Recent reviews by Fast

I Mounted A Monster Without It's Consent.

This is a fantastic game.
In fact its one of the only early access games I have recommended and probably ever will.
The roadmap is robust and looks great.
The developer seems committed.

Some nitpicks are
1. current QOL is....limited but its to be expected (EA)
2. the stock and order system could do with improvement.

dog
poop
game

Me see Black Myth: Wukong trailer, know it special. Monke play, feel power. Game big, game deep, like jungle full of secrets. Monke fight, use staff, staff long, staff strong. Staff crush enemy, monke feel good. Enemy tough, enemy big, but monke quick, monke smart. Monke dodge, monke hit hard.

Game look pretty, like jungle after rain. Monke see water, see tree, see sky. All look real, make monke feel inside world. Music good too, make monke heart beat fast, like when hunt.

Monke story strong, about other monke, Wukong. Wukong smart, Wukong tricky, like monke. Monke learn from Wukong, get new power, new move. Monke feel like hero, like legend. Monke fight many enemies, big and small. Some scary, but monke brave.

Monke think game make feel alive, make feel proud. This game not just good, this game special. Special like art. When monke play, monke see beauty. World in game look like painting, like dream. Black Myth: Wukong make monke feel like king of jungle. Monke recommend to all monke, all human too.

This is one of very few game I would consider to be a masterpiece in its own right.

I have not a single bad word to say about it.

Visually is incredible.
The Music and Setting are are masterful.
The characters are generally well written and goal orientated.
The plot lines are above average even if a little simplistic at times.
Dialogue for the most part is good.
Locations are a visual treat with huge diversity in backgrounds and environments.
Enemy diversity is great and well thought out.
Combat is actually pretty deep, there is a lot of tweaking players can do to achieve massively different results with various job combinations and abilities and characters, and i mean a lot.
Itemisation matters a fair bit. Especially for the super boss.
Looting and exploring is nice, small detours but not excessive to get cool and sometimes really strong loot without massively inconveniencing you is really good.
The map size is good and tons of locations to visit, explore and complete.
Side quests are impactful and rather well designed with nice story tie ins and break up the main story a bit.

I really cannot recommend this game enough.

If I had some negatives to talk about of which I dont have many and some would be pretty nitpicky but ill list them anyways:
1. Dialogue in places can be a little be weak, unnecessary or drawn out.
2. Some side quests are truly incredibly vague to the point you are likely going to have to look them up the vast majority are self explanatory but some are just like "wut?where?huh?"
3. Some of the main characters are just considerably or massively better than others simply because of job/item combinations that some cannot access simply due to their base job.
4. Some characters are better to start with than others, its not necessarily a negative as such, but it can encourage starting a path you might not want to simply because of how efficient it can be to progress early.
5. Agnea is a character is quite an annoying character and the least satisfying story line.
6. The lack of a bestiary, especially for ochette, as ochette becomes a staple shield breaker but if you dont know which enemies have which abilities can be a pain to work out where and which ones you need, even if not for ochette simply to see which enemies are in what locations etc.

In conclusion the game is incredible. Get it.

I think the hype for this game and current review trend is incredibly premature.

The game looks pretty and on the surface feels somewhat nice to play and engage with.

However, these game are about systems, mechanics and good foundations for those. Not to mention the fact its truly one of the most bare bones titles I have played in recent years and that is a pretty low bar. If any other company had put this out it would be mostly negative instantly , I am not sure where people get off thinking its okay to release what amounts to a tech demo as an early access title which steam explicitly states is not what early access is for.

With that said, Manor Lords has a multitude of mechanical and system issues that are are rather foundational in nature. Which concerns me because these are not the type of things, early access is going to see resolved. Because changing the foundations of a system or mechanic is a much more involved process than simply changing numbers, or design ideals that sit on top of those foundations. And lets remember, it took 6 years just to get to this point.

Ill provide some examples below, however, I wont list them all because quite frankly, you could write an essay on the problematic nature of some of the design problems. But for example,

1. Market Stalls, the idea that you have such little control over one of the most impacful parts of the processes to be successful in the game and it requires such specific placement and a very specific setup to get the most efficient outcome is terrible. This one mechanic can see your settlement entirely fail because you are unable to easily manage who places stalls without some finicky micro management of replacing families in buildings.

2. A rather narrow and very specific way to play for success. Many of the mechanics in the game require a very specific way in which to succeed with them, leading to a "you almost have to play a specific way to succeed" meaning the first 4 hours of your game is the same as the next one and the next one etc. There is very little room for player choice and decisions here, you do what the game wants how it wants or you lose massive amounts of efficiency and can quite quickly fail in even the default or challenging difficulties.

3. Farming, generally speaking, there is literally no point in engaging with farming because it is a massively inefficient process even if you waste a point on the OX, the way it is set up, in general a long with the fact your starting location is guaranteed to have some nuclear waste level soil for farming means you are gonna wait a few years at least to attain a title worth farming. Then you are going to quickly find out a precious perk point is going to be needed for the OX to make it even remotely worth engaging with, or be prepared to dump 5 families for 9 months every year into the farm house. You are then going to have to make 10 or 15 small fields, So if and honestly when your ox and families fail to farm a few fields it doesnt matter, because if you hit winter you lose everything in any field that wasnt harvested or complete. Then you are gonna see that even a 3+ field is going to produce barely enough for the amount of families you wasted for 9 months. Tou put it simply, just use trade for base farm materials and take the trade perks. There is no reason whatsoever to produce any of the grains yourself instead of buying them.

Now before you scream "ITS EARLY ACCESS" yes it is, but the problem is, these small examples show a lack of design prowess and foundational understanding of how to build competent systems. Which in turn leads me to think, this game really needs a much larger team with a much wider range of experience to truly build these systems out in a balance and competent way. To be clear, many of the problems you will encounter are things that will be immediately obvious within a few minutes to a few hours of gameplay, they are not hidden under multiple hours and layers of depth or game play before you encounter the multitude of problems.

And yes i know one guy made it. Its not an excuse honestly, if one guy made it or 500 guys made it, it still should not have mechanics and systems that are just outright weak to the point they need entirely reworking or rebuilding. It took a long time to get to a tech demo(yes its a tech demo) of which much of the game doesnt work, or isnt even available, and the stuff that is available is extremely limited, broken, or a complete mess design wise. It does not give me confidence.

And finally, the absolute lack of content, this is quite literally like 5-10% of a game. 1 map, broken AI, that doesnt build or do anything itself, bandits that steal your stuff with no gameplay related counter mechanics, outside of get your militia and go kill them, is poor, influence gain is incredibly slow seemingly to extend a game beyond 5 hours. The lack of balance in any of the design aspects is rather disappointing. I dont expect a complete harmony of features, but the game is so devoid of anything functional, it leads me to suspect its unlikely to ever reach a level of acceptable balance and completion. Though I am happy to be proven wrong.

I would suggest history tells us however, the outcome will be a game that is left mostly unfinished for years and years before falling into obscurity and never realising its potential.

As of now I absolutely cannot recommend this game. I think too many people bandwagoned and hyped this game to find its considerably more undercooked than it should be but need them sweet sweet purchase validation feelies and need to review positively to feel good about themselves. Personally there is not a lot here to review and what there is, is broken, flawed, and missing competence in areas.

I respect any solo developer who tries to build or work on their dream, but its not an excuse to fail at the first hurdle when it comes to design elements that simply should have been thought out better.

Oh and if your feedback gets traction or is seen as even "slightly negative" it will be deleted from the discord or steam forums, pretty ironic for and early access.

The game is in a very rough state.

I dont recommend it honestly.

The EXP system is abysmal.
The heists are really limited in number and the methods to completing them are limited by arbitrary time gated objectives stealth or loud with very limited variation.

The weapon upgrade system and CSTACKS is bad...just bad

The gameplay is reasonable but its undermined by all the negative things to the point that its just not a very good game.
It feels like it was cheaply made and shoved out
Im not even sur this game will be good in time either. The heists are not good enough to carry the game nor is the reasonably good gameplay, when everything from the UI, progression, levelling, and weapon progression systems are absolutely terrible.

Beyond that : I will just mention the Discord, as i was banned from it for seemingly no reason, I found myself removed after realising it was missing from my list. Whether a mistake or not...its terrible oversight. There is no appeal system? No contact? or anything?

Cant recommend.
A middling experience, with a terrible story, weak dialogue and boring characters.

It doesnt stop there though, whilst there are a few gems hidden amongst the various quest lines, the majority are fetch quests that have you loading multiple times which destroys the pace of the game whilst in many cases with very little combat, to corridor shooter like experiences.
Its very weak to be honest.

Planets are empty nothing burger boring garbage with copy pasta uninteresting points of interest (ironic i know).

There ship combat is essentially a stat stick minigame that happens extremely infrequently.
The gunplay is rather good and holds up, but is undermined by the lack of enemy diversity, there is around 20 alien species in the game, all of which are bullet sponges early on but become trivial as you level, and human enemies are just..boring. They shoot or they hit, or sometimes neither if their pathing bugs. The robots are too few to really note, you have the dog with a gun, or the bipedal with a gun, or the one that smacks you. Very uninteresting.

NG+ is worthless, upgrading powers for literally no reason as the game has no scaling or way to improve the challenge as your character gets stronger.

Companions are boring, they mostly consist of "feel good" types who are a little too much in the way of "do the good thing or we will dislike that" choice, if you do even anything remotely neutral or bad they will dislike you.

Vendors have no credits so good luck saving up a million credits worth of junk to sell to find its going to take you 30 hours to sell it all because you need to wait 48UT hours.

Outposts, are largely useless EXP farms, there is quite literally no point to them, the abundance of materials and resources at such low prices makes outposts useless.

Space, its a small zone you load into to load out of, its not a space game honestly, space is a consequence of being able to access multiple planets, not really the gameplay.

Exploration is non existent, the planets have fauna or flora and minerals you can survey but realistically ...why? why bother? what for? it offers no gameplay function and wastes your time.

The UI is a miserable experience with nothing good to say really. Should be reworked.
Visually i think the game is pretty weak, it looks like something that came out between 2013-2018 at best, there are moments when the lighting makes character models look like something from morrowind and other times where you get a more modern feel, but ultimately it doesnt look great. The lack of modern technologies like virtual textures and blended mipmaps means you end up with procedural content that varies from passable to wondering what happened.
Though it is possible to get some good looking screenshots, it does unfortunately still feel like an already dated visual experience.

Overall , I think there is a decent game here, its just the gameplay is not underpinned by robust mechanics and systems and feels cobbled together. None of the systems really work together they are all separate things that function independently but offer no deeper gameplay functionality.
The loading screens are abysmal, they ruin the pace of the game, they become tedious very quick, and undermine the idea of open world and exploration the moment it reminds you you are loading a room. Yes in some cases you will load a single room,

The game is not open world, it uses small linear zones glued together to try and provide a cohesive experience but it fails miserably. Also there is only about 4 seeds for each biome of which they all have preset locations for outposts or labs to spawn so you will see a lot of copy pasta very quickly.

To conclude i simply cant recommend it.
There are things to praise here and there, but they are few and far between. It may be worth a purchase when on sale and with significant patches.

Garbage performance
Missing Features
Missing Content
CTD multiple times per hour

^^ these are bad

Beyond that however, there is a stark difference between repetitive but fun and repetitive for the sake of it.
This game sadly follows the latter path and becomes a boring drag slogging through 15-30 min missions for minimal reward.
Progression is locked behind an hourly reset shop meaning the game play has to hold you simply to earn the currency to grind the shop out every hour. Very unrewarding, rather pathetic progression system to be honest.

The classes are extremely basic, and underwhelming. With the Feat system boiling down to % based changes with no real though or gameplay functional changes or mechanical upgrades.
In the industry its considered very lazy to use what could simply be baked into the base version of a class as perks/feats/skills and Fatshark ignored that and went with it anyway.

The game is the exact same at level 1 as it is at level 30, the difficulty is lazy with just throwing more of the same at you.

There is a lack of enemy types, there is technically something like 65 weapons but many are just variants, and arguably maybe 10 or 12 of them have any use at all when it comes to optmization.

Overall the game is in a poor state, is low on content, runs poorly, and the one and only 100% complete feature is the cash shop.
The crafting system is missing, we are short a bunch of weapons andthe missions boil down to corridor corridor arena corridor corridor arena , there is very little change from this formula across the entire game.

The game is in its current state below average across the board with the only exception being sound and music which are extremely well done.

Beyond all that the balance between classes is almost nonsensical and build diversity is basically zero.

Overall it feels like the game was made with a very minimal budget and very little care in terms of quality.

Pretty easy game tbh