Manor Lords Early Access Review – Royal Treatment

Between seven years of development and three million wishlists, Manor Lords by Slavic Magic has its fair share of expectations. Your mileage may vary, as it caters more to the quaint city-builder – it’s evenly paced, at times feeling a bit slow, but also meditative and deceptively challenging. Even with some rough corners, seemingly unwinnable situations and the potential to go more in-depth, the early access release draws you in, making you care about your village throughout its three unique scenarios.

"Your village will slowly expand and attract other villagers, requiring more housing, a proper marketplace to distribute different types of food and necessities, clothing and even amusement."

Though set during the 14th century and even sports some real-world locations, Manor Lords doesn’t conform to any period of history or dive too deep into historical conflicts. Dirt and a single camp of settlers is your inheritance; that customized coat of arms represents no standing army (forget the non-existent coffers and treasury). Upon this humble rock, you must build your settlement, construct housing for your people, and secure food and fuel supplies. Other lords tend to their business, and you can either engage in trade, declare war or ignore them completely.

Manor Lords eases you into the role of would-be ruler pretty decently, explaining the benefits of connecting roads and cattle (like how they assist in faster transport of materials and construction) or how to set up gathering, hunting and storage facilities. I could have used a better explanation for growing crops – leaving the soil fallow and restoring some of its fertility made sense, but waiting several months and not seeing a shred of wheat harvested didn’t.

Your village will slowly expand and attract other villagers, requiring more housing, a proper marketplace to distribute different types of food and necessities, clothing and even amusement. More nuanced options also become available, like adding backyard facilities to specific houses, enabling a surplus of eggs or hides.

However, simply constructing houses left and right isn’t the best solution if there aren’t enough supplies. Pushing your gatherers and hunters may also seem like the best solution, but so is being careful to not overload the storage, since excess resources can become spoiled from rain and other environmental conditions or cause animals to migrate, thus wiping out a stable source of food.

Then again, worrying about the variety of foods available is also important to fulfill your citizens’ needs (which trade can mitigate to an extent). Approval is surprisingly lenient initially, though not catering to the people means you can’t upgrade their housing and thus receive passive income. It’s much easier than it seems to railroad yourself, stagnating the growth of the village and any available forces. Occupying another territory to avail its resources is easier said than done since you need to build up influence, which feels a little too high at present, or utilize the King’s Favor.

Choosing your starting region isn’t much of a hassle since they each have the same resources, but you can’t select the position of your starting camp. It could be near essential food sources or not, which became annoying when the animals migrated and I suddenly needed to gather berries from across the map.

"Progress can seem slow at times, but it affords more opportunities to appreciate the little things. The mild hustle and bustle as your villagers go about their daily activities and the lilting soundtrack bring the medieval village to life."

Progress can seem slow at times, but it affords more opportunities to appreciate the little things. The mild hustle and bustle as your villagers go about their daily activities and the lilting soundtrack bring the medieval village to life. An experimental third-person camera further increases immersion, allowing you to roam among the citizenry on the ground level. Despite being a work-in-progress, it works surprisingly well (outside of that one building being a black void), offering a new perspective as you watch villagers clean clothes, drop off supplies in the marketplace, and so on.

Unfortunately, keeping closer tabs on them from a bird’s eye is slightly more challenging. While hitting Tab showcases which buildings have people in them, so you know if facilities like the forge or mining pits are currently running, no list showcases what everyone is doing at a single glance.

Since you need to unassign citizens from tasks to aid in construction or even have them tackle different jobs to curry up materials for trading, there’s some furtive clicking involved. A singular list to assign and unassign individuals would be an excellent quality-of-life feature. Tracking the progress of resources gained and lost with some graphs would also be helpful.

As your village grows, you can invest in different developments, unlocking benefits that make ploughing fields faster or provide passive incomes of bread and firewood. You can also enact policies for some double-edged benefits, but Policies are underdeveloped right now, so it should be interesting to see what other options emerge during early access.

As for combat, it’s a spectacle, as you deploy your troops and can either have them engage the enemy full force, bait them in or stand their ground. It’s easy to manage, and there was at least one opportunity where a unit kept some raiders distracted while another picked their flank apart. Of course, there’s not much to do against sheer numbers, and it felt somewhat unfair to see a raiding party roughly three times the size of my army beeline from across the map to destroy it.

Since the villagers constitute your standing army, losing even a few can be rough; having them wiped out so decisively means a quick restart and pondering what I could have done differently (like having the means to bring on Mercenaries earlier).

"As for combat, it’s a spectacle, as you deploy your troops and can either have them engage the enemy full force, bait them in or stand their ground."

"Whether or not it caters to others’ expectations and offers this sweeping medieval playground or a peaceful city-builder that makes you ponder each decision carefully, Manor Lords is an all-around solid title."

Don’t get me wrong – I like that aspect of citizens turning warriors since it makes the people feel much more important rather than just passive resource income. It’s just that the negatives – like potentially losing my workforce – far outweigh the positives, namely some influence and bandits’ corpses.

There are other areas where Manor Lords could stand to improve, like adding random events and occurrences to assuage some of the boredom between long waits. While there’s still a lot to be done, be it in terms of promised features, inherent systems or overall polish, Slavic Magic has something special. It runs great, and I experienced very few technical issues like the camera occasionally slingshotting to a different part of the map or some placeholder text.

For what early access has to offer, it’s worth trying, especially with its different scenario objectives, ranging from peaceful to outright domination and difficulty sliders to customize your experience. Whether or not it caters to others’ expectations and offers this sweeping medieval playground or a peaceful city-builder that makes you ponder each decision carefully, Manor Lords is an all-around solid title. Albeit one that needs more time to grow, yet equipped with its own charm and engaging gameplay loop right out of the gate.

This game was reviewed on PC.