The Sims Medieval

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Never played any of the Sims games before? This first paragraph will be a discription of the games:
          The Sims are a series of a different sort of role-playing where, in a sense, you are god. You control your sims where they can perform various mundane tasks and/or adventurous and  mighty feats. Your sims will be spawned with basic needs like hunger, sleep, social, et cetera. While it is recommended and easier to play if you keep their needs up, it is entirely your decision. Your sims can get married, have children, have a job, woohoo, increase skills (such as fishing, cooking, logic, et cetera), build houses, and pretty much anything you can think of doing.

          The storyline in this game is that you are the Watcher (their god). Where you create and control certain hero sims (spy, knight, blacksmith, et cetera) in order to create a magnificent kingdom. It's pretty straightforward and simple with tons of quests to complete and even just play around with your sims.

         
          New/interesting concepts of the game:

• Unlike previous Sims games, this game contains achievements for you to complete. They vary from something easy, like throwing a certain amount of tomatoes at a person, to something difficult. It's nice to have something else to work for in games.
• While players have been able to fight in Sims games, they have never involved weapons. The battling scene will have your sim along with the person he/she is battling. Both sims have two bars that indicate their stamina and health, if either go all the way down, that sim loses. Usually the fights are not to the death, so don't worry. As you level up your sim, you will get stronger and better in combat.
• In previous Sims games, you could create a character with certain traits, with the traits varying from career helping to personal gains. However, in Medieval, the traits you will only obtain are two fortunate ones and one Fatal Flaw. ie: My sim is Adventurous, Parents Eaten by Whale, and Drunkard; the drunkard is the flaw one which results in several negative effects. Also, one of the best parts of the game, if you do a certain quest with one of your sims, they will have a chance to replace their flaw trait with a legendary trait.
• In all of the three previous Sims games, you could rotate the camera in a 360 view around your sims. It's a little different in Medieval. In buildings you just have a 2D view where you can switch between floors and skim to other rooms. Outside, it gets a little more complicated. First, there's the Watcher's view. That's where your view point is from the middle of your kingdom, where you're surrounded by all the buildings and locations. Another view is the one camera that follows your sim (right clicking or double left clicking on their icon) where it's just like the original Sims games and the 360 view is enabled. If you're not in either of those views outside, you will be in one like the 2D inside the buildings.
• The Sims seems to have avoided the idea of having religions on their games, that is until now. Good thing they sort of made up two religions, less controversy. Anyway, the two are Jacoban and Peteran. Jacoban is all about scaring you to come to church like Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Peteran is more about peace and happiness. Before your sims have a religion, they are agnostic and will either obtain a negative or positive buff occasionally before joining a religion. Of course, you don't have to join.
• Since the original The Sims, your sims were able to level up skills (like I mentioned earlier). There are no skills here, but in a way you have your own little skills with each hero. For instance, the blacksmith will get better at smithing by leveling him/her up.
• Annexing. I had no idea how to do this at first. The game failed to give a tutorial about it. If you end up having problems figuring it out, check out this site. Now, to explain it; annexing is where you become an ally with another kingdom and complete a quest so that you may obtain very awesome perks.
• Finally a monster to feed all your enemies to! The beast is located in a pit by the stocks. You can go in and fight the beast for experience, or if you're the monarch, you can send people to be put to death in there.

          Hero information:

• Monarch: There must be a monarch in every kingdom. You can pass edicts, pass laws, duel sims, send sims to the stocks, and pretty much everything that a ruler can do.
• Knight: You can duel, spar, teach people to spar, and that's pretty much it. Overall, I find the knight very boring.
• Physician: You can perform surgery (which is basically throwing leaches on sims), create medications, diagnose sims, and curing sicknesses.
• Spy: You can pickpocket, eavesdrop, and create poisons.
• Bard: You can write poems or plays, play the lute, sing songs, and you're home is pretty much a medieval bar. What's better than that?
• Merchant: You can sell various items and bribe sims. That's about it. I view this one as the most useless, although it does have potential.
• Wizard: You can learn/cast spells, scry in your crystal ball, create potions, and freaking meditate instead of having to sleep in a bed.
• Jacoban Priest: You can perform sermons, absolve sins, post proclamations, and convert sims to Jacoban.
• Peteran Priest: You can perform sermons, evangelise, bless sims, and convert sims to Peteran.
• Blacksmith: You can create weapons, armor, staffs, hammers, and paddles.

          I personally like:

• The quests are very well organized and easy to get into. Seriously, no problems with it. If you're having trouble with it, just read the discription by rolling over your quest icon.
• They sort of used the idea of having multiple sims in multiple households off of the Sims 2. What I mean is that unlike in Sims 3, you can have several sims households, but you only use one at a time. They updated it to where you can use several at a time for some quests. Like the Sims 3, if you have chosen to use a certain household, your other household sims will continue on with free will on. It's a well-made marriage between the Sims 2 and 3.
• The minigames are fun. ie: The blacksmith has a minigame when you're making weapons, armor, or whatever where you have to make sure that the blade doesn't get too hot and too cold. I find them fairly amusing, but I'm sure some would find them annoying.
• Like the other Sims games, the dialogue is a perfect combination of wittiness and quirkiness. The other games had an obession with llamas, this one is dire chincillas.
• Instead of other games the needs have been shortened to just hunger and energy. This proves very useful and less time consuming as you have important quests to do! However, when your sim takes a bath, a positive buff will appear. So, the needs aren't gone; they're just not needed.
• You can pretty much guarantee that you'll have to go to the village shoppes and buy something for every quest. Now, there are benefits to reproducing! When you have a child, you can send them shopping while you're doing other things, and you can take things/give things to the child's inventory.
• Like I mentioned earlier, meditating is amazing! You don't need a bed, and you can just "sleep" anywhere. So handy, but it's only for the wizard.
• The other Sims accepted the player choosing a sim to be gay/lesbian, and that's no different in this game. They even give you an option on whether you want a man or a woman to woo in your first quest.
• Now, I'm an artist, so I'm very much influenced by artwork. So, the story quest drawings entertain me as much as the dialogue beneath it. I don't know if anyone else just studies the art for like 5 minutes, but that's what I do.

          I personally dislike:

• I didn't know this at first, so it greatly disappointed me. The sims that you create in your kingdoms (except in that one quest) don't transfer over to a new kingdom.
• The daily responsibilities are sometimes overwhelming while doing a quest. I just remember beginning to play and not being able to figure out how to do my responsibilities for the day. If you don't complete them, you will recieve negative buffs. If you do complete them, positive buffs. If your sim has the Dedicated trait, they will recieve an extra responsibility each day.
• This game is all about going out on adventures and traveling all over the kingdom to get various quests done. If your computer isn't godly amazing, you're gonna want to set it to a low quality. My computer isn't old, but it isn't new. Even though I'm set on the lowest quality, the thorne room always takes at least 20 seconds to load. Which might not seem like much, but if I'm playing low resolution, I want it super fast.
• You walk everywhere; it takes forever. I'm constantly using the fast forward buttons.
• The village shoppes only carry certain items at random times and certain amounts of the items sold. It's annoying when I send my bard all the way to the shoppes just for them not to have the heavy metal lute not in stock.
• I understand that the point to the sicknesses spreading is to get you to level up and play as your physician, but it's incredibly annoying when 50% of your kingdom has sicknesses. If your sim has a sickness, you have a negative buff until you get it treated or wait it out.
• If you have a sim that likes to fight, you're in tough luck unless they are the monarch. If you fist fight with another sim, you will most likely get arrested and sent to the stocks which creates multiple negative buffs.
• Remember how I mentioned that the throne room takes forever to load? It just happens that sims will often choose it as the shortest route to their destination. When a sim walks by the throne room, the room has to load, even if you're not going in there. Just annoying.
• I've always had problems with the option to "have marriage here." A lot of times my sim complains that something is blocking them and will stop getting married. I assume it's because the wedding Officiant who spawns from the heavens. Perhaps if there is a problem, locate a wide, open area to be wed.

My ratings go as this:
0.0-0.5 I hated it
1.0-1.5 I disliked it
2.0-2.5 It's mediocre
3.0-3.5 I liked it
4.0 I loved it

My subratings:

1. Merchant hero: 1.0
2. Knight hero: 2.0
3. Monarch hero: 2.5
4. Peteran hero: 2.5
5. Jacoban hero: 2.5
6. Bard hero: 2.5
7. Easy to figure out the game: 2.5
8. Spy hero: 3.0
9. Physician hero: 3.0
10. Wizard hero: 3.0
11. Blacksmith hero: 3.0
12. Easy to use: 3.5
13. Conversion from original Sims games: 4.0

My overall rating:

          I'm a fan of the original Sims games, but I've found that EA did a great job of converting the game to an RPG type.
          It's available for:

*It doesn't say in the picture, but it's rated T for Teen.

Thank you for reading! I hope this helped you in your decision on whether to buy the game. Check other people's reviews to get a better idea on whether you like it or not. Also, if you buy it used at Gamestop, you can return it with the receipt in 7 days if you don't like it. I have the Limited Edition version, and I advise getting that one if you like your sims to have more stuff. Also, the expansion pack called Pirates and Nobles is out. I don't have it yet :'( However, I'm sure that it's good.