Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game Review

The journey of Bilbo Baggins to Lonely Mountain (and returned) in the hobbit was about 2000 miles. In Tales of the Shire: The Lord of the Rings Game, I have the impression that I run at least half of this distance, never leaving the compact city of Bywater. I cook, fish fish, cultivation – but I spend most of my time using my vast hairy feet to skip a dozen hobbit who regularly need my aid.

This is not unusual for Sim Life – I also run like crazy by the Star Valley – but despite all the vivid in Bywater, there is not enough to fill my days. Some of the actions are good: the cooking system is one of my favorites in history in history, and feeding with mushrooms, fruit and herbs on rolling hills and lush meadows beautifully detailed smarts is pleasantly chilly, but half is too basic to be fascinating, and agriculture is a disappointment.

And unfortunately there is not much to do in Tales of the Shire except for these four things, except a bit of home decoration and dressing up. In some life sims, I always race with a clock to end everything I need before the end of the day, but in stories about Shire I usually dive in bed as early as possible to quickly forward until the next morning.

Mut

In Tales of the Shire you are a recent transplant for Bywater, so compact that the official government of Hobbit does not even consider it a real city. And who is better to organize residents to gather his act than a complete stranger? Fortunately, there is a great way to gain the trust of local Halflings, through their stomach.

Cooking in Tales of the Shire is perfect – and yes, you can eat all meals Pippin from the style of the ring: breakfast, second breakfast, hills, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner AND Dinner. Go to the kitchen and choose a recipe, then add feeding or adolescents, such as fluffy mushrooms, shiny fruit and profuse vegetables, and those you bought or replaced, such as meat, cheese, flour and cream.

The ideal version of the meal you create has a compact target for cooking HUD, and hitting it means adjusting the smoothness or thickness of the dish (depending on how vigorously you chop the ingredients), as well as crunchiness or delicacy (which can be refined to a pan, saucepan and other kitchen tools). While the oven flows, you can also mix additional flavors at every stage, adding sugar, salt, cinnamon, butter and lots of herbs and spices to create a combination of flavors that improve the quality of the meal.

This is a entertaining and touch minige, which I like every time I do it: pouring some ingredients into a mixing bowl, chopping others with a vast cleaver, and then transferring and throwing them on a sizzling pan.

Finding out how much or little to sit or fry each ingredient to precisely splashed with the final version of each dish, but even if you miss the sign, ready meals are always delicious: sticky blueberry jams, crunchy fishing, eggplant, eggplant, eggplant, mutton pushed with cheese, opulent vegetable soups and cakes filled with fruit filled with and cream. Even if I did not try to convince myself of the social ladder, turning the hobbits with food, I would go meals every day only for pleasure.

Not at home

I just want the rest of the Tales systems to be as pleasant as cooking – and I would like it to be more to do. Genning is pleasant enough, especially because racing butterflies and lightning will lead you to complex ingredients, a nice touch in the style of a fairy tale. Fisheries minigame is a bit too elementary to be a good, absent layer of the complexity of lures and lures that most other Sims add. On a plus, you never waste time fishing, but I have never pulled the treasure from the rivers and ponds.

What I want the most is the right farm, even a minuscule one. Almost every hobbit in Bywaty has a compact, but pretty garden cracking with plump vegetables next to their holes in the hobbit, but in the stories of shire I was allowed to grow only crops in compact ponds, not directly on earth. I can move the boxes and arrange them as I want, and I like that planting some seeds next to each other will strengthen their quality – but actual agriculture only requires that you knock out seeds in a box and water it every day, nothing more. I feel jealous every time I run at the house of another hobbit and see their pretty, free farm boxes.

Tasks require a lot of running between hobbit to provide messages and miniature conversations. The main task is long to raise the city to the official status in Shire, but to spread it during the game, there are often gaps in which you just have to wait for the next part from the end of the day and starting the next. Many tasks concern the variety “The princess is in another castle”: trying to track down the missing book, every hobbit I listened to sent me to another and then another. It’s a lot of running and to be candid, I would prefer to be at the cooking house.

Last stage

I was cheerful to discover that despite the fragile, well appearance and style of play, the hobbits from Bywater have some advantage for them. Despite Gandalf’s love to Shire, Tolkien’s hobbit can be, to be candid, a few holes. In fiction, they are often petty, greedy and misleading (remember that Gandalf hired Bilbo to become a thief) and I am glad that some of them appear in the stories of Shire, from the owner of a mill of a monopolizing supply of flour to the ancient group of a farmer who does not believe that his daughter can continue trading only because she is a girl. In my dialogue reactions, I even have an occasional chance of a disregarding jerks, although it seems that it does not affect the tasks or makes someone not like me.

With the beautifully presented world and an excellent cooking system, it’s a pity that the rest of the story about Shire is not so good. Gandalf certainly loves Shire, but I can’t say the same.