Starting Like a Lord

Manor Lords is one of the most ambitious projects, if not the most ambitious project I've ever seen in the world of RTS, its proposal is to combine the genre well known for games like Starcraft, Command & Conquer and Warcraft, but now combined with the city management genre system, similar to games like Sim City.

Personally, I found it to be a brilliant idea, the two styles are already somewhat similar when it comes to managing resources in a territory, so I believe that the combination makes everything more interesting and complex, making the game much more attractive to those who already know the genres.
 

And surprisingly, when you think about a combination like this, it definitely comes to mind "wow, this game must be very complicated", and in a way it's not wrong, because the game has a huge variety of systems, but fortunately it was well polished and has very simple and didactic tutorials.

Making the game not one of those where learning is the biggest obstacle, maybe a bit more challenging for those who are not used to any similar game, but I believe that other players like me who are already familiar will not have great difficulties.
 

Something that spices up the gameplay even more is the fact that you can try to play without the direct part of major conflicts, which is not yet available in the test version I played, but one of the options the player will have when another territory is tense is to try to resolve diplomatically and avoid conflict.

A detail that I found somewhat crucial, because at certain times, you will have to focus your efforts on taking care of your population, increasing food production, fuel for the winter, or building housing so they don't die or simply leave your territory.

Effort, Strength, or Prosperity?

Right off the bat, the game gives us the choice between three scenarios to start my aspirations of being a feudal lord. Each of Manor Lords scenarios reflects the style of gameplay you can expect, designated by one of the three final objectives: growth, domination, or conquest.

The "Rise to Prosperity" model is more of a sandbox mode, allowing you to delve into city building and management systems without worrying about rival lords, enemy invasions, or real-time battle tactics, this was the one I ended up playing for longer, because I wanted to understand better how the city systems worked without interruptions.
 

"Restoring the Peace" requires you to devise strategies to eliminate other lords and claim their territories, and finally, "On the Edge" puts the RTS elements in focus, with even more battles to face, as you struggle to maintain your domains and achieve the highest settlement ranking.

The game also allows you to create a custom game mode, where you can choose the attack settings, weather, include opponents off the map, raid frequency, and how many initial supplies you start with.

And as a first game experience, I say that the first years are tough, everything is very slow, because you have few members in your settlement and few resources, so it ends up being very gradual, but fortunately there is a time acceleration tool that is a blessing (but sometimes a curse), which helps to make this beginning faster.
 

And when I say that sometimes the time acceleration button can be a curse, I'm not kidding. If you are a bit absent-minded like me, and use it so you don't have to wait for a certain construction to be completed, but you forget to put workers in your plantation, and since you accelerated time, winter comes and you lost your harvest.

Contemplating the Middle Ages
 

Something that I found very impressive were the game's graphics, when the camera is far away everything is very beautiful, but the surprise comes when you decide to zoom in on people and buildings and then you see the insane level of detail that the NPCs have.
You can see in detail the faces of the characters, facial and movement expressions, also of the animals and buildings, which makes the game much more alive and organic, giving the player more of the feeling of what a real city would be like.

This level of detail is also very evident in the changes of seasons, the game can convey very well that a new season is coming because the scenery gradually changes as time passes, until it reaches the peak of the season and changes everything completely.
 

The soundtrack is also very good, the music is medieval-themed and very calm, I listened for about 3 hours of gameplay non-stop and didn't get tired at all, I believe quite the opposite, it ended up relaxing me and helping me focus even more on the game.

And for these details and many others, we highly recommend this game, because it is very complete and complex, but at the same time very functional, in the test version there were already many features and it was shown that at launch there will be many more, besides I was hooked the whole time, so certainly other fans of the genre will also love it.

We thank Hooded Horse for providing us with an early key to this game for content!