The Sims Medieval Review

Publisher: EA Games

Developer: The Sims Studio
Platforms: PC/Mac

Though the Sims Medieval is a standalone product, it feels like an evolution of the World Adventures expansion pack for The Sims 3 which pushed the game series towards an increasingly quest based nature.

The Sims Medieval centers itself around the creation of a new civilization at a micro level (as opposed to the macro level you might see in the Civilization series of games). In it you take on the role of The Watcher who interacts with the game world through varied hero characters.

Though you start with a Monarch, the list of heroes (Each with their own building) swiftly grows during the first many hours of gameplay. There’s a wide selection of buildings, for which the hero/building combination lists as Monarch/Throne Room, Spy/Spy Quarters, Wizard/Wizards Tower, Physician/Clinic, Blacksmith/Smithy, Merchant/Market, Bard/Tavern, Jacoban Priest/Jacoban Cathedral, Peteran Priest/Peteran Monastery and Knight/Barracks.

In addition to this there are many locations & buildings, some of which are built and others which may appear or already exist in the world. These include Forest Outskirts, Watcher Pavilion, Reception Hall, Mill, Lighthouse, Docks, Town Square, Path to Village Outskirts, The Judgement Zone, Kingball Court, Training Yard and Graveyard & Cave.

What is particularly stunning is just how much gameplay there is waiting for you. I’ve lost count of the hours I’ve played the game for, have all the available buildings constructed and yet I’m still working on the first of 12 ‘Ambitions’, the other 11 still being locked off until I finish the current one. If you’re looking for one single player game to sink countless hours into, this could be it.

Each ambition will provide you with a set number of Quest Points which you must then work through, the quests are very varied and fun and/or interesting and I’m impressed with how the developers have managed to fight the usual danger of a quest based system, where everything feels like it’s just fetch and kill quests.

A significant factor in this lies in how each quest starts, a hero will suddenly decide that they are looking into some issue that they’ve heard about. So it neatly dodges the issue of wondering why the quest giver isn’t doing his own work instead of wasting the players’ time with menial duties.