Summary

• Manor Lords in Early Access lacks a complete feel but offers strategic combat and city-building aspects.
• Banished and Manor Lords both focus on difficult survival, but Banished lacks combat, and Manor Lords offers another layer.
• Banished provides a peaceful city-builder experience while waiting for Manor Lords to develop further.

Manor Lords was released into Early Access as the most wishlisted game on Steam. Although it pulled in over 100,000 concurrent players, it definitely doesn't have the feeling of a fully finished game just yet. However, there are plenty of city builders available that can help fill in the time between updates for Manor Lords as it continues to be developed during Early Access.

While Manor Lords has a combat feature that relies heavily on strategy, the first few hours spent in-game center around its city-building aspect. Since it takes time to build up a population and the infrastructure needed to form a decent army, the survival and growth of the settlement make up the starting section of the game. For some lords ruling over their peasants, this could be the best aspect or the one they enjoy the most right now.

Banished's City Building Is Similar To Manor Lords

Keeping Survival Difficult

Like Manor Lords, Banished makes survival for the settlement's population difficult, especially in winter, while the number of people in the settlement is on the lower side. Starting out with limited resources means that setting up ways to gather more early is essential in both games, and the changing seasons puts a time limit on how long the settlers have to prepare enough supplies to survive. Additionally, Banished and Manor Lords require that the population grows in order to grow the settlement, but increasing the population too quickly becomes a problem for resources.

How Banished And Manor Lords Are Different

The Aspects They Focus On

Although similar in design and concept, there are key differences that might make one game or the other more enjoyable for the lord commanding the construction of their settlement. Banished doesn't have a combat system, so the focus is entirely on growing and maintaining a population while continuing to build and advance structures. While this makes it more peaceful than Manor Lords in some ways, it's not any less stressful when the threats of disease, starvation, and freezing are constant issues that need to be handled quickly for the sake of survival.

Manor Lords makes it easy to sink hours into the game, even with its Early Access flaws and feeling of incompleteness. But for lords who enjoy the city builder aspect of the game and want another title that's finished while waiting for more updates, Banished is the perfect option, given its difficult survival aspect when it comes to its settlement. It might be the center of attention for the moment since it's new and was highly anticipated before entering Early Access, but there are other city builders that offer an experience that can act as a substitute while waiting for more features and polish to be added to Manor Lords.