The Sims Medieval - PC/Mac

I don't typically write Amazon reviews, and I'm really not sure how to write this one. If I were able to give this game multiple ratings, I would give it: 5 for certain aesthetic and technical qualities, 3 for gameplay, and 1 for certain moral considerations. I thought about averaging the three ratings for a 3, but since it was the last point that was the show stopper for me and that caused me to uninstall the game, I've given it a 1. First, the aesthetic and technical aspects: The graphics are quite beautiful, and it's really rather charming to hear the Sims speaking Simlish with an Elizabethan accent. Also, the game seems to run faster on my computer than Sims 3 does. I have a Mac with 2GB of memory that's beginning to age a bit, and Sims 3 is often a little sluggish on my machine. I didn't notice this to be the case with Sims Medieval. Whether that's because they've tightened up the code, or because the underlying code is simpler as a side effect of the game being qualitatively different from Sims 3, I don't know. Gameplay: I like some things better. One of the things that has always felt a little "off" to me about the Sims franchise is that the Sims' entire lives seemed to revolve around partying, working, meeting basic physical needs, and ...um... reproducing. They always seemed like soulless little animals to me, and it was a little depressing. The Sims in Sims Medieval seem to have somewhat more human concerns. As part of that, I like the introduction of religion, even if it is some sort of weird made-up eye-in-the-sky thing. On the other hand, it seems like the Sims games have been progressively dumbing-down, at least since Sims 2, when I started playing them. The Sims 2 games were fairly rich with a variety of activities from which to choose. Sims 3, while improving the graphics and integrating the town together, removed most of these. Sims Medieval is a series of highly guided "quests". There's not a lot of room for free-form gameplay, the ability to decorate houses is limited, and the ability to build is gone entirely. More and more, the Sims games seem to be controlling the player, rather than the player controlling the game. Morality: I realize that not everyone is going to be in sympathy with this last point. However. I'm a practicing Catholic, with all that that implies in the area of morality. Because the Sims has always had aspects that I consider morally questionable, I have a policy of never allowing the Sim that I'm playing to do something that would be immoral in real life. This means: no criminal profession, no gay relationships, and no "woohoo-ing" except for married couples who are trying for a baby (and even on that last point I half feel like I'm being asked to produce a piece of soft porn). I realize that these restrictions aren't for everyone, in particular for folks who play the Sims as a way of weaving stories, but I find them necessary for my own spiritual health, because I find it too easy to get drawn into the alternate reality of the game. Sims Medieval is the first Sims game that has not allowed me to do this. So far (and I really didn't get that far into the game before I finally decided to give up on it and uninstall it), in order to advance a quest, I have been asked to: (1) give marriage advice to a gay couple, (2) steal pieces of people's souls, and (3) "woohoo" with someone. I'm sorry, but no. I resent being manipulated into violating my values, especially by a semi-mindless computer game. It's not cute, funny, or edgy: it's pointless, unnecessary, and unintelligent. I guess part of the reason that I'm taking the trouble to write this review, instead of just tossing the game and forgetting about it, is that Sims Medieval feels like such a wasted opportunity. The Middle Ages was such a rich, interesting period of history, and the game could have been made something that was intelligent, interesting, and educational. I wish that the game had gone roughly in the following direction: Use the same basic Sims 3 setup as a base, substituting medieval-era buildings, building materials, objects, clothing, etc. Add "religion" to the simology, but use real religions: Christian (either just Catholic, or Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and maybe Cathar), Jewish, Moslem, various pagan. (I realize that the game developers were trying to avoid offending anyone, but real religions could have been used successfully by keeping a light touch and avoiding the more contentious aspects. And by also including traits like "religious" and "irreligious", they could have had some fun: eg, a religious Moslem would get a negative "buff" by neglecting to pray at the prescribed time, or an irreligious Christian would if someone dragged him to church.) The game could have drawn from the medieval Faerie literature by including fairy sims (real fairies, not Tinkerbell). Class characteristics (is the Sim a noble, a free townperson, a serf tied to the land?) and feudal relationships (is one Sim the liege lord of another?) could have been included. Craft guilds. Gypsies. Vikings. And so on. The original SimCity and some of the early spinoffs were successful because they were interesting, challenging, and educational: they gave a good feel for the challenges of managing a complicated ecosystem. The Middle Ages were a time when culture and civilization were developing in varied and interesting ways, and when people were tied to one another in many different kinds of relationships. Sims Medieval could have reflected this cultural richness, building on the existing Sims 3 model, and could have been a fascinating game. The developers chose not to go in this direction. It's too bad.

Got this today along with the Prima guide for it, which I have to say, if you didn't get the guide for this game you really should. The guide is huge compared past Sims 2 and 3 games because there is SO much more depth to The Sims Medieval. I have only played for about 4 hours this afteroon and haven't even scratched the surface of the gameplay involved. This one, although it has incorporated many aspects of past Sims games, is very different in most ways. This is like Sims 3 World Adventures but on a grander scale with different gameplay mechanics. Which means the world involved for your sim to run around in is huge...huge! And you can run from one area, like your castle, to another area, such as the village, WITHOUT any loading screens. Its like S3...one seamless huge world. There is SO much to this game, in fact, writing a comprehensive review on it by one person without having to leave out a lot of details due to space constraints would be next to impossible. So I'm going to just list some stuff I've seen so far. 1. CAS - It has it but its very limited on how you can alter your sim. There is no makeup in this. It's all things medieval and apparently makeup didn't exist back then so they left it out in the game. Hair: There are many styles for both genders. Clothes: Limited in what is given but customizeable through color. Body: Limited on how you can alter its physical features. The clothing inevitably makes all sims look fat from the waist down so don't expect to have an anorexic looking sim. 2. Graphics - Nice but feels flat. This game requires great graphics capability, but although my computer does have that, the graphics, while the most tech-modern, still came across as lacking some substance. Your sim's kingdom is so large, that the camera view of some areas is more like a far-off bird's eye view of some areas, leaving you to have to look at a tiny pin-dot of a sim on the screen at times, especially when your sim visits the nearby village. It's a concession I can overlook considering how large the kingdom is and how much memory it would otherwise use had EA not created it that way. In most areas though, you can zoom in to see things close up. Some things could have been done better, such as the grass on the ground in the forest. I could see the straight edges, almost like large blocks, in the ground where the developers textured in the grass...more like a bad cut and paste job in some areas. A little distracting but ignorable. Some things have to be left up to the player's imagination as well, unlike WA. In WA your sim could enter tombs and such while exploring and you could see what was going on, control your sim inside the tomb, etc. Not so with Medieval. When you send your sim out to the forest and go hunting, your sim disappears into the trees on its quest for wild game. You have no control at that point until your sim is done, nor can you watch your sim do the actual hunting. Same with collecting resources in caves and such. Your sim disappears only to re-emerge a short while later after its task. A small activity box in the upper left corner of your screen indicates how far along your sim is into the activity, much like in Sims 2 when inside a downtown building. Physical graphics as far as sims facial details is a big change from Sims 3. In this, up close in CAS, sims look more lifelike and realistic than ever, in a flat sort of way I guess. However, once out of CAS and into the game, those wonderful new changes seem to disappear and get lost. They revert back to looking a lot more like the sims in Sims 3 during gameplay. I view my game on a 19" monitor, so its not like I was missing any details either. 3. Gameplay mechanics - There is a storyline, sort of, with many, many, MANY quests your sim is expected to pursue and complete every day in order to keep up with the storyline. The story begins with your sim starting out as a Monarch of his/her own kingdom and who must try to acquire as many loyal subjects as possible, rule the kingdom as he/she sees fit, and build the kingdom into a great one. The storyline will change depending on how you play the game, too, and what decisions you make. Options will pop up and you will have to choose which direction you want the game to take you. There are other lands/kingdoms your sim will have to deal with concerning trade and its up to you on whether or not you want to make neighboring kingdoms friends or foe, RPG style. Your sim will be able to set sail on a large ship to islands to explore, etc, once maps are acquired and the quests lead you there. Maps can be bought in the village for HEFTY price. Some of what you saw in WA comes into play here. Your sim will have to discover items and stuff in the environment while exploring. For example: To find wildflowers your sim has to look in bushes and stuff on the ground, much the same way excavating happened in WA. In fact, your sim's body movements while under the 'discover' command are exactly the same as what they were in WA. These things are worth money for your sim so try to find as much as possible and sell a lot of it at the nearby village. Some items are necessary for potions later in the game. Dueling between sims, sometimes to the death, with the use of weapons, again RPG style, is expected in Medieval. Weapons upgrades can be purchased in the town village and its up to you to get your sim experienced in the handling and use of those weapons so that they can win whatever duel or battle they are in. Body armor, along with upgrades, is helpful and available for your sim to wear also. There are witches and wizards in this game although I have yet to get far enough into the game to encounter any. I'm interested to see how that is going to play out. Religion comes into play in Medieval as well. I was really surprised on that since EA, in the past, has done everything they could to avoid the entire topic of religion, but here, although these are 'fantasy' religions, they are still religions nonetheless. I personally think it adds realism to the game and am delighted its included. Build Mode - Non-existent as you know it from past S1,2, & 3 games. This time its more RPG style. Acquire enough wood and stone materials, deliver them to the Master Builder, tell him what type of building you want, and it magically appears RPG style. You can't actually manually build your own buildings. Each building also requires a Hero to run it. You can either place a random, computer generated Hero or go into CAS and create your own. You can, however, decorate the existing buildings to your hearts content provided your sim has enough cash to do it. Furnishings, wallpaper, etc are readily available to buy and add to your castle. Other things - Cooking: It's done the ancient way, in a huge stone kitchen fireplace with a big cast iron pot over the fire. You start out making 'Gruel' and go from there as you gain experience and ingredients. There are no modern appliances, so when your sim is finished eating (with his/her hands...utensils didn't exist in Medieval times) the bowl automatically disappears. No dishwashing. Bathrooms: No more mandatory pottying. The game did away with the requirement although your sim can take a bath and can use the pee pot if you want them to. The toilet is a small pot on the floor, which both female and male sims stand up to pee in. THAT was funny to see the first time. The ONLY things that are mandatory for you to look after in the care of your sim is food and rest this time. They are the only green bars available that can be filled or depleted. Throneroom: You have a throne in which you can sit and 'Hold Court'. In this throneroom are also a desk to write necessary papers on, a Roundtable (actually hexagon shaped) where your sim can do several things (prepare edicts, practice military strategies, etc), a bookcase, a card table, and a few other things. Outside of the throneroom is a 'mailbox' complete with a pidgeon carrier to deliver the mail. There are no phones at all so if you want to invite friends over you have to send a note via pidgeon carrier. The docks: It's where your ship sits at port, ready for your sim to set sail. The forest: It's where your sim goes to hunt for food and resources. The village: A place to buy and sell things. I won't mention any of the other big places for fear of spoiling the fun of a reader's exploration of their kingdom and its surrounding world. In this, how you rule your kingdom is entirely up to you. You can rule it with an iron fist and throw everyone you see into the stockades and throw stuff like tomatos and eggs in their faces, or you can be more of a kinder, gentler type ruler who prefers making friends instead of enemies. There are monsters in this game too. I don't know much about them yet but I saw one come out of a small pond in the forest area. It was big, ugly, and scary looking. Not sure if my sim is eventually supposed to kill it or befriend it or not. I'll have to check my Prima guide on that. Relationships: They exist. You can meet, fall in love, all that good stuff if you want to. Bugs, glitches, and crashes - No crashes (Halleluyah!), no bugs so far, but there is at least one glitch. During a duel on sloping ground, I defeated my foe and when she went down on her back she disappeared into the ground. All I could see of her was her toes and part of her sword sticking out. The rest of her vanished until she eventually recovered and got up and walked away. It didn't effect gameplay at all, it just a querk. Other than that, I have yet to see anything else out of the ordinary. IMPORTANT: Should you buy this, make sure you have PLENTY of time to play it the first time around, because it will automatically start you out in Tutorial Mode and you CANNOT 'Save' the game while in Tutorial Mode! You have to play all the way through Level 1 before you are given the 'Save' ability, so if you stop midway through Level 1 you'll lose everything you just did. I found that annoying because it took me 3 hours to get through Level 1 and I had to leave halfway through to go do some things and ended up having to leave the game running on my laptop until I got back, which caused my laptop to get really hot. Overall a GREAT Sims game. Its new, different, refreshing, and engagingly fun. It's difficult to get bored with this one because you are constantly completing new quests at your own pace as your kingdom evolves into the greatest kingdom in the land. Some concessions apparently had to be made here and there, probably for memory reasons, in the game compared to what we are used to but still, overall I think EA did a pretty dang good job on this one. What it lacks in latitude it makes up for in depth. If you love ALL things Medieval, this is for you. And if you like an RPG style game without the stress or major violence of some of the more mature RPGs on the market, then this is also for you. This is like a kids version RPG. It's more casual, more user friendly, way less violent, and I think more fun. Well worth it! But I have to mention again, get the Prima Guide for this one!! It will help you immensley! Reviewers, feel free to jump in here and fill in any of the gaps my review left. It's going to take all of us to cover this one this time! :)

Let me start by saying that I am a huge sims fan and have owned every single sims game. That said, I'm extremely disappointed in the game. Sims game + medieval + rpg should equal an amazing, awesome game. But, for me, instead of giving us the best of both worlds, they cut out the best parts of both worlds leaving a boring game. There's no aging. Babies appear in a crib then become children in a couple days and stay forever children sims 1 style. There's absolutely no build mode and there's not much room to rearrange anything. There's no wants, just a couple of responsibilities a day. The needs bars have been reduced to just hunger and energy. There are no visible skill bars. The houses give a 2D dollhouse view, you can't even really turn the camera to see different angles. With all of that, I still could have loved the game if the rpg part was more challenging, but it's really not. The quests are ridiculously easy, like a four year old could probably manage. You just click on the yellow button that tells you what to do, and your sim does it. Interesting things like hunting and cave exploring are in a rabbit hole that you can't see. Even Oregon Trail that I played as a child was more interesting in that at least you could actually do the hunting yourself. There's no level up then pick your reward type system. You level up but it just increases your chances at succeeding at things, like the physician's potions will become more advanced. In rpg games that I love, you're given a large list of things you can unlock with your level up points. You keep wanting to play because you want to earn ... X, whatever X is. So you play and play to try to unlock it. But this game really doesn't have anything like that. You can unlock other kingdom ambitions after playing your current kingdom all the way through, but I don't know that any of the other ambitions sound interesting to want to get anyway. There are a few side challenges to unlock watcher points which gives you more clothes, for example, but those aren't particularly hard either. What I keep finding is that there's no challenge in this game and I can't figure out anything for my sims to do. You start out with way too much money and too many things. You don't really need to earn anything. Normally in sims I push my sims to increase all their skills. I focus to keep them extra happy with achieving wants. I keep all their need bars high. But my sims are constantly happy with very little effort on my part. They have no wishes for me to fulfill. They accomplish their responsibilities in about 2 sim hours a day, and then I'm left with the whole rest of the day with really nothing for them to do. It is a little bit like the sims 2 stories games, but I found those much more fun. This, like those games, has a goal pop up that you need to accomplish before moving on. The types of goals are very similar. The easy of accomplishing them is about the same. However with the sims 2 stories I was able to challenge myself much harder than the actual game goals by making my sim get a job and get to level ten before reaching the end of the story, for example. I'm trying to think up more challenges for myself to make the game more interesting, but it's hard without skill bars or wants. I've still been playing the game quite a lot. I keep waiting for something challenging to happen. But after playing a week several hours a day, I still have not managed to fail at anything or even have a difficult time accomplishing anything. There really isn't even all that much to accomplish. I'm just ... bored. And as I play, I just keep thinking of the numerous things they could have done to make this game fun. People might like to know that for the most part the game base seems pretty similar to the Sims 3. Sims get two traits and one fatal flaw (similar to sims 3 traits system). You interact with other sims and your sim gets the "Gwen thinks your sim is being ..." message. You get moodlets similar to sims 3. However there are only two need bars--energy and hunger. Things like hygiene and socialization just lead to moodlets. Likes --You can name each hero anything you like --You can design each hero in CAS, so you do get to decide each sim's looks --You can pick a male or female for each role, doesn't matter --Same sex couples are allowed like previous sims games --There is a create a style option to make things the colors and patterns you want. --The stocks are amusing --Watching sims bow to your sim and getting to hold an audience in the throne room is fun --Fully medieval domestic objects. It's great to have several choices for authentic cooking methods, realistic bathing methods, etc. No more need for custom content to try to replicate the medieval time frame. --Traits and fatal flaw are cool --Sims can marry and have children Dislikes --My biggest complaint is that the game is almost 2D is places. The palace isn't laid out like a sims house. It has three rooms across the top from left to right and three on a floor beneath. Your sim goes out a door at the back of the house that leads to nothing and comes in one at the back of the house from nowhere to go between rooms instead of just taking a door between those rooms! There's no forward and back to the house, if that makes any sense. Also in quite a few places you can only pan left and right and up and down. You can't rotate the angle to see clearer. That isn't true everywhere, but it's true in some places and is annoying. --Children can't age. You have a baby, and then it becomes a child, and then that's it. It's like going back to sims 1. No multi-generation medieval kingdom here. Also children are not controllable! --There's no real build mode. You can change wall and floor colors and rearrange and buy furniture, but if you're a fan into building, this isn't the game for you. --You can only design the heroes. You can't design the peasants. You can't design a spouse for your hero unless you make that person another hero. --The opening movie is the most annoying thing I've ever seen. It has a long story in English. The pictures and animation are beyond lame. I'd really have liked to have seen a preview of things you can do with the game, but instead it's a silly intro story about you being the watcher. I really can't impress how annoying this is until you listen to it start up each time you start the game. --The general game icons are rather simple. I think they went for medieval looking pictures, but they just look too simplistic and out of place in a video game. Again, this is hard to describe. But in sims 2 and sims 3 the icons and borders and such things aren't even noticeable, they just fit and look right. Here they stand out as off and look odd and annoying. It's also really difficult to try to figure out what each symbol means, even with the Prima Guide. --There's an emphasis on religion in the game. The religions are made up, but all together it makes me feel a little uncomfortable. I don't really want to think about what religion my sims are. And mentions of my sims worshiping the watcher, aka me, makes me uncomfortable as well. Depending upon your religion, this may or may not bother you, but it's something I think people should know. --There's no sliders for skin tones, just a few preselect choices. --Trying to get decent camera angles is extremely difficult if not impossible. --You can't decide where buildings go. You can decide what buildings you want to build next, but they go in set places in the Kingdom.

The Sims Medieval is great fun. I don't know how it compares to the other traditional Sims games. I am a big fan of Sims City Societies though and can tell you that the game play is similar enough that if you like one you will probably like the other. If you enjoy strategy, action or RPG games and are into the Medieval period thang then Sims Medieval will be a pretty good fit. This game is a very well thought out one and I do recommend it, but with caution. Here is a just a sample of the Good: Graphics: Beautiful. Though there will be moments of frustration when the oh so beautifully rendered trees and landscaping block your view, it is all rich with color and detail. Gameplay: Varied, challenging, entertaining. You will play a series of games. Each game is targeted to a specific ambition. Each ambition requires you to complete different quests. The quests are varied and totally up to you. During the course of each quest you will be required to fulfill certain daily responsilities or "duties". Completing these daily tasks are not always easy and can have good or bad consequences to your current quest. During each quest you are given a certain amount of quest points. How you choose to spend your time in your kingdom will dictate how much of these points are used up by the time you have completed the quest. Use your time wisely and you can explore the kingdom and build friendships, alliances, businesses, even families. (Though a note here, have more than 3 kids and you will be asked to send one of them away to school, etc.) You will also be expected to actually feed, clothe and maintain your sims (No joke, neglect the hunger or energy bar? Lose a sim. Serious.). And for not much money either, so you will have to get creative. Game Designers were careful to include a number of keyboard shortcuts so navigating your kingdom is a snap. You will be expected to "build" your kingdom and are awarded a certain number of resource points according to gameplay results and allowed to choose which buildings can be actualized. There are unexpected elements of gameplay that are non-required but can make for a more well rounded Sim. Your sim can spend time playing KingBall for instance. This game is a fun way to explore the Medieval world without having to actually go medieval. If you like Renaissance festivals you should love this game. Sim Creator: Put your sim together yourself. You are given an avatar and a plethora of choices, skin color, age, weight, hair, body type, etc. You can even be a Medieval fashion designer if you wish. There are clothing choices for each class of sim and you are able to choose colors, etc. Plan an outfit: In the middle of game play stop by a dresser or chest and you can change your outfit or even someone else's (NPCs usually). Furnish mode: Think Medieval Interior Decorator. The music: Fantastic, the music totally fits the period and has a certain amount of tongue in cheek-iness to boot. Okay, now for the bad and the ugly. Glitches. Oh my God, how this game glitches. For instance, your character gets nabbed by the constable and sent to the stocks. Okay. Usually they are out in a day. But sometimes, they don't get out. Ever. Or you see your sim desperately needs to eat. She has food, you get her to ye olde fireplace but her focus is low and she actually forgets what she is doing. And won't cook. At all. And dies. Sometimes you can save the game with a number 2 attached to it and close and go back in and finish up sometimes, you're just screwed. Also, this game was NOT designed for Win 7. Period. And don't bother contacting EA/Origin. (Which brings us to the truly ugly.) There is NO customer service or tech help for this game. EA/Origin will tell you there is. They lie. There is a phone number with many extensions and no humans. They have a couple of different websites and forums. These are also not maintained. Send as many emails as you please, there will be no response. Bottom line, this game is great fun but it is not for the faint of heart. You better have a real good system and a whole lot of patience because the powers that be are not interested in helping you out once you pay for the game. I'm not gonna lie, I have vowed to never, ever buy another EA game. That said however, I loved this game and the price that goHastings is offering it for is waaayyyy better than what I originally paid. So good in fact, I am buying one for my daughter too! NOTE: In the spirit of full disclosure, my pc is state of the art and now every time I play the game Windows Explorer crashes. My daughter just started playing hers on her laptop and it started crashing and freezing right from the beginning. Apparently EA is fully aware of the problems with this game (like how the longer you play the worse the gameplay will get, i.e. more and more crashes) but has done little more than issue statements basically blaming consumers' computers. They continue to release games that are simply not finished or at all ready for the user. This game is fun but woefully produced and should have been recalled ages ago. Go to (...).page to get an idea of what other users are saying.

Right away I want to say that I had zero expectations of this game going into it. I was looking forward to something different in this franchise, but I purposely did not read too many details about the game because I wanted the experience to be fresh and unbiased. I have played every game in the Sims franchise; from the very beginning over a decade ago. I have liked each game in varying degrees on its own merit, as I think they all have their pros and cons. That said, each player's experience is different and enjoyment is entirely subjective. This is only my opinion and I'm sharing because it may help someone else decide whether or not to spend hard-earned money on it. I have noticed a trend with EA's RPG-like games towards cut-scenes, "nothing" time, and a general lack of animation. This is pure laziness on the developer's part and it really takes a lot away from the gamer in terms of enjoyment, imagination, freshness, and control over the direction each player's game takes. In Sims Medieval, there are many points during "quests" (called "ambitions" in-game) where you direct a Sim towards a specific location for a specific purpose, only to sit there staring at the screen as the minutes tick by and you're doing absolutely nothing while the Sim is supposedly completing some action out of sight. At points in the game, rather than create the animations that would allow you--via your Sim--to perform certain actions, such as hunting, fighting, exploring, sailing, etc., your Sim disappears from the screen and all you get is a little text bubble that lets you know what your Sim is doing. When you duel with other Sims, the game takes over and success is left seemingly to chance rather than any deftness on the gamer's part. This game gives you very little control over the various Sims. You can be puppeteer to a handful of specific Sims over the course of the game and mostly it is the game deciding for you what you are allowed to do at any given moment. There's very little in the way of furnishings and attire, food, locations, etc. "Building" is done for you as well, though you can decorate indoor spaces to an extent with the limited amount of items available. Sims cannot wander the buildings, they can only walk room-to-room, and hallways are behind the scenes so your Sim disappears for a short time as they travel hither and tither. Due to the limitations of the indoor areas, the POV is not 180 degrees, you get only a frontal view. The "quests" quickly become monotonous and stale. As I said earlier, much of the animation simply does not exist and there is far too much time spent waiting for Sims to do things behind the scenes. (Or, much more exciting to consider, on another plane of existence.) Many quests are slight variations of quests you've already done. Choices are black and white, good or bad, not nuanced. For me the pros are: the graphics are quite lovely, some interactions between Sims are clever and quite humorous, it is somewhat fun for a day or two if you don't dwell too much on how much more fun it would be had they not skimped on animation/player control. In the end, I don't even know what to call this game. It really reminds me of a choose-your-own-adventure story. You have *some* choices, but they are predetermined and therefore quite limited. Once you are aware of all the choices, it loses its luster. In my opinion, good role playing games leave much more to the imagination, letting gamers create their own adventures/stories and explore on their own terms. The Sims Medieval just couldn't muster the creativity and skill necessary for me to fully immerse myself in the game. Edited to include the following: the game installed easily on my Windows 7 64-bit OS, the patch installed straight-away, and the game runs with few hiccups. It did freeze once or twice and I had to do a hard shut-down via the Task Manager. I have a NVIDIA Geforce GT545 and 12 GB RAM.

I spent 10hrs. setting up my quest and gaining a level 3 Monarch, then I decided to furnish some of the new buildings I put up... big mistake. The game freezes and you can only choose kingdom mode or build mode - live mode is unavailable to click - and if you choose kingdom mode then it locks up. I did the patch update about 6hrs. into gameplay; other posters around the web claim to have problems after they run the patch update, so there may be a connection. My advice is not to do the patch update until a fix comes along. Up until that problem, the game was actually pretty amusing, like a merge between a soft RPG and The Sims. I was hunting bear, making alliances with crab monsters, dueling brigands in the forest, and sparring with my neighboring ruler over the lust of my master builder. Now I have to start all over - just as I was starting to really get somewhere in my first quest. I never even drank ale, or bedded a handsome knight... *sigh*.... **************** UPDATE ********************* I solved the issue we all seem to be experiencing - it is a design flaw in the user interface and is NOT a bug in the program itself. Here's the issue: You start with monarch, solve a quest, then are prompted to build and furnish new buildings. That's where everyone gets "frozen" or confused... there's no prompt to tell you what to do next, so a lot of us assume we're bugged because you cannot choose "live mode." You need to choose a new quest, a new hero and new approach - it says so in the manual (if you are like me, the manual was tucked neatly beneath my can of soda as I never read the manual unless necessary). On the lower left side, right by the area where you choose to furnish your building, is the book of achievments. You need to choose another quest, etc... Once you do that you can get back into live mode. Overall, the game is like crack: I am highly addicted, and when not playing I kind of mull around half aware of my surroundings, expecting a large, green diamond to appear over my head. So yes, its a great game. And yes, I finally brewed my own beer, and "whoo-hooed" a rather handsome bard. Several times.

Suckered again. Oh, EA, how do you continue to disappoint us? Let me count the ways. So here we have their latest blunder-I mean, installment: "The Sims Medieval". Let me begin by saying that I've been playing Sims games since the beginning and it's my favorite PC game. That being said, I think it's alright to be blunt and not sugar coat their every game release; if "official" reviewers keep giving glowing reviews telling them how great they are, they'll never figure out what they're doing wrong. Let's dig in. I'll start on a positive note so as not to break anyone's heart: the game runs smoothly even on the highest settings(if you have a half way decent PC). Very smoothly. Too smoothly. Do you know what this means? It's my first indication that the game is rather small. Oops, did I say that this was a positive note? Even basic Sims 2 would jerk a little here and there on the highest settings on my PC(not to compare the two games, mind you. This is a different animal). With that in mind, let's discuss why exactly it's so small. Expansions in the future or not, they can't go back and fix the graphics. What's wrong with them, you ask? Even on the highest settings and a great resolution, anyone can tell that the CAS(create-a-Sim) is a dumbed down version of The Sims 3. The background for the CAS has really rough edges and has a very unrealistic feel. Even your Sim's reflection is choppy on the ends, though your Sim isn't. The character customization falls short of TS3(only two traits and a fatal flaw?) and the clothing is a disaster. I hardly wanted to even play with the color of anything because it all looked so...mushy. The colors didn't come together nicely like even a Sims 2 outfit would; instead they appeared to kind of bleed together, like a seven year old playing in Photoshop. I'll give them points for the facial hair, since it amused me for about 30 seconds. Did anyone else notice that the crown looked like a badly done piece of pixel art? No? We'll get to actual gameplay graphics in a moment. The "story", if you can call it that, for The Sims Medieval is rather...primitive(no pun intended). I'll also give them points for using Patrick Stewart to narrate it, as he is awesome. However, that doesn't make the story any better. They pretty much come out and tell you that you're God of your Sims and that they worship you. Um...what? Call me crazy, but when I was a kid playing with my toys, I never thought I was God, or pretended to be God. In fact, you hardly think about it. You're just playing; telling a story that you made up in your head. The same is true when I Sim, and while I know some players like being God of their Sims, EA telling me what I am to my Sims just rubs me the wrong way. I would have made up an epic sounding story and left out all those weird implications. But that's just me. Or, better yet, why is there a story at all? Every other game in existence with the Sims label that has a story has an option you click on to play that story. This is generally called "Story Mode". Isn't the whole point to make up your own Medieval kingdom? They may as well have named it for you, too. Then they ask you to enter the history of your kingdom. Um...why? There's little more to add after everything they've told you about how Sims came to be, don't you think? After sitting there for about five minutes trying to come up with something clever that could fit in with their rock wall story and coming up empty handed, I threw out something about war burning it to the ground and our new king restoring it to its former glory. But my frustrations with the game were just beginning. "Build your kingdom!" was something they advertised like mad. "Create", "Build!", "All your own!", blah, blah, blah. There's just one problem: you don't build anything. Everything gets automatically built for you! You can't even so much as choose its placement-that's predetermined, too. You can furnish it to your heart's content, but even that will remain severely limited until you're at a point where you have loads of money coming in. Or you could cheat, but I certainly wasn't about to do that in my test run of the game. The buildings themselves are just...wrong. You can pretty much only see it open from one side, like a doll house. They have magical little back doors that Sims disappear through, only to come out a floor above-oh, I guess that's their idea of stairs. With all the settings on max, the "grass" is flat colors with no texture. The further you zoom in, the less impressive it is. Just keep your distance in outdoor scenes, like they did in their trailers. Can you say "disaster"? Before we get to the meat of this dish, let's talk about the music. I was impressed...for the first ten minutes. It starts up and it's that neat olde tyme stuff with the flutes and it's really nice. However, unlike the radio in the regular Sims games, it can't be shut off; and unlike other games that shall remain nameless, it's not the type of music that effortlessly becomes background and distractionlessly enhances gameplay. In fact, it gets quite boring. They made it all sound too similar and turning the volume down only helped a little. It was too lively for such a game and while it would have worked at certain points, having it play near-endlessly was a bad move. So much of this was poorly thought out that it makes me feel like this is just a bit of table scraps they're throwing out to us hungry wolves to keep us "happy" while they work on something else. The voice acting for the Sims themselves was pretty good and it really did sound like Olde Simlish. Now we'll get down to the real problem: EA tried to combine the "sandbox" game The Sims with a Medieval RPG and made a bloody mess of it. Either this is The Sims or this is Fable and when you try to make it both, it becomes neither. I'm sorry, the two cannot be successfully combined. It may appease the casual Simmer, but to us hard core fans, this is just insulting. You'd have been better off spending all this time and money on a huge Medieval expansion or stuff pack for TS3. In this game, your Sims only have two needs to worry about: hunger and energy. This is their way of saying "Don't focus on your Hero's life, focus on the quests!", yet at the same time, they imply that you may want to settle down and start a family. Uh...wait? What's the point in getting married and starting a family if no one ages? The king's son will never become king, not to mention you can control no one except your designated "heroes". At least they have an infinite lifetime to fulfill their quests and somehow go from something like a mere bard to a hero! Which, in my humble opinion, makes the game even more boring. At least in a regular Sims game you have a little pressure on you. "Oh crap! It's only five days till little Jimmy's birthday! I should at least potty train the kid..." or "Just seven days before Nancy becomes and elder and she hasn't even gotten to the top of her career yet!"-you know, things like that. There's a bucket for male Sims to urinate in(I have yet to see a female attempt to use it, or for anyone to take a "number 2") and a bathtub for them to bathe in. Why? Well, for the moodlets-I mean, focus, of course! Your character will spend a couple Sim hours bathing just for a +5 or +10 focus bonus for the next 10 hours. There are games to play when they don't need to have fun and plenty of people to socialize with when they could speak to no one ever again with little consequence. Of course, you have to piss around with things like that because if your Sim loses focus and they try to do a quest that involves anything more complicated than writing a letter, it will likely end in failure. This is not a challenge as much as it is an annoyance. The maid was no where to be found when my king needed to eat, so he had gruel, which earned him a negative focus...um, un-bonus. Being my first Sim day(should I be saying "hero" instead of "Sim"?), I had no ingredients with which to make anything decent. So instead of needing to have a better cooking skill to be able to make better dishes, you just have to have the right stuff...assuming you can afford it when they just encouraged you to buy something for your throne room for a quest. Thank goodness for the maid, since she clearly has endless ingredients. Wait...where did she go? Speaking of such, let's touch on these so-called "quests". The tutorial turns out to be your first quest, which unlocks your next available "hero". Did I mention that it's insanely long? And you can't save until it's over. Although I'm pretty sure they'd have horses to cart their king around by then, your king walks everywhere; running is not an option. Despite probably being a skill-less aristocrat he'll fight some baddies all alone. These fights are very scripted and majorly dull; I have yet to see any surprise in them. But not, in fact, quite as boring as all the things that have no animation at all! You can sharpen your sword from the inventory menu; I didn't see him do anything but stand there. They want you to gather wood? He disappears into the trees and returns moments later. It must be in his pocket. They want you to gather stone? He disappears into a cave and returns empty-handed. He has big pockets. One of his two "day job" mini quests for the day is to hunt a bear! `Okay,' I thought, `this should be interesting...' He walked into the trees and disappeared. Moments later he returned with an un-bonus declaring that he had been badly wounded and had not, in fact, killed any bear. He walked normally, talked normally; none of his needs suffered. After so many hours, the wound un-bonus will disappear. And...so what? Let's even forget that fact that he's a king and wouldn't be doing any of this kind of crud for himself. It's still...so disappointing. For a moment I thought, maybe they should have started you as one of the common "heroes" instead of the monarch; at least then it might make sense for them to go around and do all of that. However, you can't build up the kingdom without first establishing a ruler. Really, that flushes any argument I could have thought of in their defense, like "Hey, they just made a mistake." Unfortunately, this whole game was a mistake. In the end, I feel cheated by EA. They used cheap tricks and crafty advertising to get me all excited, only to let me down again. I have learned my lesson and swear never to pre-order another game just because it has The Sims label ever again. I know this was long, but hopefully it can save some of you your hard earned cash and a lot of misery. In my supreme disappointment, I will now crawl back to The Sims 2 and wait, likely in vain, for a Sims 4 that will probably never touch what this game once was. Aku-chan Gaming In Perspective

I've played for a day and a half so far, and don't expect that I'll play it again unless I get really bored with all of my other options. As it was loading I read through the instructions and I started to get really excited. "Quests", I thought to myself. That will give the game some direction. I'm currently taking a break from Sims 3 because I got tired of doing the same thing over and over with my different sims. However, as you advance in the game, the quests repeat. Sure, there are new one's as well, but still why would you want to complete the same quest over and over? So, you can do the opposite of what you did last time, I suppose. That's not for me, unfortunately. Even that wouldn't be so terrible - you could just not do the quests and control your sims, except... You can only control your hero sims, not their spouses or their kids. I had a heck of a time trying to track my sims spouse down in order to get some kids. He or she kept going into the village or outside the boundaries of the house, castle, etc. There are times you can't "call them over" to where your sim is at, so no woohoo until they come home. One spouse was pretty much always gone - never came home to sleep at night or to eat - no kids for that sim. I wasn't able to get my sims to have more than 2 kids, so that didn't add any variety or drama to their lives. The kids themselves never grow up, the sims in your kingdom never age. Oh, they die - sometimes, but they never grow old and die. If you enjoy tearing down their houses and building your own, or expect to be able to add rooms to the castle, hovel, etc., sorry to burst your bubble, but no. You can redecorate and furnish your sims home, but you get a limited number of rooms and that's it. I had the expectation of the combination of Sims 2 and 3 and thought, cool, set in medevial times with quests to keep it fresh and advancing a kingdom through the generations. That's not the game. If that's what you're expecting too, well, you can try it, but may be disappointed.