Bellwright is a new medieval action survival game launching in Early Access on the 23rd of April 2024. I hear a lot of people compare it to Medieval Dynasty as it does have some similarities as a hybrid of strategy, town-building, action, survival, and RPG game.
But is it really a Medieval Dynasty “on steroids” like some people suggest? I was lucky to be invited to a closed beta playtest of Bellwright a couple of weeks ago, and here’s my take on it.
Big thanks to Donkey Crew Studios for allowing me to playtest @PlayBellwright and to @GamingwithKristi for letting me use her raid footage! Go check out her amazing tutorials on Bellwright, you’ll learn some great tips for starting the game.
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🎵 Music:
The Vikings - Alexander Nakarada
Heavy Interlude - Kevin MacLeod
Folk Around - Kevin MacLeod
Viking Intro Loop - Alexander Nakarada
Ring of Iron - WombatNoisesAudio
Tavern Loop One - Alexander Nakarada
Farm - Alexander Nakarada
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:27 What is Bellwright
01:07 Differences between the two games
01:39 Combat
02:21 Commanding an Army
03:16 Raids
04:18 Villager autonomy
05:48 Building
06:25 Survival
07:44Conclusion
08:26 Bellwright Release Date and Price
#bellwright #gaming #medievaldynasty
I would trust the Medieval Dynasty developers more than the Bellwright developers which have a history of incomplete games.
exactly, they ignored the history of the company that never delivered what they promised, it looks like a paid review
Medieval Dynasty is really derpy.
@@DarkchGameplays especially since one of the key problems people have is the npcs doing stupid stuff apparently, and this reviewer is like "WOW the npcs DO STUFF". That said, it still looks like it's alreay better than MD in many ways. The MD fans had to practically BEG the devs to allow more combat.
This is true, but at the moment I'm seeing up to half a dozen updates every day. Not that that's a long term sign, but it's a positive move
I can assure you I wasn't paid for this video 😂 I was invited to the playtest which is what this video was based off, and then I bought the game like everyone else to keep playing it. So far I'm not regretting it
Wow this was such a great video! The side by side comparisons are fantastic!
Good video! I'd be interested in a bit of gameplay footage for sure :)
Fantastic video; it was quite helpful. I would be interested in seeing gameplay content as well. Keep up the excellent work. Thanks!
Great Video. It helped me a lot. And I would love to see gameplay content. Keep up the good work. Thank you!
Thanks so much Rappodon, and thank you for the donation! 🙏
Great video! Helped me get much more hyped for Bellwight while I wait 12 more minutes to play it for the first time!
Glad you enjoyed it! :)
Brilliant video, such a succinct overview and comparison. Really well presented and put a new game on my radar. Got a sub from me, hope to see more Bellwright content on your channel!
Thank you so much for the lovely comment!
Thank you, this was a wonderful comparison.
very well done video! Sub! And yes, would love to hear more about the game and roadmap.
I heard Alexander Nakarada's music in the background, love his work! Great video, I just subscribed to your channel, keep it up.
Bellwright looks really interesting, especially combat. Looking forward to that clip you might share 😉
It does have interesting elements that we don't often see in survival games. I hope it captivates me more than Enshrouded, as I'm not much of a builder anyway!
@@GwentheShieldmaiden Enshrouded has some fun gameplay, but yeah. It is the building elements that drags people in for sure 🙂 Anyway, if you'll play Bellwright, I'll sure watch it.
Great side by side comparison! I love this genre/setting of these games, so the more the merrier for me 😆
Likewise!
exceptional video, went to 2 or 3 streams to figure it out about this question and only now i have an idea
Thank you! Glad it was useful :)
Excellent analysis and review Gwen! Great job!
Thank you A-Train!
This video is EXACTLY what I was looking for! I enjoyed Medieval Dynasty a ton, but definitely ran out of stuff eventually (before even needing the "dynasty" aspect...). Thank you!
Love the new games in that genre that are coming out. Always wanted Bannerlord + Valheim
This looks awesome and I can't wait! I wish I had the chance to play in the beta! Of course you are concerned about the food. lol
Yes I think you'd really enjoy it!! Happy to play it with you if schedules align :)
@@GwentheShieldmaiden That would be awesome!
what an amazing video new sub here thanks for sharing this!
Thank you, glad you liked it!
Looking forward to it on Tuesday!
Likewise! Will probably stream it in the evening :D
Extremely professional, well done!
Thank you! 😊
Super detailed, great info
Thank you, I appreciate it!
I've played both and logged over 100 hours in Medieval Dynasty. I'm currently around 30 hours in Bellwright. From my experience, Bellwright is so much more grindy, sometimes almost to a fault. For instance, going to Tier 2 by building the Village Hall was a pain in the arse. For one, it takes so much resources and two, it takes forever to build. Even with assigning the villagers to build it, it still takes a while to complete. Also, researching and crafting things takes longer than it needs to be. In Medieval Dynasty I don't remember being pissed off quite as often because things were taking way too long to build. In Bellwright it feels like everything takes twice as long to build. Both are extremely fun to play, but I will have to give the edge to Medieval Dynasty because it doesn't piss me off as much as Bellwright.
I'm also at that stage of the game, although I'm playing co-op so that helps a bit speeding things up. From what I can tell hiring lots of villagers and prioritising their tasks based on their skills is the key to alleviating a lot of the grind - I'm still wrapping my head around the prioritisation system. It may be worth submitting your feedback to the Devs as they are doing daily tweaks, fixes and adjustments based on feedback and bug reports :) I absolutely love Medieval Dynasty but sometimes it feels like pure micro management and not enough action. We'll see if Bellwright will keep scratching that itch or if it ends up the same :)
great video - subscribed :)
Great video ty, subbed.
Thank you so much! Glad you enjoyed it
Excellent!
Thanks for the video! I've played Medieval Dynasty in the past but it was just... too passive? I played the Bellwright beta last year and I've been pretty hyped for it. Thing is now I'm trying to look for more info on Manor Lords since it keeps being compared to Bellwright. Either way, I want to give the Bellwright Devs a chance solely because I found the game to be very fun. I will miss those Survival Elements though. I actually really loved that in MD.
I totally get the passive thing with MD, I love that game but really do miss action! I wish it were more like Valheim in that regard. Maybe that's why I'm enjoying Bellwright, it feels like the stakes are higher as you could be killed at any time by bandits!
Great video! It was fun testing the Beta together!
Thx for the video. Does anyone know if there is controller support?
Thanks for watching! From the official Discord: "We'll have controller support soon, it should work partially out of the box but you'll definitely be missing some buttons you need"
you get a debuff in the cold
Yeah I didn't notice that in the playtest, seems to be the case now!
Weather system is a must needs some sort of survival element like drinking water and winter being cold and farms get affected
Yes! But this will come later, the devs are working on it :) There's already limitations on what you can forage in the winter so seasons have more of an impact now
@GwentheShieldmaiden game has potential but all the reviews say they will just abandon the game so I'm just gonna wait and see how it progresses
@@Yt81818That's fair, I played on stream for 9h straight yesterday and barely scratched the surface of all the content, I'll probably get another 70h out of it so I don't regret buying it for that price :) Glad I gave it a shot
@@GwentheShieldmaiden iv just been watching your video lol
@@GwentheShieldmaiden can you raid villages whenever you want not just bandit camps also will the other villages raise army's to raid you back
8:45 over 100 hours you say, more like over 10 years IRL. Building is just painfully grindy and long
Having enough villagers helps a bit to speed things up, and I am playing co-op with 3 friends so even though it's grindy, I don't feel the pain as much. I'm also not yet at tier 2 (still building the village hall) so maybe things will get harder after building wise. But it may be worth submitting your feedback to the Devs as they're constantly tweaking and patching the game based on player feedback. They've been very proactive on the official Discord to address pain points
@@GwentheShieldmaiden you will see in tier 2 how painful is
Was watching SirJayWalkers Bellwright Stream and he mentioned you and came to check it from another perspective... Very awesome video and comparison between the 2 games... I feel like medieval dynasty needs more late game content to break the autonomy... it kinda gets boring late game without any action, but from what i watched, bellwright might be more fun with weapons and combat.
Yes you've hit the nail on the head! I'm towards the end of my co-op playthrough of Medieval Dynasty and we've almost unlocked every building and decorated our town, there's not much else to do other than hunting for sport and endless fetch quests. I really want my kid to be of age to experience the dynasty aspect, but that's going to take another 100h of gameplay 😩 way too long
I can't wait to try this game thanks to this great review, now i just need to buy a whole new computer to run it lol.
Thank you for the lovely comment! :) And I hope you manage to run it! My old 8gb ram Acer Nitro 5 couldn't :/
@@GwentheShieldmaiden i have a 2gb video card and 12 gb ram, so more than likely not lol. Ironically Medieval Dynasty runs smoothly.
@@FurryDragonborn yeah MD just about plays on my laptop so you may be ok?
A great video, i hella like it
Thank you so much! Glad you liked it :)
@@GwentheShieldmaiden my pronoun is a male/pancake now. Yay
looks good. Hopefully with MD and SD the game loop doesn't get boring. Good thing they implemented some brains into the NPCs tho :) Also yes, the playtest video is requested.
I think for Bellwright the combat/raid aspect will keep players on their toes, so they won't get bored as easily
Question: I played Medieval Dynasty, one thing who bugged me was the repetitive tasks, I mean I can't play hours and hours so I'm annoy to spend my gaming time to collect wood and painfully skill my farming skill... what is your thought on that for both games ?
With both games you're supposed to hire NPCs to do the grunt work for you, to the point you should be able to be completely hands off... hypothetically. It's always still some micro management to make sure the NPCs collect the things you need, but if set up properly you should be able to cut out grinding entirely
@@GwentheShieldmaiden IIRC In medieval dynasty you need to skill your character to unlock techs. It was too repetitive IMO, but I did not play that game for more a year, maybe even two...
@@user-uc2qk8wg6z yes that's right, and in Bellwright there's an element of that but it's not as prevalent. To upskill you can read books that you find through quests or buy
@@GwentheShieldmaiden ok thx! I'll keep an eye to it
I hope they optimize the game and a fix combat/raids a bit.
The gaming community is a toxic place. This game is great and a good comparison video. One tip eat meat it has a health regen aspect. And seasons have a small debuf slightly less productive in winter followers are have a small mood change because it’s raining and you’re running across the landscape. It’s a great game as is fully playable and complete story included right to end game at day one of ea release that’s impressive. I played medieval dynasty at day one. I couldn’t play it it was horrible I picked it up like 6 months later and enjoyed it ended up many hours in but at day one to day one this is insanely better.
Nice video :) sadly i never gonna buy another game donkey crew, that did leave 3 other games in early acess, i dont trust them anymore
Thanks! I understand. I just keep my expectations knowing that the game might not evolve more, but in its current state it's enough for me to have fun so I was ok spending the money :) Also I had heard of ORKAM and LO, what's the 3rd game they developed?
Keep in mind that the company behind Bellwright has a history of releasing games in EA and never finishing them. It's worth checking out the video Kira did on it before you consider buying the game.
so what i heard is that they left last oasis after the player basis died.. but they still made 2 more seassons before leaving it after the player basis died. is that what you mean?
@@xXChemikerXx What I mean is look up the youtube channel Kira and look at his video on Bellwright from yesterday. He explains quite clearly their previous projects and why he doesn't have faith that this one will get finished.
it looks nice
Wanna play it? ;)
A new endless series? Lol
Oxygen Not Included already exposed the glaring issue with priorities, and non-specific assignments: workers do one step of a task and go to the next task, wasting time on traveling back and forth between them, taking forever to finish anything. I've had a worker with research on priority 9 and construction on 5, and it still lugged a single log from the communal chest to a building site, then went back to research for one second, before going on his way to fell trees, so I've had to completely disable all activities except research for that worker to stick to researching. Sorry, but eventually having to resort to disregarding priorities and setting everything to disabled while keeping one task active, is just functionally the same thing Medieval Dynasty already has with its own specific assignments, so there is no way less micromanagement nightmare involved here...
Yeah I'm still trying to wrap my head around this priority system now that I've played the EA version a bit, the devs have been taking feedback on those points so there might be some tweaks in the future. We shall see. I'm just happy they actually do stuff even without a specific assignment, rather than being idle like in MD
OH also you might have gotten the priority ranking the wrong way around: Priority 1 will get tackled first, Priority 9 is bottom of the list. So if you want them to do research first, you need to put it in 1 :)
@@GwentheShieldmaiden Now that's totally counterintuitive. Thanks. The issue I described with workers doing just one step of a task to go do one step of another task still persists with equal priorities though, just like it does in ONI. Oh well... releasing half-finished games is the norm nowadays, what can you do.
To be fair it's in Early Access :) so yeah it's not finished, and if those issues are reported to the devs they can fix them quicker (they've already done 4-5 patches since release so they're definitely listening)
@@GwentheShieldmaiden I'm a child of an era where you bought disks that actually had the game files on them, you put them into your computer, and what you installed was the game everyone was playing for years. Then came internet. Patching is convenient now. Higher speed internet -> larger patches are excusable -> what the hell, let's just not finish games and release them. Oversimplified, but accurate. The only excuse for unfinished content in my book is episodic content.
Ngl I feel like they picked the worst time possible to release this game, because it’s not going to compete with Manor Lords, that’s a fact. They should have given Manor Lords a few months for the hype to die down. I’m still getting the game, just definitely not now.
It’s 3rd person manor lords
If Manor Lords would let you play as a character, and with the survival, crafting and RPG elements... Sure 😜
@@GwentheShieldmaiden the entire tech tree is manor lords. 80% of this game is basically manor lords. All they did was add hunger to your person, and your the worker not the one telling others to work. Oh wait that’s there TOO It’s literally third person manor lords lol.
@@RameyFamily I'd say it's closer to Bannerlord than ML in that case. But I still think they're totally different games in a totally different category. I'm not interested in playing Manor Lords because it's an RTS, while Bellwright is an action survival/RPG that happens to have battles and city building, which is more my thing. Ultimately it's down to the balance of different elements that will attract different players :)
@@GwentheShieldmaiden I’m a fan of both. I played the demo thing manor lords released last year for about a week. The similarities are basically copy and paste I do enjoy this game though but it really does seem exactly like manor lords when you look at the tech tree. And the workers in the community you build. Some of it even looks copy and paste. I’m a huge fan of banner lords. But lately the only modding community has been its only saving grace. Same with Total War if you’re a historical type gamer like me. What else do you guys play?
@RameyFamily I'm more of a co-op survival player so things like Medieval Dynasty, Valheim and 7DTD. Dabbled a bit with Enshrouded but wasn't taken by it, and sometimes play some Mordhau for bash bash (but I'm absolutely TERRIBLE at it but it's fun for meme value). And back in the day I played a bit of AoE 2. I really love Medieval Dynasty but it's a lot of micro management which can be frustrating at times
For me I was hugely disappointed with the NPC in dynasty. I am thinking getting bellwright for the better NPC stuff
bellwright does not have backpack HAHAHAHA
Wish they had generations. You can have children and pass down to the next gen. Imagine if NPCs also could do that.
Yeah Medieval Dynasty has that, but not Bellwright as it would be very hard to manage alongside the raiding system (would children fight too? what if both parents die before a child is old enough? etc etc)
@@GwentheShieldmaiden can easily be managed. Poor excuse.
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Hey! It's the exact same terrible melee mechanics as that terrible game Oasis! I think they ctrl+c, ctrl+v the animations and everything.
Bellwright looks cool but I'm very sceptical seeing the developers, donkey crew. Their last two games got lots of hype and buys and were later abandoned before being fully released when they were unable to improve the games significantly and the playerbases died. The devs can either be viewed as incompetent or fraudulent, neither of which gives you lots of hope when buying into an alpha.
That's fair, and everyone should do their own research and weigh the pros and cons before buying any game. For me, having playtested it and seeing how much content there is, it was worth the purchase and I'll get my money's worth in game hours, even if development goes no further
@@GwentheShieldmaiden That's all well and good, but that's like sitting down at a restaurant, paying for your meal; waiting two hours and only getting half the course and saying "Well, for the money spent even though we didn't get everything promised, I still enjoyed what they offered and the time we spent waiting." That's the problem; too many people are comfortable paying for a third or half of a promised product; and that promotes developers to look at the numbers and say "Well, the player base has dipped down, it's not worth it for us to keep making the game, let's shelve it and just start work on a new one, and people will buy into it in a year or two when we put it up as 'early access' and we'll see how that goes." Nobody goes into a restaurant, orders a meal, and when only a fraction of the meal is delivered; are happy to pay for less than was promised. Nor does anyone goto a movie and when the movie is turned off on the last 15 minutes, do they get up and say "Well, I enjoyed what I got to watch."
@@ShevaiAsandid you try the game though?
at the same time, those games were both basically mmos. this is at most a coop game. the scale and needs for development are far simpler here.
Dynasty on steroids - with AI voiceacting!
AI voices are a placeholder for Early Access release until the Devs have locked in all the character dialogues to hire real voice actors (it even says it on the Steam page). At the moment they're still doing adjustments to the dialogues based on player feedback, it would be pointless to keep paying a voice actor to redo takes. You can turn the voices off though if it's too immersion breaking :)
in all honesty, i dont see the issue with ai voiceacting. It allows for rapid development of features that use voice without the astronomical cost and time-sink of voice actors. The reason it's used is more and more people these days are practically illiterate.
the developers tend to leave their game hanging like last oasis so be warned, might 🏴☠ this sht just to try it out but wouldnt buy the early access.
The crafting and building seemed interesting but I really disliked the intro of Bellwright. So much that i took it off my wishlist as soon as I saw someone playing the demo and heard the intro. The story seemed just so badly written and unrealistic that i lost all interest. What's your thought on the story? Does it improve further down the line? Are you forced to follow a rather rigid story arc and does the game end when you finish the story or can you play endlessly like in Medieval Dynasty?
Yeah the intro is a bit long winded, the TL;DR is just: you are coming back to a land you had to flee as a child after being wrongly accused of murdering the future King, now his sister is in power and a tyrant and everything's turned to shite Brexit style, so you come back to liberate villages from the bad lords and Queen. That last bit is really the key takeaway and end goal, but you're pretty much left to do whatever you want like in MD. There don't seem to be a rigid story line beyond that at some point you should liberate other villages, but not even sure that's being enforced. Good news is you can skip that intro cinematic ;)
Lol just before Manor lords .... i didnt think much of the demo and what ive seen. Hope im wrong and its great. Battle though looks generic, bland and repetitive....
I will never buy another game made by snail games. Look at how they killed ARK survival evolved after promising a free graphics update that they then changed and sold back to us. Instead get Manor Lords. A developer that killed the multiplayer servers once they started charging real money for the same game with a graphics update is as bad as developers adding lootboxes after the reviews are out.
This dev has a really bad rep. They always abandon their games. It's Manor Lord for me.
Weird that she didn't mention that
Manor Lord looks boring even dev said it's casual city builder
Manor Lords isn’t a survival game, it’s a city builder that’ll be forgotten by the vast majority of people in a couple of weeks because the game barely has any content yet, I’ve seen streamers beat the game in less than 5 hours on normal difficulty
Both for me
@@ThinkPositiveDude my guy if it’s an early access game yeah I’m pretty sure you can beat the game in 5 hours, it’s like you people don’t understand the words “early access” or your just choosing not to have common sense
AI is terrible. Even if combat works AI will just move straight line to you.
Yes it needs improving, but I found the bandits pretty tough to fight as they block as much as they attack
This is a really sketchy video (just like the developer). Comparing a game overly favourably to another game thats designed to be completely different.
Bellwright won’t be complete. Developers aren’t known for finishing or caring about games
Been playing it since release yesterday, only minor bugs that the Devs jump on straight away, and as far as I can see there's A TON of content, we've only scratched the surface. Looks like I'll easily sink 70h into the game and for that price, for me it's totally worth the buy even if they don't develop it further. But that's just my humble opinion :)
Both games are insanely boring and offer no real challenge. And they are fantasy games, so a bit bizarre to compare them to games like Manor Lords.
I refunded the game after it crashed a few times and realized that its developed by donkey crew and snail games. It'll be abandoned it a couple of months.
60 hours in hasn’t crashed once for me maybe check out your pc. And it’s pretty much finished it’s 100% playable and a lot of fun as is some tweaks would be nice but again 60 hours in and I’m just entering stage 2 building out of 3 so 1/3 way complete. From what I’ve seen of people further in it’s still complete it doesn’t just end which most ea at day of release you hit a wall saying story will continue later. I really like how they did placeholders for the acting and finished the story and will update it as it goes but it’s complete and can be played through.
beeta... beta!!! ugh
Check the Oxford dictionary ;) we pronounce it the greek way in the UK ("vita")