This is essentially the overarching goal you’ll be working toward as you play. However, it comes at the cost of some of the freedom that many would say makes The Sims, well, The Sims.Īfter Patrick Stewart introduces you to the game’s fantasy setting as only Patrick Stewart can, you select a Kingdom Ambition. In that sense, The Sims Medieval adds what many gamers thought was always missing from the franchise: structure and purpose. So you’re sort of on your own for that.The Sims Medieval is more about going on quests and bettering your kingdom than it is about making families and living out their lives, day in and day out. I wish the game had taken one more step, though: It gives you credit for making good choices, but it doesn’t do the same when you avoid the bad ones. But it is to say that such negative elements aren’t approached in the same way or given as much clout as they are in many RPG peers. That’s not to justify the mystical spirituality or casual sex that can go on. What paths through the moral forest you decide to explore. What you do and what you see in The Sims Medieval has a lot to do with how you play. And sexual encounters are dubbed “woo-hoo” and kept totally under the covers. Inebriation is overblown staggering and silliness. Spells are little more than glowing blasts from a wizard’s stick-like staff. And the swordfight encounters or pit monster battles are bloodless and generally approached with a detached, humorous slant. Killings-from hunting bears to jousting monsters-all happen offscreen. Characters communicate in a non-language sim speak, so obscenities are never a problem. But it’s only fair to say that it’s tempered and tamped down by the game’s approach. You can end up, then, with options for free-flowing alcohol, swordfights ending in death, dark magic spell blasts, dens of gambling, flirting in the hopes of bedding members of either sex, and church clerics who are clearly less than godly fellows. And if your sims are encouraged to nurture their negative yearnings, then the game will always supply ways to sate them. So you might end up with a brave, valiant … compulsive gambler. So do you prompt your hero to kill her? Steal her power? Or marry her (gulp!) and draw her to your cause? Also, each character you create, whether king or commoner, comes with two positive traits and a fatal flaw. One quest features a powerful hag of a witch who threatens the land, for instance. Like most RPGs, The Sims Medieval often offers several paths to a given quest’s fulfillment. They’re all characters who nobly-or maybe not so nobly-serve the realm and help you fulfill your quests and finish your ambition. Other structures let you create and control wizards, spies, blacksmiths, knights, merchants and bards. Build a church, for instance, and you get a priest. New buildings, however, bring with them the possibility of new heroes. Decorating with a new throne, a roaring fireplace or a few tapestries are about all the architectural dabbling you’ll be doing. New prefab buildings and towers can be added-and no degrees in building are required this time around. And each finished quest opens the castle gate to several more, earning experience points that allow you to expand the kingdom. Voilà, you’re one step closer to a secure domain. You can actually better the entire kingdom when you choose to pursue one of 12 possible “ambitions” that interact with well-being, security, culture or knowledge, and eventually lead to “winning” the game.įor instance, a monarch may hear of a fearsome cave-dwelling Crab Monster that could very well be persuaded by new clothes, a little mustache wax and several well-prepared meals to help protect the realm. Regular miniquests of eating and resting, along with other scheduled kingly duties such as passing edicts or perhaps killing a rampaging bear, do more than just expand the family wardrobe here. Instead, things begin with the building of a single male or female monarch whose job it is to govern and rule. But the goal here isn’t to build families and watch them do their daily chores and attend to their various bodily needs. Fear not though, fair gamer, you’ll still be in the character-creation biz. Play begins with a brief narration and gameplay tutorial that makes it crystal clear just how different things will be. This new build-a-hero experiment moves the action from a typical sim suburb and plunks gamers down in a Sims version of a quest-filled role-playing game. The Sims Medieval is much more than that. Is, then, this newest sim-er, with its king and castle cover, essentially just another expansion pack with a Renaissance Faire twist? No. With The Sims games, players wield the power to create little virtual people called sims, prod their lives to and fro, and watch what they do. For 10 years now-whether on a PC, a gaming console or even on a touch screen smartphone-people have been having a blast playing god.
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