Manor Lords Review (Early Access) | A Rising Royal Among Medieval City-Builders

Manor Lords is a detailed medieval city-builder from Slavic Magic. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.

Manor Lords Review Overview

What is Manor Lords?

Manor Lords is a uniquely detailed medieval city-builder from Slavic Magic where you play as the Lord (or Lady) of your very own medieval settlement. Building your territory from the ground up, you’ll manage all aspects of its production, construction, innovation, and resource allocation, progressing from a simple camp to a burgeoning kingdom.

Manor Lords features:
　⚫︎　Uniquely organic city-building
　⚫︎　Detailed assets and smooth city simulation
　⚫︎　Visit your city from a street-level perspective
　⚫︎　Fight massive wars with your own militia and retinue

For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Manor Lords's gameplay and story.

Digital Storefronts
Steam	Xbox

Manor Lords Pros & Cons

Pros	Cons
Truly Organic City-building Amazing Medieval Aesthetics Visit Mode is a Game-changer	Not Much of a Tutorial Still a Few Bugs to Iron Out

Manor Lords Overall Score - 82/100

Manor Lords is a good-looking city-builder on a mission to make blend historical accuracy with fun and innovative gameplay. Not only did it execute its mission well, it did so with an early-access build that’ll only get better in time. I expect this game to continue to impress as time goes on, and for the bards to sing its accolades across taverns and cities. The new king of medieval city-builders is on their way!

Manor Lords Story - 7/10

Manor Lords suffers the same fate as most other city-builders in terms of narrative by not having a defined story. This isn’t too big of a criticism considering that story has never been the genre’s strongest suit. Still, as games like Against the Storm and Dungeons 4 have shown, a strategy simulator like this can have a story if the devs give it some thought. For now, the tale of your town's rise and fall will have to do.

Manor Lords Gameplay - 9/10

Manor Lords’ gameplay is crisp, complex, and innovative—three words not often associated with medieval city-builders. It dared to be different by opting for a more organic feel to its city designs, doing away with grids, and letting you build according to the lay of the land. The combat system could use a bit more refining and some bugs are yet to be squashed, but this is otherwise THE medieval city-builder experience.

Manor Lords Visuals - 10/10

Manor Lords hit it out of Camelot with its visuals and even that much is an understatement. The sheer amount of detail—both historical and graphical—given to the game’s plentiful assets truly astounded me. Everything, even the peasantry’s period-accurate clothing, and the tech tree’s medieval stylings made this game look like it popped out of a history book.

Manor Lords Audio - 8/10

Listening to Manor Lords’ audio made me feel like a lord being serenaded by his minstrel. The medieval tunes plucking in the background somehow work so well with the hustle and bustle of medieval peasant life. From the grocers peddling their wares to the laymen going about their jobs, it’s such an all-encompassing medieval auditory experience that I can’t help but be immersed.

Manor Lords Value for Money - 7/10

Manor Lords is proving that early access isn’t just a playground for unplayable and unfinished concepts with its novel city-building ideas and great graphics. That said, $40 is just a smidge too pricey for a game with a long way to go before completion. I’d be more than happy to pay that much when the game comes out, though.

Manor Lords Review (Early Access): A Rising Royal Among Medieval City-Builders

Medieval city-builders get a bad reputation for being samey and unoriginal in their presentation. I think it’s debatable, although I do see where such comments are coming from. One can only see dirt roads and thatched roofs so many times before they blur into an unintelligible mess. Manor Lords is different, however, because it not only stood out from the rabble but also grabbed the crown and seized the throne for itself.

So, like a minstrel singing his lord’s accolades to dignitaries, allow me to regale you with what makes Manor Lords the new king of medieval city-builders. We’ll begin with the aspect that Manor Lords exemplifies the most: historical accuracy.

Normally, a game would not get any additional points by being historically accurate, at least not with our criteria. I think that stylization is just as valid as historical accuracy if it contributes to the game. For the medieval city-builder subgenre in particular, historical accuracy could even serve as a detriment because it could make a game needlessly tedious or just plain unfun.

Manor Lords did things differently by leaning into the ideas present during that era in history and designing fun gameplay mechanics around them. Let’s take the role of the familial unit in medieval history, for example. In Manor Lords, families serve as the most basic unit of workers, consisting of three members, the third of which could either be a son or daughter.

Families are assigned to buildings as one unit despite having three separate members, mirroring the trade dynasties and familial traditions held in medieval Europe at the time. These families can become less efficient when one or more members—usually the father and son—are drafted into your militia and are killed in battle. This particular game mechanic is derived from how militias were formed back then, consisting almost entirely of ill-armed peasantry.

We’ll get into more of those historically accurate gameplay mechanics later. For now, I’m sure you get the idea. Manor Lords is fun because its gameplay makes perfect sense for its setting. Nothing about it is stylized, yet nothing about it is unfun either. This might seem like it should be a given for this subgenre, but you’d be surprised just how often history takes a backseat.

Let’s move on to what else makes Manor Lords special: organic city-building. And I don’t say that to mean that the houses are made from wood, although they are. I mean that the layout of your settlement is completely determined by the lay of the land and the positioning of resources.

Stockpiles and gatherers need to be close to resource nodes and would have to be cycled depending on whether the resource is renewable or not; markets need to be close to residential areas for them to work; roads can be as janky and curved as the area’s topography requires; all these come together to create imperfect, asymmetrical settlements that would look right at home in a history book.

Your kingdoms here don’t look like they were made in a game, they look like they were built by generations of people doing their best with what they’re given. It’s this natural, unequivocally medieval vibe that really sells what this game is going for. Manor Lords isn’t the first medieval city-builder to try this—far from it—but I think it best implemented the idea.

Moving on to Manor Lords’ other facets, we have its aesthetics and unique "Visit Mode" feature. Manor Lords looks absolutely stunning with its AAA graphics, detailed, assets, and top-notch background simulation for its people and buildings. Cities: Skylines 2 was able to achieve much of the same with their own engine but Manor Lords has a unique leg up with its Visit Mode.

Visit Mode drops a street-level view of your kingdom from the POV of one of its citizens. You drop in as an avatar of your Lord and can take a stroll in the very same roads and buildings you were setting down mere minutes ago. You can’t really micromanage from this vantage, but it’s still a whole new way to appreciate your handiwork, one that lets you walk among your people like a true lord would.

The Visit Mode also reveals the true extent of this game’s beauty because even from this POV all the assets, from the buildings to the peasants themselves, look pretty darn good. Circling back to the game’s penchant for historical accuracy, the architecture and engineering of the houses, carts, and stalls look appropriately ramshackle. There is simply so much going on with this game on every level and none of it ever feels like it's too much.

On the home stretch here, let’s talk about the game’s audio. I like bardcore music so I might be a bit biased, but this game’s background tracks aren’t half bad. They certainly keep the vibes going, but they’re nothing compared to the game’s voice acting.

There isn’t a lot of it and it’s mostly reserved for the game’s Visit Mode, but it’s the banter between the peasants and the cacophony of the marketplace that make this game’s audio feel like the real deal. Why, I could almost feel myself dying of dysentery just listening to it.

That said, the game still has a few things to work on before its full release. One of Manor Lords’ major gameplay features that I’ve failed to talk about until now is its combat. I’ll go ahead and say that it’s not bad—in fact, I’d even say that a good few people would find it extremely entertaining, but therein lies the problem. This game’s combat is an acquired taste because it’s one of the few times its historical accuracy works against the game.

This game’s combat is a pausable RTS setup that uses some of the city-building portion’s freeform selection to set up your formations. It is, by all accounts, a realistic skirmish, with numbers and load-outs often determining the battle’s outcome before it even begins. I prefer playing the underdog and turning the tide for dramatic effect so this setup might just not be for me.

And, lest we forget that the game is still in early access, there are a good few bugs left to squash, especially for the game’s cosmetic day and night cycle. But as far as early access goes, this is as solid a foundation as a game can hope for.

Overall, I’d liken Manor Lords to a prince who’s fresh to the crown. It has proven itself worthy of its accolades many times over and has impressed on most fronts. There’s always room for improvement, however, and the newcomer would be remiss to rest on their laurels now.

Pros of Manor Lords

Things Manor Lords Got Right
Truly Organic City-building Amazing Medieval Aesthetics Visit Mode is a Game-changer

Truly Organic City-building

I’m a sucker for grids, truth be told, but there’s just something so fun and authentic about having a gridless city plan and having your people build where the land lets them. Manor Lords executes its gridless city-building flawlessly by letting you draw in residential areas, marketplaces, and fields, and having the size of those drawn-in areas directly affect their effectiveness.

In addition to allowing you a more compact and realistic layout for your cities by letting these areas sit flush against roads, organic city-building also allows you to be more flexible with your layouts. You can finagle another house into that curved road section like a medieval contractor would, and it’d look the part too!

The best part is that it doesn’t take away from the city-building experience despite being a major deviation from form. Sure, you have to spare a few extra brain cells to plan ahead, especially when roads still can’t be demolished, but the payoff is a medieval hamlet that doesn’t look like a suburb.

Amazing Medieval Aesthetics

I will continue to gush about this game’s aesthetics because it truly is a sight to behold. The game’s developer clearly had a vision they wanted to uphold with this game’s art direction because everything is so well-defined and historically accurate, I could swear that I’ve seen some of these in documentaries before.

There’s just so much attention to detail at work here that I don’t know where to begin, but would like to highlight the residential buildings, even if the rest of the city is just as detailed. The architecture is representative of the era, down to the minor imperfections and personalized repairs between each homestead. The same could be said for the decorations surrounding each house, including the fences, furniture, and gates.

Visit Mode is a Game-changer

Manor Lords executed a lot of its game mechanics well but Visit Mode, despite still being in an early developmental stage, proved to be the game-changer among them. No matter how satisfying a city is with its efficient logistical chains and well-thought-out layouts, I promise you that the ability to walk among your people and see the city from their point of view would still be a better way to experience the fruits of your labor.

It’s emboldening to see what your city does on a micro-scale rather than a macro-one, and witnessing what truly goes into each of your decisions would only make you a better player in the future.

Cons of Manor Lords

Things That Manor Lords Can Improve
Not Much of a Tutorial Still a Few Bugs to Iron Out

Not Much of a Tutorial

Manor Lords technically has a tutorial, although I wouldn’t consider it the most beginner-friendly. I’m generally against tutorials that hold your hand with every step, but Manor Lords seems to be veering into the opposite extreme with its mostly text-based tutorial.

These pop-ups aren’t unhelpful, they just seem insufficient for the game’s complexity and difficulty level. They also only show up after you press a UI element, making it possible to never get a pop-up if you don’t venture into certain facets of gameplay. A more in-depth tutorial would certainly make this game more accessible.

Still a Few Bugs to Iron Out

I’ve alluded to a few bugs before so I’ll elaborate on a few more here. The one I mentioned earlier is about the game’s cosmetic day and night cycle, which is exactly what it sounds like. The bug happens when you try to turn it off, causing the day and night cycle to continue regardless.

There also seems to be a bug with the automatic edge-scrolling, which causes the screen to edge-scroll a ludicrous amount whenever you exit the pause menu. Considering the low visibility of less-developed kingdoms among the treelines, this is a very disorienting bug that’s made me search for my territory more times than I’d care to admit.

Is Manor Lords Worth It?

Yes, But You Might Miss Those Gold Pieces

Manor Lords is an early-access gold mine that’s chock-full of fun features and great ideas. While I concur that it’s worth its $40 price tag, the game still has a long way to go before it’s finished and some might not be comfortable shelling out that many gold pieces for an unfinished product. If its early-access build is any indication of the game’s developmental trajectory, however, that regret will likely dissipate as the game gets closer to 1.0.

Platform	Price
Steam	Xbox
$39.99

Manor Lords FAQ

Will Manor Lords Support Modding at Launch or in the Future?

According to the game’s developers, Manor Lords’ Mod support is under consideration for implementation post-launch, potentially after the full 1.0 release.

Will Manor Lords Have Multiplayer in the Future?

No. According to the game’s developers, Manor Lords was designed to be "a refined single-player experience, with no multiplayer or cooperative modes planned at the moment."

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Manor Lords Product Information

Title	MANOR LORDS
Release Date	April 26, 2024
Developer	Slavic Magic
Publisher	Hooded Horse
Supported Platforms	PC, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One
Genre	Strategy, City-builder
Number of Players	1
ESRB Rating	RP
Official Website	Manor Lords Website

Aaron Bruce Albert..

A massive fan of roguelikes, turn-based RPGs, and open world adventure games. His gold standard games include The Binding of Isaac, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, and Dragon Quest Monsters Joker.