After I first performed Tales of the Shire again in September 2024, I left the expertise disillusioned but hopeful. It had a number of points, sure, nevertheless it additionally had a number of potential. There was a transparent reverence for each Lord of the Rings and the life-sim style on show, and contemplating the sport had been delayed till the next 12 months, it felt like each the builders and I have been on the identical web page when it got here to the sport being undercooked. Think about my shock, then, once I booted up the launch model of Tales of the Shire and located the expertise roughly unchanged.
Wētā Workshop’s Tales of the Shire feels incomplete. Gameplay is proscribed and monotonous, its story and characters are forgettable, efficiency may be very tough, and whereas there’s some appeal to the sport’s clunky-looking world and the hobbits who inhabit it, as a rule, the visuals come throughout as low-quality and dated moderately than whimsical. Regardless of enjoying it on two totally different consoles–Nintendo Change and Steam Deck–both experiences suffered from quite a few bugs and visible hiccups. Whereas its mechanics are advantageous sufficient and there are some cute concepts nestled inside, Tales of the Shire is regrettably unpolished and unengaging–and contemplating how populated the comfy sport style is, you would be arduous pressed to discover a cause to play it in its present state.
Set within the village of Bywater (although it ought to be famous that the “village” half is hotly contested by its residents and serves because the crux of the sport), Tales of the Shire sees you tackle the function of a hobbit leaving the city of Bree to start out a brand new life someplace peaceable and pastoral. Although the sport’s character creator isn’t notably sturdy, it is also not egregiously restricted, and allowed me to create a charmingly plump hobbit with a multitude of darkish, curly hair, thick lashes, and two minimally hair-covered toes. Utilizing the sport’s urged hobbit names, I named my maiden honest Jessamine–a intelligent play alone title– and climbed aboard the carriage of a lanky, bearded wizard who was positively not Gandalf–wink wink. From there, we rode in what can be the primary of the sport’s many awkward quiets to Bywater.
To its credit score, Tales of the Shire does a advantageous job onboarding gamers. As soon as I arrived, I used to be knowledgeable that the quickest approach to a hobbit’s coronary heart, as you may need guessed, is thru their abdomen. As such, a number of the sport facilities round gathering ingredients–be that by means of foraging, fishing, gardening, or bartering–whipping up meals, and alluring my neighbors over to share them with me. Although the preliminary collection of quests you get to be taught extra about these facets is a self-acknowledged wild goose chase became a collection of grating fetch quests, the mechanics connected to every of those minigames, for lack of a greater time period, are simplistic however enjoyable—even when the sport does not at all times completely clarify them. Happily, all the things is pretty simple; foraging sees you harvest wild crops and fungi with the straightforward press of a button; fishing is neither brutal nor boring; and Tales of the Shire’s foremost occasion, cooking, is definitely a fairly good time. It consists of you getting ready elements in a approach that aligns the general meal on a grid with the axes smooth-chunky and crisp-tender. It is a new tackle a cooking minigame that makes it far much less passive than it’s in lots of life sims, and I actually respect that truth contemplating cooking basically serves as your love language all through the game–it ought to really feel like an act moderately than a way.
Conceptually, I really actually adore this conceit. Although there are actually some exceptions, a number of cozy life sims video games appear to boil all the way down to you doing one in every of two issues: establishing your residency through discovering real love (Stardew Valley, Harvest Moon, Fields of Mistria), or encouraging a forged of colourful characters to arrange residence in your newly-founded city (Animal Crossing, Disney Dreamlight Valley, Howdy Kitty Island Journey). In Tales of the Shire–and because the crotchety Previous Noakes likes to remind you–you are a newcomer and decidedly not the city’s foremost precedence or focus. You’ll not get the Gilmore Ladies therapy right here, and I like that type of authenticity. And, with no possibility to present items and no hobbits to woo, changing into a valued resident of Bywater feels real and like one thing you are really striving to do for the only real cause of creating neighborhood.
In execution, nonetheless, Tales of the Shire fumbles arduous for quite a lot of causes. Before everything, not having sure finish targets results in the sport missing any outstanding sense of development. Certain, there’s something to be stated about how the human drive for development and optimization is extraordinarily un-hobbit-like, and subsequently the exclusion of such methods is thematic, however I feel that is an excessively beneficiant studying and one which forgets that to ensure that a sport to be participating, there must be some “sport” to it. And whereas there are quests to finish, relationships to strengthen, and sure upgrades to realize, the sport’s meager story, reliance on fetch quests, lack of deep characters with whom to have significant interplay with, and basic indifference in the direction of you as a personality makes caring about doing something extraordinarily tough. Briefly, I felt no extrinsic name to be part of Bywater, and couldn’t encourage myself to care intrinsically, both.
It does not assist that, regardless of these characters having dialogue that varies between delightfully dry and intelligent to no less than serviceable, all of Bywater’s residents really feel pretty lifeless and vacant. A part of this is because of their lack of depth, which makes them really feel flat, undistinguishable, and impenetrable. However one other a part of this comes from the sport’s option to not embrace voice performing, outstanding music, and even some dynamic sound results, making interactions typically really feel awkward.
Sadly, this lifelessness extends previous simply the characters and involves outline Bywater as an entire. Regardless of the altering seasons, there’s an general lack of dynamism to the sport. That is even mirrored in your personal dialogue decisions, that are typically restricted and really feel virtually unaware of the actions you have taken at occasions. Whereas Bywater is respectable in dimension, there is not rather a lot to do outdoors of the core gameplay loop, which grows outdated shortly, and far of it’s full of hobbits you cannot work together with in any respect, however merely exist to make the world really feel extra populated. And although I perceive the logic of this, particularly because the sport solely has 15 precise characters in it, it simply makes all the village really feel much more floor stage. As time went on, I grew to become grateful that adorning my hobbit gap was easy sufficient and inspired as a time-passing activity–I by no means needed to work together with a lot else.
It additionally appears doubtless that these NPCs’ existence contributes to a different one in every of Tales of the Shire’s most urgent points: its efficiency. All through my time reviewing Tales of the Shire, I performed it throughout two totally different consoles: my Nintendo Change and my Steam Deck. I began with my Nintendo Change and, at first, I assumed its efficiency points have been simply on me for not having ponied up the funds to purchase a Change 2 but. Gadgets and characters clipped, my display went black throughout interactions, and various occasions, the sport fully froze and/or crashed. It additionally simply seemed shockingly horrible. I keep in mind strolling by means of Bywater and pondering I had performed higher trying video games on GameCube 20 years ago–and to be clear, it has nothing to do with the sport’s artwork course and stylistic decisions as a lot as how all the things was rendered.
So, regardless of being hours right into a sport that I already was discovering uninteresting and irritating to play, I made a decision to restart and provides it an opportunity on my Steam Deck, which has at all times managed to run much more graphically demanding video games simply advantageous. Visually issues have been higher, not nice, however I nonetheless needed to endure bugs, glitches, freezes, crashes, and the sport being pretty lackluster as an entire.
As somebody who loves Lord of the Rings, life-sims, and comfy video games, Tales of the Shire is heartbreakingly disappointing–so a lot in order that I discover myself genuinely questioning what went incorrect. With such a robust premise, a strong workforce engaged on it, and what appeared like a concentrated effort being made to let this sport absolutely cook dinner earlier than it was shipped, I’m in the end confused by the completed product and anxious for what occurred throughout manufacturing. Though Tales of the Shire has some charming concepts, uninteresting gameplay, heaps of bugs, and a basic sense of vacancy in the end drag this once-promising life sim all the way down to the pits of Moria.
