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
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.
I've found most of my fun comes from envisioning something new every time I play the game like try a different series of town layouts, or a strategy for making money, or how aggressive I want to expand, etc. I think these games thrive when they have enough to allow the basic things to be uniquely used by the players however they can think, should someone have the creativity. I think a game like this will only get better when more things are added to allow people to fulfill whatever they come up with.
@@Gillio66 it’s a fun game I just like builders in general. But without cosmetics(non paid for) or much to do progression wise it’s kinda boring after a while. Eventually everything looks the same and it looks like you are building a vivarium city lol.
100 hours and still very, very engaged. I think certain types of people don't recognize or value the depth and nuance of its systems, specifically the citizens. I have probably spent as long as you have played watching my citizens go about their day. It has fed into the evolution of my design. If one doesn't recognize this or is incapable of processing information of this magnitude, then yes, you will see it as shallow and boring.
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.
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.
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 👏
Exactly mate. It’s a superb game, and you’ll have a thrill. But it’s early access for good reason and is missing a lot of content. I’m really looking forward to seeing how this develops over time.
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.
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.
German makes sense given the name of the regions, but the British voice overs still sound great! Good write up here and yes, worth pointing out I only paid for the 25% discounted price. At $40 it feels a bit harder to recommend as you state.
"ML has to decide, is it a Battle game or a builder " Errrm, it can be both... the two are not mutually exclusive. And that's exactly what this game is aiming to do, hence the interest. "Those of us who spend many hours building a perfect village...." Errrm, you can already do that - it's all in the game option settings, already. "I suspect that the publishers will push the combat, whilst the Dev will want better town building." Errrm, It's already primarily a town builder, so that's not going to just get thrown out. "We will see." Errrm, we can already see where it's heading... you'll be able to play it as you want to, which you already can. And it will not be just "a Battle game ". That's obvious. Talk about seeing a problem where there isn't one.... but you'd have known all this if you had actually played it, or at least watched more than just this one review. But then, you wouldn't have been able to get your pointless 'virtue signalling' in then, would you? 🙄
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.
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.
@@lkp7481 At this moment the building occupants will be doing nothing if you pause production. Just import more wood at trade post and push them to work. They will generate income when you sell finished goods.
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
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..
Thank you mate, that’s exactly what I want people to see when I do the upload. I’m on a 4k screen using shadowplay. I set the bitrate stupidly high as a I have terabytes on my NVME dedicated to this channel just for my recordings (I know the bitrate is pointless being that high due to the compression). I play on a 4090, 64gb of DDR5 and an i13700k. A hefty rig to push the pixels! But once in Premier Pro, I’m rendering this to around 210mb bit rate. This video here for example was a 19gb upload. My thinking is that maybe one day in the future RU-vid might unlock better compression techniques and the video has the higher bitrate and data ready to go. Who knows… either way, I like to get the best quality possible for you all!
As ever you are most welcome mate. It certainly deserves the positive buzz it's been getting and hopefully the positives I've called out show why. But it's definitely early access for a reason and I fear this is going to be one of those massively overhyped games in the next week or two setting expectations for people that are just unrealistic. Thanks for commenting too! Cheers.
Looks good, big fan of builder games, especially ones that include battles. Over powering raiders and steep learning curb are concerning for new comers, but I'll try it.
Lets put everything into perspective (one-man band)...It's a great game with a very good future. Just look at the updates, each one well throughout and relevant. Cracking job that puts so many suppose top games to shame.
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
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"
@@cockneygamer yeah, I don’t mean to hate. But other than the perk tree, the only things added since the 2022 beta is bugs. Don’t recommend buying until the creator shows he’s set on fixing/finishing the game. My personal opinion
@MrShady2099 no hate taken mate, it was insightful! Usually I smash a game for a review and move onto the next one for the next review, so having people like your good self throw in additional information that I wouldn’t know myself is more than welcome, so I appreciate it.
Nice video, the game looks like a comfy city builder. But i will probably wait until it goes out of early access. Also the road mechanics gives me black and White 2 vibes
My best mates are Aussie, so you’re in good company mate! Edit: sorry mate; having a few beers tonight and see you said you’re NOT Australian! Either way, you’re in good company!
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🤞
Played games like this for years now. Why is this suddenly becoming popular? Foundation is one of my favourite games in the last year or so for example.
@@cockneygamer Ye there was another a few years back as well that has similar graphics too. Cant remember the name tho. I will probably try Manor lords but I dont like the RTS part. Would rather just chill and build a city. :)
for me, a big part of my enjoyment of a game is how immersive the world is. in other words, is the world one that i want to hang out in and just watch things unfold? for me, Manor Lords totally nails this aspect of gameplay right out of the box. it's so fun watching my peasants go about their daily lives while i create stories in my head about them. a game hasn't engaged my imagination this much in a very long time. for me, an EA game simply needs to sell the proof of concept - and Manor Lords goes above and beyond in delivering this. My only gripe at this time is that I don't get an 'are you sure you want to overwrite the file'? pop-up when i go to save my game. it's all to easy to save over a file you didn't intend to save over. ....ask me how i know. 🤣🤣
This game doesn't tell you what to do. What you need to do is watch your people. Watch them and gather data, track each one and work back through the supply chain and you will come to the answer. This is brilliant, but I think it is a devalued experience. Modern gaming is all about spoon feeding us answers (or information that makes the answer easy to grasp). Some if us value not having our hands held. Btw, you can change the frequency of raids. Also, the dev himself has stated the combat is a small add on amd I wonder if he regrets putting it in the game as people criticize it as a primary feature.
Really like to get this if good, but again IRL not great so not doing early access or release buys atm. Hearing a bit light on content and keeping an eye on it. Maybe get in a sale next year or something. Love how reggie plonks it all about, Jonney two shoes needs build a knock off PC shop for market trading? Any recent new pc's giveaways lol. Seems it a but like Bannished a lot and can be brutal. but is it balanced & fun enough to repeat over and over? In Reggie we trust! :)
Haha, Jonny Two Shoes is still about, he’s kicking around back here somewhere. I’ll be sure to give you all a little life update in the next review! And yes, it’s definitely one for the sales later on. Thanks mate, appreciate your support as ever.
The rebuild button is apparently bugged and the people that live in that house will glitch out and just stand around idle. The work around is to completely demolish the building and replace, which can be a bitch to do as the demolition will leave logs sat exactly where you need to build and you have to wait for some dickhead to randomly show up with an ox to take the logs away. My two big gripes are; 1) Never enough meat, despite using perks to boost production. IMO this could be fixed by adding meat production to chicken coops and sheep farms. 2) The off-map baron needs to fuck right off. The instant a bandit camp spawns he'll send in his army to kill them and destroy their camp and a minute later he'll claim a territory. It doesn't take long to end up completely surrounded by him.
new to the channel checking some older videos, you got this one spot on! i played for ages, edned up turning riads of and setting weatherto low, but then it became too easy and boring. im letting it cook for whie seewhat the dev comes up
Mainstream hype is shit, I've already had this wishlist since it came up in my radar and same as RattenReich, sucks to suck of being a sheep just following the hype
@cockneygamer just need more ox from what I've experienced. They base their pick ups / drop offs, off of a queue system from I can tell. It's like deleting a market stall and depending on how many granary workers I have it takes them some time to go scoop it up.
I agree. I think this is where it would be nice to maybe have a little more feedback about how things are going. On the Oxen, maybe a breakdown of what tasks they are actually doing so you can clearly see. From what I gather it simply says “assigned” or “unassigned” which doesn’t always tell you enough.
The one dude in a shed part is truly amazing. In a thousand years I don't think i could have whipped up even one element of all the pieces going into this game. For sure this at least deserves some kind of honourable mention. Game design effort of the year.
I really hope the dev team opens up. Clearly this guy is talented, and he has a clear vision. And it took the poor sod 7 years to get here. He deserves the money and resource now to push this through. Thanks for commenting mate.
Yes, a great point and I got this one wrong. I was referring to concurrent players from this article: www.pcgamer.com/games/city-builder/manor-lords-surpassed-100000-concurrent-players-within-hours-of-release-and-now-its-the-global-top-seller-on-steam/ Thank you for calling it out!
I'm not surprised folks are Desperate for Authentic games made by somebody who cares about what ..they re doing. Plus there's been so MANY Mediocre city builders I ve lost count
Looks great, but I think I'll wait until it's been in the oven a bit longer. But I have to say this puts Ubislop and other so called "triple-a" studios to shame.
You have the option to do that.. it's just that here Reggie's defensive forces were defeated, hence the resultant carnage. Did you actually watch the video? 🙄
I have very little faith in this game... This game will be a big discussion in a year or two for a few reasons. 1. The dev is in over his head, the systems in game is a coding mess and to fix it, a rewrite of the fundamental gamecode has to be made. 2. The SOLO DEV without previous experience charged the same price as a AA (or even AAA EA) studio!! 3. Giving above critique of the game will get you banned on the various platforms the dev utilizes. 4. It is also being ported to UE5 in the middle of development, very strange decision. The game looks stunning, but as for a functional game, it will never be what people think it will be so the whole situation will turn into a mess where all these "defenders" will suddenly turn angry af. In business terms these people are called "ambassadors", and they can be both a blessing and a curse. If they feel betrayed (witch they will), they will cause 10x more harm to you than a "normal" user. RU-vid videos like "what happened to Manor lords" or "is Manor lords a scam" will start to pop up where content creators inspect down to the subatomic level of what has actually been done with the game since EA release... And my prediction they will find: "almost nothing has happened, but the dev became a millionaire from charging 40 euro for the solo dev game..." Just give it a year or so more. The lack of bug fixes is already a pretty darn clear indication. (and the reason is point 1 above)
Really interesting take this. Appreciate you sharing your thoughts. Truly, I haven’t played since this review so my assumption is some big upgrades since I played. I’ll be curious to revisit-review it in the time frame you suggest. Thanks for sharing mate.
Great review, just what I needed before spending the money. If there is a casual mode to learn at my own pace as I'm terrible at starting games, I'd probably buy it at some point........well done!
There is a casual mode... you can totally disable all combat elements, entirely. Or, you can have it were you won't be attacked as such (things may get abstractly stolen, without even being raided - so more like a 'event' where you just lose some produce) . You can just play it as an open-ended town builder/management game, with no goals or ending at all. It's all already there in the options to do such.
Absolutely I am! In fact I think it’s important to do so as it shows growth in the game. I believe I did that with Ready or Not if memory serves me well! But yes, in regards to this I would gladly review once it hits 1.0. Thanks for commenting!
You mentioned those dreaded words "early access". You do know what that means don't you ? It means, the game looks good but is fundamentally broken and will probably never be fixed, but if we bulls shit everyone we can still make a lot of money. And why not. If you are stupid enough to give your money, we are dishonest enough to take it.
confused, you want games to spoonfeed you what is happening in your town? alert you when there is a fire or your short on materials? i think thats the problem with modern games. they spoonfeed us so much we have all gotten use to being told what to do than to watch, check, test and do.
There is a difference between spoon feeding and feedback. We Are Billions is a great game that provides robust feedback. Planet Zoo another. Transport Tycoon (Chris sawyer). Original Sim City games. This game is in early access mate, these aren’t features you’d expect this early on. It’s just calling out what they are right now. It’s not a complete game by any stretch and that’s totally ok because it will be in time. But as a game review, and a game that charges money, it’s only right I call this out. The oxen is a great example. Simply saying “assigned” or “unassigned” is not enough info. As your town grows, it would be better to show where they are assigned, what farm or hitching post as it can be a lot to manage. By clicking on a drop down and then clicking the Ox it should zoom you to its location. That’s not spoon feeding at all. That providing you the player feedback so you can make quicker decisions and meaningful ones.
