Feudal Baron: King's Land

by Aethyna Dec 27, 2024 | 1 Votes | 23 Played | 0 Reviews

6 rate

Genres:

Simulation

Graphics:

Labels:

City Building , Medieval Age , Management

Platforms:

Publishers:

PlayWay S.A. Stripped of your inheritance by the king, you have no choice but to develop the modest piece of land left to you in hopes of finally regaining your stature in the royal courts and maybe even ousting the king who has wronged you! Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Feudal Baron: King’s Land is a medieval-themed city builder where you play as a young baron who just had his inheritance seized by the king. Thankfully, you were spared a modest piece of land in the valley to cultivate. By developing your city and nurturing the land, perhaps one day, you may regain your influence in the royal courts, enough to oust the king who has wronged you!

Plotline

In this game, you play as a young baron who just had his inheritance seized by the king. Thankfully, you were spared a modest piece of land in the valley that’s filled with fertile soil and precious metals to cultivate and exploit. By developing your city and nurturing the land alongside your trusty advisor, you may, perhaps one day, regain your influence in the royal courts, enough to oust the king who has wronged you!

Gameplay

Feudal Baron: King’s Land features the typical gameplay you’d come to expect from a medieval-themed city builder. There are houses to build, industries to set up so you can construct more complex buildings and fulfill your people’s growing needs to keep them happy, especially once you start getting higher-ranked citizens, and of course, all the logistics to fuss about just so you can ensure that everything goes to where they need to be in a timely manner.

The overall goal here is to grow your city and, hence, your influence, but there’s a monthly objective where you’re required to pay tribute to the king. Not paying the tribute on time will result in having the royal army descend upon your budding city and razing everything to the ground – something that you’d want to avoid for sure! From time to time, you’ll also get events that you’ll need to respond to, and you’ll – or at least your people and your city – have to live with the consequences of your decision, be it good or bad.

What’s really interesting about this game is how different buildings interact with each other and its major highlight – customizable building ranges. In this game, some buildings have other building requirements, and as long as they are within range of these required buildings, they will produce whatever they produce. Some buildings can also produce multiple items, and you can switch between the products you need based on demand.

There’s also a nifty table for you to easily track all production and consumption, making it possible to identify any resource your city is deficient in with just a simple glance. However, this feature isn’t mentioned during the tutorial, so the player will need to do some "UI-exploring" of their own. At the top bar of the screen, you can even manually assign certain resources, up to a maximum of eight types of resources, to track.

Now, what I really like about this game is the customizable building ranges. As mentioned earlier, some buildings have requirements, and you’ll need to place them within range of certain “Trade-based” structures (usually storage buildings) for them to work. Thanks to customizable building ranges, you can choose to only cover buildings that require the use of said storage building. There’s still a maximum range, though, and it’s not possible to cover buildings that are placed beyond those limits.

This feature is surprisingly helpful in my city-building efforts, allowing me to get more use out of the storage buildings I’ve strategically placed around my city. However, due to its “newness,” it can get a bit disorienting at first as you try to get used to having to mark out the coverage ranges for the many buildings you place.

I should also probably point out that not all buildings that you’d expect to have customizable ranges have them, specifically the chapel. I’d expect to be able to only cover houses that need its services. Its coverage range is also surprisingly and comparatively small, and you are severely restricted in how many of them you can build, making it difficult to build a sprawling city if you want to make sure the houses have all coverage. This seems like a bit of an oversight on the developers’ part, though it is still possible that this is entirely intentional… just to make the game a little bit tougher to min-max.

There’s a combat system in this game as well. Combat is turn-based, and unlike other city builders, you don’t need a standing army at the ready here. Instead, when your city is being threatened, you can then arm your people and have them join in the battle. Besides having to assemble your army, you can even purchase various fortifications using resources you have in storage and place them strategically on the battle map to tip the tides of battle in your favor.

As you progress, you’ll unlock more advanced game features, including decrees, higher-ranked citizenry, and others. Unfortunately, there’s no way for you to adjust tax rates in this game, nor do you have a way to research new buildings, industries, or technologies on your own. The campaign here can be quite linear, though, to be fair, it does serve as a pretty good tutorial, even if you’re an avid fan of city builders and are familiar with a variety of different games from the subgenre.

Aside from the campaign, Feudal Baron: King’s Land also comes with two other game modes, namely Scenario and Free Mode. Scenarios are similar to challenges where you’re given specific objectives to complete with the resources provided, while Free mode is kind of like a sandbox mode, where the only challenge here is building the best possible city without having to concern yourself with tributes or disastrous events.

As fun as the game is, Feudal Baron: King’s Land does have its flaws. There are some questionable design choices, such as its fairly complicated storage system where there are way too many different storage buildings. You can’t seem to upgrade existing buildings to allow for more workers as well, which is something that’s needed when, in my case, the two workers in the market couldn’t supply all 10 houses within its area in a timely manner, resulting in a loss in happiness. I ended up building two markets with overlapping coverage areas just to make sure my houses were all well-supplied.

However, these pale in comparison to the bugs I’ve personally encountered in my playthrough. At one point, I wanted to move my chapel from a subpar location to a better one, so I decided to demolish the existing chapel. To my horror, the game seems to not have registered that my chapel is no longer there, and it still restricts me from building any more chapels. Since the chapel is a needed building for campaign progress, I’m essentially softlocked.

It’s still okay, I thought I have a saved game that I can load to counter this, but unfortunately, the loading screen seems to be endless and after waiting for 15 minutes, I’ve decided to call it quits. I’m confident there’s a competent city builder here somewhere but I’m sad to say that the bugs and some of the designs may deter many fans of the genre from the game.

Graphics/ Sound

The graphics in Feudal Baron: King’s Land are really incredible. I love how the game allows you to zoom in really close so you can admire the details of everything in the game. There’s also a photo mode that will delight players who enjoy taking picturesque images of their city. In terms of sound, the game features some truly amazing tavern-inspired/Celtic soundtracks that not only match the medieval theme well but also help set the tone and the atmosphere of the game.

Conclusion

There’s a nice gem of a city builder here in Feudal Baron: King’s Land, but unfortunately, the game, despite being a full release, is marred by many design issues and bugs which may even, at one point, softlock the player’s progress. It seems like the game would do better if it’s kept in the oven a bit longer, so the devs could collect more feedback and bug reports from the community and improve their game.

As it stands, Feudal Baron: King’s Land is what I'd call a “KIV or Keep in View” game (where the V refers to your Steam’s wishlist), that is, unless you’re an avid fan of city builders and don’t mind helping the devs out.

New Game Added: Feudal Baron: King's Land

by Aethyna Dec 27, 2024

Stripped of your inheritance by the king, you have no choice but to develop the modest piece of land left to you in hopes of finally regaining your stature in the royal courts and maybe even ousting the king who has wronged you!