Carl and Metro have posted their first thoughts about Sims Medieval over on their vacation thread. I'm copying them here.
Carl writes:
"We're having a lot of fun with Medieval so far. It's bringing back that sense of excitement and exploration that has vanished for me with The Sims 3. Dueling, and exploring the kingdom is quite fun. The only thing we've really found lacking so far is some of the quests for Merchants. You know the type -- you're sent off to talk to this Sim, then go across the map to speak to another or do something silly in a rabbit hole just to run back across the map and find you're not quite done. Some of that isn't very exciting but the quests are of the same quirky nature with The Sims' signature humor. It is very reminiscent of World Adventures' China due to the walking time and the way Quests are often easy to complete. We've seen more depth to them, however, in that they sometimes involve multiple steps and you can choose in which order to tackle them.
Myself, I'm getting the itch to write. I can't wait to crack it open and figure out how everything works. Traits are very odd, and finding good uses for them will definitely take time. We're seeing an end in sight although a game is quite long. It'll take the average person a few days to finish up a Kingdom, and that's with some fairly heavy play. This evokes a sense of great replayability. You won't be able to pull everything off in one Kingdom, although you will still find better routes to improving the kingdom score. Strategy will be important and I can't wait to advise people against certain quest lines that don't offer the kind of payoff for the price.
At this time, I believe you are given 50 quest points to spend, and each quest you undertake will deduct from that, leading to an ending and score for the Kingdom. I'm not aware of any imposed time limit in days, so we'll likely find it's not worth it to rush through all of the quests. Meeting a Sim's needs and making them happier through buffs (moodlets) is still very important. We're down to 38 quest points and have only touched upon the Monarch, Knight, and Merchant. There's no juggling involved. You switch between characters with each quest you take on.
We tried a cheat, and do know that motherlode works. This lead to unlocking an achievement for Tom's account, raising his Watcher level which will represent how much he's accomplished in the game once it's been registered. This bug needs fixed asap before people start cheating their way to the top. That's not to say that everyone cares about achievements in games. I know for a fact many don't, but this will discredit Medieval's entire achievement system and make it irrelevant to folks who really want to work for them.
We'll be putting together a detailed review when we've got some more time in with the various classes. Right now, with the Merchant experience tainting it, it wouldn't be very fair. I'm sure that hero class does have its merits. It was kind of interesting hawking items to Sims, and they do visit the lot very often when a Merchant is open for business. For now, I hope my rambling gives you some insight into what we think of it until we can compose an organized review."
Metro writes:
"Carl and I have been busy playing Medieval for about 5 straight hours. It's a fantastic new game. We were at Meijer before the sun came up this morning and the clerk had not even put the game on the shelves yet, so a manager needed to be called to unlock where the games were in storage.
Wow...where to begin? Well, there's a ton of overlap with Sims 3, so all of you should feel right at home. But, it is a true RPG with concepts like Experience at the core. Every morning at 9 AM your hero receives 2 main aspirations for the day and you have varying amounts of time to complete those. You also have Quests to complete and each main quest is made up of many small accomplishments — go talk to X and discuss Y, go to the boat and do Z, go to the Village and do Q, etc. All of these things eat up lots of time because you have no option but to walk everywhere.
My biggest tips at this point is to do a little exploring in a forest at the outset in hopes you find some gems you can sell. You can then go into Buy mode and purchase a better bed because all heroes, even the Monarch starts off with truly abysmal beds and it takes forever for them to be fully rested. Cooking decent meals is another thing you want to address early — your only option without going to the village for ingredients is gruel, so going to the village for something like boar meat will provide meals that yield nice buffs — moodlets are called buffs in Medieval. And the Mood Meter is called Focus.
More to come soon."
