The Sims Medieval Review

The Sims Medieval provides a medieval setting for the player to work within, with newly designed buildings and scenery to give an authentic "back in time" experience. Players will build a kingdom up, send Sims on quests, and earn rewards in the form of Kingdom Points. The game diverges from the series in that players can win the game by achieving a kingdom ambition. Confirmed ambitions include "Best In Show", "Busy Builder", "Efficient Expander", "Fame", "Filled Coffers", "Hard Workers", "Imperial Domination", "Legendary", "No Quest For The Weary", "Safe And Sound", "Thoughts And Prayers", and "Wealthy Populace". In a change from other Sims games, the character creation, simulation, and architectural aspects are significantly reduced and altered to enforce a sharper focus on RPG-style gameplay. For example, players will be able to customise the aesthetics and layout of building interiors, but they will be unable to alter the basic structure and shape of buildings.Instead, the game will involve the player upgrading a kingdom, choosing an ultimate goal for that kingdom (such as wealth or popularity) and then fulfilling quests that contribute to that goal. The goal can be completed through the use of heroes (or specialists). For example, the player can have a wizard and a physician cooperate on one quest or a knight and monarch in another. Focus, experience, and the traits of the Sim influence their success, and players may choose how the team will attempt to conduct the quest. Players will also choose which Sim will lead the team. Interestingly, The Sims Medieval will not be a generational game. Much like the first generation of the main series, The Sims, the characters in the game will not progress through life stages. The Sims will still be able to procreate, but those children will never age to adulthood. Sims will each have two normal traits and one fatal flaw, which can be turned into a positive trait through a quest, unlike the The Sims 3 where there are five main traits only depending on the age group.

Review:

I wasn't a fun of the series despite the fact that I have played most of them at least for 2 hours each. I got bored easily because there was no mission that I wanted to achieve. The only achievments one could get by playing the games were high carier position and lots of money but I found those a bit boring. In this game though there are actual epic missions with sorcery and DRAGONS, and we love dragons in this blog :D

Character creation: It is tottaly changed, now the player doesn't create a starting family, instead he/she creates a monarch for his/her kingdom and some heroes to help in the quests. Customisation is using the same engine but with much less clothing choices available. You can't even customize the pyjamas they are automaticly set. Of course there is a premade selection of characters and the good old random button.

Gameplay: Tottaly fixed. Now there are only 2 needs for each sim, hunger and energy. The boring 6 needs based games are over and a new era that sims get only hungry and sleepy has began. Of course there is a bath and a pot in the toilet but they are just for fun and quests now (yup there is actually a quest that requests the player to take a bath). Also I found extremelly relaxing the fact that the player doesn't control more than 3 sims at the same time, exception: many children, and the fact that the jobs are not in fixed hours they are just quests with deadlines. Moreover, many quests have alternative paths to follow, for example when an angry boar causes chaos in the kingdom you can either slay it or tame it. Finally the story telling in some of the big quests, slaying or befriending a dragon (♥) for example, is really inspiring and keeps you wanting more quests. The really bad thing is that after the player completes a kingdom purpose the whole game resets, buildings and characters and he/she has to start over for the next kingdom purpose.

Graphics: The standard sims graphics with a few tweeks to drag the player in a medieval spirit. The combat animations with the swords are very primitive for an action-rpg game but for sims they are really cool. The bitter part here is that the dragons are not animated, they are sketches in the quest book but they are cool sketches :D



Buy The Sims Medieval @ Amazon.co.uk