medieval city builder.
The not as good - It's not finished yet, some of the upcoming mechanics are hinted at ( experience for individual retinue soldier, increased policies etc... ), trade ( as you might expect at the start of EA ) is a little imbalanced, and you hit the tipping point ( players of Total War games will know what I mean ) fairly quickly in terms of military power leaving you with the expansion of your village/towns as the end goal.
Buy it or not ? I was one of the bazillion people who wishlisted this. I also have xbox game pass so could have got it for free, but I still bought it in the hope that the Dev would get enough cash in to continue delivering his vision. I love where this game looks to be going. It is in a very good state for an early access title, but it is lacking some longevity at the moment so I will likely only check back in to play after major updates. I am super excited for the end product. So I would say if you want to support the Dev to continue delivering his vision, buy it with your eyes open and help support it on the understanding it's not finished but still very playable. If you're more risk averse, wait till launch when hopefully we'll all be blown away by what is delivered :)
Detailed observations
Things I love
*This game is beautiful... Playing it on 4070 with everything maxed out, the level of detail is incredible. The lighting, the way the terrain reacts to the weather ( rain, snow, wind ), little details like creatures running and flying in the countryside. If you were playing on a VR headset and stuck a cow pat on your desk for the authentic aroma you might believe you were out in the countryside ! :)
*Things like your villagers running away screaming when brigands get close add immersion
*Building system is brilliant. Seriously I love the way placing housing works.
*Being able to zoom in to the level of seeing individuals and the work they're doing, even your oxen !
*The agriculture model is very nice... Effectively models fertility and crop rotation ( even if it is a little confusion at first)
*The third person spectate function is a wonderful touch and gives you a great way to explore your village
*Sounds and audio are fantastic
Things which need finishing or improving ( all of these I would deem to be usual sort of issues when a game is released to EA. The whole point of EA is to get more eyes playing the game to spot stuff )
*Balance
- Baron takes territory too readily
- Trade is imbalanced making it too easy to get money, but without the money it's hard to defeat the baron so overall balance is in need of tuning
- Unit balance needs finalising... Archers seem underwhelming at the moment
*Pathing - Your units sometimes take some whacky routes and don't follow the easiest roads which can be a problem when your village is attacked by brigands
*Collision detection - units can walk through your castle wall but not the gate
*QoL improvements - Being able to get more detail on what the order of the building queue is and where bottlenecks are in production more easily are good examples...
*Policies need to be fleshed out more. There are currently only a few switched on
*Development points tree needs tuning and balancing
*Manor building needs work and fixing ( see aforementioned pathing comment. There's no point in the walls other than for the looks at the moment.
Overall I'm really happy with the state of the game given it's EA status. There's clearly a lot of stuff to be completed / new stuff to be added so I hope that Greg will be posting some plans for future updates and functionality in the near future so we can all see where he is going with this. I'm sure that after all the hype of the launch, it's going to take some time to process the flood of feedback but from what I've seen so far the engagement model is fantastic so I'm really hopeful that this will become a fully fleshed out and fantastic title at launch.
Thanks for reading if you made it this far !
MS