Manor Lords (Early Access)

It's hard not to get carried away by the pleasant medieval music that greets me in the main menu. Magnificent art and fantastic opportunities to customise my experience are the premise of Manor Lords, a medieval city builder, and that's obvious when you get to painting your weapon (or shield) with a plentiful selection of colour choices and settings. Crusader Kings 3 has a similarly deep system for this, and outside of that game, I've rarely seen such a comprehensive system for what is effectively just an icon. So, what makes this unique? Well, the developers behind the project have been very clear that it cannot be compared to, for example, Total War or Cities: Skylines.

Despite similar real-time battles, I can state that Manor Lords is first and foremost a city builder not unlike Anno, Tropico, The Settlers or Banished. It has a very slow pace, even for the genre, for better or for worse, and just like in The Settlers, gameplay pretty much begins by seeing workers transport resources from one place to another. First, trees are felled and made into planks, before being transported by another worker to build a structure and begin the growth of your city. These are residents you don't just see as a number, but who wander around the world, live, age, and then die, and this level of detail does a lot for the experience.

Slavic Magic has worked hard on this project and it shows in not just the music and art, but also in the graphics and gameplay systems, which are above expectations for an indie project. That care rubs off on me because, as a consequence of their well-crafted systems, I care about the community I build in-game. Even if the cities can ultimately grow to feature castles and walls, it is still the journey there that is most significant. Memories are made all the time like when you build your first church or manage to solve hunger issues. Just like in Anno 1800 or Dungeon Keeper, you can wander around your world and look at its constructions in detail. Thanks to the graphics, the seasons and the day and night cycle, it feels like a real place, and depending on what you build or ask your workers to produce, the cities will look different. You can create more specialised communities or more multi-faceted ones. The choice is yours.

It's important to note that you take over areas to advance your city's development, as more territory gives you more opportunities to acquire more resources. It's a bit like the system in Cities: Skylines where you acquire new areas to build on, even if you won't be building several cities in the same area nor on the scale in that aforementioned series. I am very pleased with the presentation and how it adds to the gameplay. The seasons, for example, affects harvests, what your villagers do and how the environments look, as well as which resources are most in demand. You can really feel the comfort of spring when the snow recedes, even though it's just a game.

Another important cornerstone is the user interface and construction menus. I don't like the icons in the build menu, and I think that instead of a picture of the houses, symbols are needed to distinguish the buildings. You currently have five or more images of buildings with similar appearances, which creates unnecessary confusion and you have to hover over the buildings with the mouse pointer to use the information boxes to clearly see what you want to build. That being said, it's easy to draw zones and place the construction sites, and to decide how many buildings to break ground on, or which technology tree to invest in to get more tools to create the city of your dreams.

The battles that have been an important part of the marketing are not as big an aspect of this as one might first think, as it takes time for the city to grow enough that you can produce soldiers from your residents. They must be of a certain age and male for that matter, plus you need to produce the weapons and equipment they wear like armour. You can also hire mercenaries for money to aid in battles. These battles take place in real-time in or outside the cities where you control soldiers similar to Total War, albeit with some more advanced tools, and I was impressed with how you can slowly withdraw your troops to lure the enemy into traps. You move columns of troops, order infantry to attack and archers to fire their arrows, all of which is seamless and smooth, and presented well. However, don't expect that to be the focus or that you can do it immediately, as it took me many hours before I could fight and command large enough armies to employ intricate strategy.

Strategically, you have tons of options for building your communities. It reminds me a lot of Anno in that sooner or later you will be able to collect all possible resources necessary to "win", even if you specialise more in something and sell that item to computer controlled opponents via trading systems. However, there are several ways to get there and to see the end of a campaign, but it's here, just like in almost all competitors, that the title's biggest problems lie. The game almost stops suddenly and without much of a grandiose end. Maybe the developers should look at something similar to the upcoming Frostpunk 2 or find their own ways to make the final portion of the game more interesting.

This being said, in general, Manor Lords is a fantastically assembled city builder for those of you with some patience and an interest in history. It's more reminiscent of The Settlers and Banished than something like SimCity, yet at the same time, it has battles in certain situations that bring to mind Total War, all while still being something all on its own. It stands out with lovely music, a living world and a charming simulation of medieval societies. I don't think it's quite perfect, with a distinct lack of maps and the absence of certain gameplay elements that are still in development, but it's nevertheless an incredibly promising game in its genre. Even the lack of things to do at the end of the campaign doesn't stop the journey there from being great. I'm always reluctant to recommend buying Early Access, but Manor Lords makes that principle hard to stick to, more so if the developers maintain their passion and build on this until the full release, as this could be a true masterpiece in its genre. Right now it's really good with great potential.