Manor Lords Review - 'Buy, Wait for Sale, Never Touch?'

Manor Lords Early Access Review
I normally don't do early access coverage much but there are so many oddities with the coverage so far with comparisons to Total War and other titles. It got so bad the Manor Lords Devs have even tried to calm it down.

Manor Lords is a medieval strategy game featuring in-depth city building, large-scale tactical battles, and complex economic and social simulations. Rule your lands as a medieval lord -- the seasons pass, the weather changes, and cities rise and fall.
All Reviews:
Very Positive (14,591)
Release Date:
Apr 26, 2024
Developer:
Slavic Magic
Publisher:
Hooded Horse

Coming on the 26th for PC game pass and Steam early access and Xbox gamepass later.
Join this channel to get access to perks:

MORE REVIEWS
Harold Halibut review
Like a Dragon Gaiden the Man who erased his name review

2 podcast weekly, game reviews for titles I buy with my cash and give out to patrons, behind the scenes videos, discords private streams, and swag.
Join the acg discord now and get 100% on BS gaming coverage
🕶 If you want to help out the channel you can buying a game on Epic use the ACG creator code KARAK-ACG
Follow me on Twitter for reviews and info @jeremypenter

🕶 Welcome to what I hope is the best videogame review channel on youtube.
Subscribe to ACG for video-game reviews, where Karak pays his own money even if the developers given him a code for the game. Previews on new games, top gaming news, funny and informative shorts and much more.

We also do the Best Gaming and Videogame Podcast each friday

ACG Reviews and Podcast can be found at the following links

🕶 Karak with ACG or angrycentaurgaming, covers new games, old games, previews, reviews, and opinions on the videogame industry and leading podcasts on new gaming subjects each week that you can get by joining this channel to get access to perks: Gaming discord.

Coverage includes ps4, PS5, XBox series X/s, Xbox one, pc, Switch, and digital storefronts like Steam, as well as companies like Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo.
Buy, wait for a sale, rent, or never touch it. The Patented Karak review system to see if a game is worth a buy upon release or if I recommend waiting.

[ACGreviews]

My take on what Manor Lords is like and what it offers in the Early Access Timeframe!

[SloMoMonday]

When the dev made the post discribing all the things he's game is and isn't, he hit on exactly what I was looking for. Glad it holds up.

[boburrides]

The real question: will Henry come to see us?

[TheWildManEnkidu]

5:54 - it's a tiny detail but as a student of archery, it's wonderful to see an almost perfect representation of drawing a longbow in a game. They really nailed it.

[cmykmatter]

Making the game you want to make will always result in a better game than making the game you feel you have to make due to the audience. Every time I come across a game that feels like it had checkboxes of trendy mechanics they had to hit, I can't help but feel like the creators strayed from their vision to hit them.

[landsbyreview]

Man, this looks good. I love how they incorporate how modern RTS and citybuilders feels like. Less micromanagement and more natural evolution of the city.

[despot]

I’d love to see a deeper acknowledgment of those who fell in battle. Like a mourning mechanism or an indication so when you select a family to perform a task you would know that one of theirs died fighting for you.

[MuzzySkeleton]

I'm going to use the city or village layouts from Kingdom Come/ Witcher 3 and recreate them in my Manor Lords playthrough. I always enjoyed how some of the buildings were placed, making the villages/city easy to traverse.

[madclown]

Love that you decided to review this, it really needs some realistic reviews so that the hype train doesn't wreck it if it doesn't live up to the enormous hype that is around it

[swampssa]

Im tired of getting burned out on early access games. Once they’re finished and more stuff has been added on regular release I just don’t feel like playing. I’m waiting for this one. Super excited about it but I’ll come back next year after they do what they want to it.

[siciliangamer]

ACG replaced the dearly departed (and irreplaceable) TB for me.

[RTRJN]

love mix-genres i see myself from M&B Bannerlords migrating to Manorlords

[tle]

This actually sounds awesome. I slept on this but after your review it's now high on my list.
*Thanks ACG!* Been watching you since 2013 and your quality has only improved. Really grateful to you and your channel.

[greymalkin]

Best reviews on Youtube. You have not steered me wrong once. Thank you for your excellent research and review.

[Zihenroy]

Using families and not single people is not weird, its new, its innovative. Most gamedevs are afraid to use small new stuff like this in their games.

[ssjbargainsale]

Hey man, I've been following you for many years now and I gotta say, you never disappoint. Every review I check out is in depth and well-thought-out. Really informative stuff. Thanks for that

[HAL]

Been excited for this. Hope they stick with it. Thanks for the review!

[Asytra]

All I've really been looking for is a good, in-depth, town builder. The extra stuff like small scale battles and regional diplomacy/conflict is icing on the cake. I had a BLAST with the demo that was out a few years back and I'm REALLY looking forward to this one. I have Gamepass so I'll play it there for now, but when full release drops I'll buy it on Steam.

[J-STAR]

I'm mainly an RTS guy, but I dee the appeal to city builders. I like the ones where you build you currently up and monster or some creature tries to knock it down.

[pj_ytmt-]

Glad to find out he sold 1M copies at launch, but that figure has since plunged to 10k concurrent players (so the video title made a wrong prediction).

Some thoughts I had:
- game is quite pricey for an early access product
- establishing supply chains hinted at lots of micro-management
- ironically, I learnt from watching youtube videos that gameplay involved expanding within starter region, then expanding to nearby regions, which means the micro-management thing is COMPOUNDED
- youtube videos also highlighted the amount of supply-chain/resource upgrades needed to equip a small squad of farmers
- no multi-player
- even if in future eg. each map (every region conquered) becomes a "player kingdom" that other players can invade, it's still an isolated instance. But this type of PvP model I don't mind at all.
- as is, it's really a game for hardcore city-builder nerds, a niche compared to the Total War crowd
- being a solo indie project means it's probably going to have lots of missing features, lots of features that are shallow implementations, that either don't really affect or have oversized effects on the outcomes (ie. make or break)
- 👍👍 for CHURCHES 😊😊