At a glance...

Reviewer	Platform	Publisher	Developer	Players	Screenshots
Darryl Neale	PC	Digital Jesters	Monte Cristo	1	Here
Requirements					Buy from Amazon.co.uk
Unknown					Click here to buy Medieval Lords.

Medieval Lords review

One of Digital Jesters latest titles, Medieval Lords is a "City Builder" from Monti Cristo games. But just how good is it? Well that's where I come in to give you the low down on my favourite genre of game a Medieval Town / Castle Building Simulator.

So, what have Digital Jesters been promising us in this up and coming game? Here are some of the features. An exciting campaign, freedom of construction, building roads and buildings were you want them, the ability to use hills and rivers to your advantage, over 100 different buildings as well as "free form city elements. "Basically you can make your fields whatever shape you want!

But anyway, let's see just what features made it all the way to your screen...

I was always told to never judge a book by its cover but this game surprised me. Though the music got repetitive after a while, like all soundtracks do, the graphics outweighed any bad points at this point, even if the fonts were less than desired.

First things first, I, like most people, don't like reading manuals, so I needed to learn how to play the game, with no surprises I clicked onto "Campaign" to be thrown into the tutorial. Result!

The first thing I noticed was how easy it was to control my view, though I did end up looking at my screen from the wrong angle with the mini map running one way and the visible map running the other. Confusing I know, I soon got the hang of flicking into first person view and back again as well as rotating the screen through 360 degrees.

Next on my list was this free form thingy! I couldn't quite picture what it meant by this but I was pleased to find it simple and easy to handle; clicking in different places on the map they formed the corners of my field.

The games map editor seems slightly more difficult to use than some of the of those that I am used to however I did get used to it in time, while using the map editor I found that place objects was easier than expected while in a first person view.

I would be lying to say that this is the first game I have ever seen in the genre and in fact, these medieval simulator are becoming more and more popular, this does mean however they have incorporated a lot of different things into this game, as I was playing I found myself watching graphs more than sitting back and watched my villagers work themselves into an early medieval grave. And I certainly couldn't do what I did with Stronghold and leave my minions working while I went shopping! It is a very hard game when it comes to balancing one thing over another. That said however it would be unfair not to point out that the objective is to balance building, defending and expanding so all is fair in the long run I feel.

Ratings

Graphics	Not actually that impressive, and were particularly let down by awful fonts.	5/10
Gameplay	Very good, though it can get tedious at times	6/10
Value	There's a level editor thrown in too, but multiplayer makes it an imcomplete package.	6/10
Lifespan	It lacks much needed multiplayer functions, so is unlikely to last as long as most games of the same genre.	5/10
Audio	Surprisingly good, as was the music.	7/10
Overall	All in all I feel that this is a very good game. However, I would not recommend it to anyone new to simulators; there is a little too much to do for anyone who is used to playing FPS games, and I would suggest something simpler. Apart from that, I can only say one thing, BUY IT! It's a fabulous game and it definitely has that "play me again and again" factor to it.	6/10

Click here to buy Medieval Lords from Amazon.co.uk.

Copyright Information

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License, except where otherwise noted.

Smileys taken from Crack's Smilies.