Reviews of The Sims Medieval - PC/Mac

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Seems like a lot of people are disappointed having expected something that was never promised. A lot of reviews are giving the game 1 star because "it's not The Sims 3 with medieval objects and clothes." Why would EA release that? That's more of an expansion for The Sims 3, not a standalone game. Heck, you could do it now yourself if you wanted to by downloading third party content for free. Thankfully, EA did not cheat us by simply giving us The Sims 3 with new decorations and clothes. They gave us an entirely new game!

The opening movie once you first start the game is quite amusing, and it's full of win simply because it's narrated by Patrick Stewart. The appropriately themed illustrations along with the narration explain that you're The Watcher, revered by the people. Also, we learn that "people are dumb" (because they're getting eaten by dragons and forest dwelling dire chinchillas), and that you are to give your Heroes gentle nudges to help guide them on the proper path to a glorious new civilization.

This game runs faster and smoother than my full Sims 3 installation, likely for obvious reasons, but even so, the graphics seem updated and quite a bit more detailed. The facial and clothing details in Create A Sim, including the new, sharply detailed eyes, are really a visual treat. When you're choosing your sim's voice, you'll also discover there's a new version of Simlish, sounding a lot more European than your standard Simlish we've all come to know and love.

Once you've made your Monarch for the tutorial (I chose to make a Queen, rather than a King), you're dropped into the game for your first quest. Never fear, the tutorial for your first quest helps explain a lot, but I'd advise not neglecting to do something simply because the tutorial doesn't tell you to. For instance, it never tells you where to go and when to eat. Don't let your sim starve to death. Once the hunger bar is about 75% depleted, head up to the 2nd floor of the throne room and make yourself some gruel in the fireplace cauldron. You'll sit down at the table nearby and eat it with your hand! Other than that, the introductory quest does a fairly good job of teaching you the ropes. This game is quite different from your standard "The Sims" series of games, so you might be a bit frustrated if you skip the tutorial... there are lots of new mechanics. One thing I did find a bit annoying was that the popup info in the upper right portion of the screen sometimes faded out as quickly as it popped up, not allowing me to actually read the flavor text. I missed out on the thoughts of my Monarch's first romance because the overlay was up for only 1/2 a second and disappeared. Hope there is a patch forthcoming.

This game is about Heroes rather than households, and it's quest based rather than freeplay or sandbox. It feels more like an RPG to me than your standard The Sims type game. You're not on a linear rail, though, because depending on the Hero you're playing and your Hero's choices previous to the quest you've currently chosen to do (yes, you are given choices of which quests to complete based on previous quests completed, kingdom status, etc), there are different ways to complete quests with different outcomes.

In a nutshell, I'd call this a medieval-themed, quest-based Sims RPG. And it's really a lot of fun and really nice to look at. EA could have cheated and thrown a themed version of The Sims 3 at us, but they did not, thankfully. It's obvious they wanted something different for this game as evidenced by the new mechanics and, so far, I think it works. I've been having fun ooh'ing and ahh'ing and learning the new game. It's a nice change if I'm a little bored with the standard Sims 3 but still want to Sim instead of playing something else.

Most importantly, don't knock the game because you expected something less. The game's website has been up for quite some time, and if you're disappointed because you expected Medieval Sims 3, you've only yourself to blame... not EA, who's done a fine job injecting some new life into the franchise.

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When I first received the game and installed it, I was immediately prompted to do a game update. Apparently one was created for the game even before it was available to buy. So be prepared after the initial installation process for a short game update to be installed prior to first playing the game.

Right out of the starting gate things about the Sims Medieval feel very different, but with enough familiarities included to make game play not totally foreign to those already familiar with the Sims games. You start out beginning with naming your "Kingdom", not a city. Once you have named the Kingdom, you need to create a "hero" sim to rule as the monarch. Doing so open up the familiar create a sim screen. While things like age, weight, skin color and hair are all still part of designing your sims, selecting their traits now also includes choosing separate flaws for them as well, such as bloodthirsty, drunkard and uncouth.

During gamely, I found that the typical Sims Mood Meter has been replaced with a "Focus Meter", basically working on the same principals of the need for your sims to stay well rested, fed and happy. The entire panel for controlling them is based on the same layout as the Sims 3. Things like your sims inventory, goals, navigation and game speed are all in almost the same layout, with only small differences.

Much like the city view in Sims 3, there is a view called Eye of The Watcher. In the original city view, you panned from left to right and north to south until you came to your cities edge. The Eye of The Watcher mode allows you to pan though your kingdom in a 360 deg. circular view. As if you were at the center, looking around. Just like in the Sims 3, you can go out into your world, interact with everyone, go places and find things to gather . The difference in the Sims Medieval is that only sims working in certain professions can collect specific items. One must also spend time investigating an item before it can be gathered.

The gathering of items plays a crucial roll in this version of the sims, as it's how you expand and build your kingdom. If your familiar with the Sims Castaway game, the gathering for the purpose of building items works similarly. Your goal is to build your kingdom and advance your sims through their quests. You can work on your quests, or just spend time doing other things. Much like in other sims games, you can do everything, or nothing. It's up to you.

Instead of necessarily having your sims spend their lives working a specific 9-5 job, now they have quests. You work to continue advancing in their quest throughout their lifetime. Each day they are also issued 2 responsibilities. They can do them, or not, but it can drastically affect a sims focus (mood) either way.

While the menus and buttons may look familiar, it would seem everything inside of them is completely different. About the only interaction that has remained the same is "chat". Everything else is something new. Each class of sim also has special interactions just for their type.

Remember the days of sims fighting with each other when one sim flirted with another's significant other? Well the days of the dusty ball of fighting in the dirt are over! Now, you challenge a duel. You hit someone with a glove and whip out your sword. But details like how heavy your armor is and weapon play a crucial roll in if your going to win the fight. The match begins and you can see every strike. There is a stamina and health meter displayed for both opponents, and the first one to run out of either is the looser. So your going to want your sim in a good mood when you brandish your sword against another.

This game is PACKED with stuff to do. This is by no means a small game. It seems to have everything from every version of the Sims. The gathering of items to build and eat reminds me of Sims Castaway, the clothing and mysteriousness of it has a touch of Sims 1 Makin' Magic. The whole layout of the menus and workings is just like that of Sims 3. The quests of building a Kingdom and advancing your sims in it is like no other. This is not a remake of just the same old game with new clothing and hair. This game has a whole new design of how it works and how to progress though it. There is so much going on that you spend very little time worrying any more about what a sim is wearing, because it almost seems unimportant.

The sims are so realistic looking in the create a sim, it's almost scary.

You'll find the game follows what it would be like in the medieval timeline quite well, in that your going to be cooking over a pit instead of a gas stovetop. Your female sims don't have makeup to wear, and the hair styles are quite entertaining. Your going to be walking everywhere, since cars are not around and if you want to mail something, your going to have to do it by carrier pigeon. Yet there's something just a little extra fun about putting a sim in the town square stockade and throwing eggs at tomatoes at them, instead of just a sim police officer putting them in their car and hauling them away.

The clothing details are beautiful, but since there are different outfits for so many classes of sims, each sims class has a limited selection. Your sim will automatically change into a preset outfit different than their everyday ones for activities such as dueling or sleeping (much like a pregnant sim changes into maternity clothing on their own). There really was a lot of thought and design put into this version of the Sims. I have had other Sims games in the past that just didn't live up to the hype, but this one does everything and more.

Playing the Sims Medieval is like exploring the Sims in a whole new way.

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it's been a long time since a Sims game captivated me enough to really sit down and play for long periods of time and so far Sims Medieval has some magic in it that I didn't quite get with the 3rd iteration.

Without going back too much into what other reviewers have already stated, one of the things that I really enjoyed is that there seems to be more things to do to give your characters focus and that seems to have been missing from other Sims games. You have quests and mini quests that you can do to pass the time, you have decisions that you can make that affects the entirety of the game.

I also enjoy that as you build your kingdom you can shape other characters to perform missions without having to play the whole game as your primary character. Some of the same elements remain however as your playing is only as good as the interactions that you have with characters within your kingdom and making sure that you sim's wants and needs are balanced.

The Focus meter is a new change in that I have noticed that certain tasks will not be done as efficiently if you are unfocused as the would be when you are and like any RPG you get XP for completing tasks correctly.

I also like the fact that as you play through your story when speaking to certain sims about aspects of the kingdom, you don't always have to guess what's going on as a pop up on the screen will explain certain situations are going on like 'yes we need more stone" or "Hey, I need you to rescue the fair maiden."

The environment and sounds will pull you right in to the medieval world from the style of dress to the music to the Simlish which has a noticeable accent.

As someone else has mentioned, early on in the game you will always have things to do although it seems like some of the tasks that your king does (like collect wood) should be delegated to a lower minion. However that gets made up in the fact that certain traits you imbue on your sim may take a menial task such as wood gathering and add that you discovered treasure or a monster that you have to slay.

As far as controls, it's as easy as always especially on a Macbook Pro and even with the graphic setting on medium, it's really nice to look at with slowdown occurring if too many sims are on the screen at once.

My only complaint with the game so far is that sometimes trying to get from point A to point B is not as easy of a transition as it could be because the mapping is not as responsive as it should. Sometimes if you don't click on that 'sweet spot' on the map the game won't respond. One other thing I would like to see added to future iterations if this is expanded upon is bringing back generations of sims. One of the main focal points of that era was the focus on families contending for the throne. Maybe it's a bit contentious to think something like that could fit into a family friendly game like this but it would be nice to have some sibling rivalry play out on this game and see it mature; the old king dies and 2 siblings compete for the throne. Who knows maybe we can get that in an expansion?

if you have followed the Sims, this choice is easy...by the way EA, if you can make the Sims 3 for the iPad, can you try for the same with this???

**As someone else stated, be prepared to play through the WHOLE TUTORIAL as you cannot save your game until you finish it!!!!! And you will need at least 2 or 3 hours for that!**

Honest reviews on The Sims Medieval - PC/Mac

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.

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Like a cross between Sims and Fable, everything about this game appealed to me and I've thoroughly enjoyed the four days I spent completing the first round. However, the Fatal Flaw of Sims Medieval is replayability, a flaw it has inherited from the Fable side of its family tree.

Creating a monarch is fun and though I take some issue with Her Highness feeling an obligation to gussy up to meet with one of her own (or his own) employees as the first act, in general, I enjoyed working my way through the quests. The actions to take are mostly clearly demonstrated and it isn't difficult to accomplish most things. You won't be allowed to kill anyone during a quest that is necessary to a quest so shouldn't get stuck. You can, however, kill everyone else, if you want. I wouldn't, but you can.

There were only 2 quests I had to pop out of the game to search the next steps for and determined that one was actually an error in the game -in the Dangerous Minds quest, my target was not completing the task I was suppose to observe him on. The other, Bric-A-Brac Day, was just too ambiguous as to what to do compared to the clear actions described for the rest of the quests.

Playing the various heroes creates a varied experience, particularly in the Blacksmith and Physician trades where you are actively participating in making the crafts.

The Merchant class is difficult to navigate... lots of walking to opposite sides of town that seem counterintuitive to selling things at the market and I don't necessarily think every sale should have to be so much work, but you do receive a salary which could be considered the "rest of the sales."

The Knight and Monarch seemed to be favored in the quest window but that could also just be my experience. I thoroughly enjoyed my knight. I had him marry my queen when she chose a suitor and then he lived in the castle and the children and him would all come home at night to sleep and then disappear each morning by six a.m. This led more gravity to their relationship than in a previous marriage where I had difficulty getting her suitor to even come over so they could marry. Relationships are, superficial at best, outside of the objectives of the current quest.

Not being able to rotate the camera the majority of the time was frustrating. I frequently lost people behind the market stalls and had no method to click on them. Children not growing up, characters not aging in general, was disappointing. I felt like after Sims Nightlife adding a "celebrity" aspect, giving everyone the same social interactions was a missed opportunity to give the Monarch more limited social interactions available when playing other heroes with low relationships to the Monarch. In general, I felt like the Monarch should have more control over their environment. But that's not the major flaw in the game.

After completing my 13 buildings and using up my QP, I was excited to take my kingdom to the next level! To spread out across the land and... essentially, you can't. If you want to launch another campaign, you start over. So now I have a whole new monarch, doing the same tired quest of primping in the mirror to meet an employee. Not wanting to be completely repetitive, I cleared the whole castle and repurposed every room but the main throne room. But the NPCs still behave largely as if the castle had the same layout. They all gather in what is now my kings bedroom, emptying his bookshelf (I discovered later that the knight had every book from the king's bookcase in his inventory.) and ignoring the spacious receiving room with its casks of ail and game tables.

Not being able to continue to a new campaign with the same ruler and being able to reach level 10 with multiple heroes in a matter of hours, a feat I cannot accomplish in any other Sims game in a week of gameplay, there is so much potential with this game but the challenge isn't there and, ultimately, the depth of gameplay is weak.