Manor Lords Review - Is It Really The Best Game of 2024?

Manor Lords is released in early access to much fanfare, so today's review takes a long hard look at it and pulls no punches. But is it really one of the best games ever made? Is it really game of the year?

Well, grab a cuppa and lets chat this and more in todays review.

#manorlords #rts #citybuildinggames #citybuilder #strategy
INTRO: 00:00
GAME OF TWO HALVES: 00:50
HUMBLE BEGINNINGS: 01:28
ROAD BUILDING BLISS: 02:07
A FRESH LOOK AT HOUSING: 02:54
CHALLENGING WEATHER: 03:45
SAVVY FARMING: 04:21
THE NEGATIVES: 05:13
STRIPPED BACK RTS: 07:16
GRAPHICS: 09:08
SOUND: 10:12
FINAL THOUGHTS & SCORE:

[cockneygamer]

Manor Lords is great. It has so much going for it. But it's a half game in this early access state and still needs a LOT of work, so just be weary of the hype.

Also a quick note on 05:39 where I mention you unlock everything very quickly. I am referring to buildings here, for example how a church can be up in no time, or a tavern, or even learning how to craft armor, weapons etc. It's these things that are easy to unlock which I feel in other games you have to work for, but yet Manor Lords still crawls at a slow pace that progression in other areas like the tech tree almost come to a complete standstill.

Love Reggie xxx

[Electrifynn]

Absolutely stunning game, I just hope he hires a dev team to pump out the updates

[Senseslol]

It’s an awesome game for about 50 hours. There just isn’t enough to do right now. Thats fine since it’s early access and free on Xbox pass.

[pinchloaf]

Its a great foundation and enough to keep me satisfied for a while. It needs the diversity that is in the works and a few more UI tweaks but it's in a great place. My biggest missing items are:
1. Flesh out the settlement progressions
2. More resource and building types, eg cattle, cheese, use for things like tools and wood parts. Flesh out the complexity a bit more, more craftable commodities, and do more stuff if livestock. Right now sheep is the only pasture livestock, should be able to eat them, as well as cattle if it gets added.
3. Expanded units and weapon customizations, cavalry, crossbows, armors.
4. Active AI towns would be sick and it looks like that's on the docket. I'm cool with the raiders and bandits for now. Those need some more improvement though.

[qweqwe]

The problem I have with the hype around is that everybody praise the game for what it (hopefully) one day becomes but nearly nobody talks about current state of the game or rather tech demo and early access is an excuse for any bug or roughness of the game. I also think that this game is really promising but in gaming industry I've seen so many unfullfiled ones that I'd rather be cautious and be honest about the game which may take years to come close to at least some of its promises. Even for early access standards this release is so barebones and broken that if it was released by any other dev there would be serious backlash but here the hype, story and promis somehow blinded so many people. Also the solo dev story which is another favourite excuse for the current state of the game is not entirely true since he basically outsourced a lot of demanding work like graphics, music or motion capture animations so it's a bit misleading to think it was all done by single person.

[Jules_Diplopia]

Errrm it is set in the German countryside actually. But Medieval countryside was pretty similar across Europe at that time.
Thanks for giving an honest review.

Yes this is an Early Access game, no it is nowhere near finished, and yes it is a single Dev project (up until now). But at 40 euros, I think the publishers are being greedy. I would happily pay the Dev 30 euros and support him all the way.
No I will stick with Ostriv, an Early Access town builder, made by a single Dev in the middle of a warzone (Ukraine). He only asks 20 euros, so I gave him more, because he doesn't have a publisher. And Ostriv works much more smoothly. It just doesn't have the pointless fighting.

ML has to decide, is it a Battle game or a builder. Those of us who spend many hours building a perfect village, town or city, don't want our work destroyed by some arbitrary AI bandits.
Those who want ancient battles, can't be bothered to build the towns.

I suspect that the publishers will push the combat, whilst the Dev will want better town building. We will see.

[kaiwendrich]

Class review as always !!! This game has huge potential fingers crossed for future development.

[daniellendi]

Finally a proper review. Been waiting ages for this game and love it, but it definitely doesn’t deserve ‘game of the century’ (in its current state) as everybody else claims. Cheers Reggie, keep it up 👏

[kennymccormick]

I thought I could take hundreds of hours, but after 5 hours I told myself that we still have to wait 7 years. I'm bored. I know the next part won't be any different. What I mean is that there is nothing that differentiates it from other parts, all the buildings are built, you can't ignore them. I need to Starts with a different resource to heat, different armies etc.

[Kidraver]

City builders for me are about building the most beautiful city and the best tool to help achieve this is decorations I hope he adds lots, spending time adding them to your creation is really enjoyable also the music sounds chinese at times.

[hdogdizzy]

I’m not even Australian and I really like your videos. Good work

[MrShady]

for anyone wonderin, the game offers almost nothing since the 2022 beta. the only difference is the perks you get from every achievement for town level. if anything, there's more bugs than the 2022 beta. recommend on waiting.

edit after watchiing the entire video - there's a difference between saying "this game is early access" and saying "this game has had LITERALLY 0 progress since 2022"

[TelperionMt]

With only a handful hours into the game, I can say there are things that need polish and QoL improvement, but, for the most part, the city-building aspect is pretty solid. I opted to play in the peaceful-mode and outright skipped the RTS combat of the game, because it was obviously going to be lacking the most out of all the features included in Early Access. Without the combat, this game feels like the spiritual successor to Banished I have been waiting for a good long while. Haven't experienced any crashes and only a bit of occasional screen tearing. Otherwise, the game runs butter smooth on an NVIDIA RTX 3080. Probably thanks to NVIDIA updating their drivers with this game in mind.

Hopefully the dev keeps on tinkering with the game and turns this into a genuine gem of an experience.

[KeiwaM]

My biggest issue with it is the lack of resource management that is available. The fact that I can't cap a resource at a specific number is ridiculous. My town was going in to ruins because I had no planks. Tried fixing it by adding more Saw Pits and everything, didn't help. Then I looked at my weapon stores and I had nearly 500 bows. Just let me cap resources please.

Also Archers suck in the public EA release. Had 100 archers fire at least 5 volleys on a group of relatively unarmored bandits, didn't even kill a single one.

[treycox]

I put in about 35 hours and I have done everything about twice. Once you conquer a map, it’s kinda over.

[parcirecords]

i like it .. i been playing like 18 hours only fighting Bandits too learn the game and i have blast..
saying it is the best game in 2024 when we aren't even in the middle of the year is a bit too much in my opinion..
but it is a great medieval city builder and the graphics are great..
the battle are honest and not too hard against bandits so it's not like you don't have chance.
Also i like that is open yes you have scenario's but they are not too story driven.
and if you take the whole map your are busy for a few days if you play against an AI it is even more .. and if they but some more content in along the way thsi could be a cool game and even a future franchise that can go too other time periods too..
the only thing that would be cool is a multiplayer option so you can play against a friend and an AI or against all Friends .. because that would make for great gameplay..

[ShibbyRL]

The game at normal speed doesn’t need to be sped up… if anything maybe have more precise sliders for game speed, instead of 4x to 12x have 2x so on and so forth

[albionjames]

Great review as always not tainted by crazy hype. Thanks CG

[TinyBellEnd]

put quite simply... no, its not, its another overhyped unfinished game released too early into the dev cycle. With that being said, it does look promising and is quite an incredible achievement for a one man studio

[alishalileh]

Very intrigued by this game. Will have to wait after the Elden Ring DLC and Baldur’s Gate 3.(yet to start). Good thing it’s still in early access. Hope it’ll be worth it🤞