I hate all sims so far, never undestood the point with them. Untill now.. But I'm probably not going to buy it anyways. Medieval Sims is a really cool idea, I like it but not enough.

Ouch. Next you're going to tell me I can't spend most of my time figuring out my sim's outfit, which is what I think is one of the best parts of the game... :pinch:

You need to order from Game.co.uk next time. For me they have a 100% success rate getting me release day games a day early.

BF is off to choir tonight (don't' ask....) so I shall play for a full 4 uninterrupted hours! I'm a total Sims geek though so will probably be impressed with whatever crap they throw at me.

To those trying this:

Please don't forget to report back your impressions as I've never played any sims and am intrigued. Due a lack of demo, I am relying on your feedback!

Thanks

Surprise, surprise. My copy arrived a day earlier than expected. And it seems EA are trying this stupid release day protection crud only on Dragon Age 2, so I could play for a little while. Well, for four hours, which passed faster than they should have.

First thing I should say: Andraste's flaming knickers, have they improved the Sim textures or what? No more pudding-faced ugliness, instead you have people who actually look like they could exist - from any angle you choose. Wrinkles and skin details are especially surprising, considering how hard they seemed to be to include in TS3.
The game itself is nice. Not too much choice for wardrobes for a single class (about ten at most), building your own houses is out, but furniture is still in. Nice looking adaptations of fitting TS3 pieces, but mostly new stuff.
Questing is fun, though on that level it's not much more than TS3 in the Middle Ages, with more golden thread here and there. Different solutions for quests are downright hilarious sometimes, as is the Sims approach to a fantasy world. Darker here and there, yet still recognisably wacky.
The game really is about a bigger legacy mode - sadly there's only one 'neighbourhood' as of yet. It's nice to see how your kingdom capital seems to grow with each new building (which always includes a hero Sim of your creation).

Not much more now. I still have to defend my kingdom against roaming hordes of Dire... Chinchillas.

So you can't edit buildings? WTF? Thats half of what the sims was all about; complete customization.

..an example of Electronic Arts' business model at work.

The original "The Sims" did not have "Stuff" packs which began when EA took over the franchise from Maxis for "The Sims 2." By holding back content (from either a base game or expansion), they can try to get more revenue from their customers by selling it seperately as a "Stuff" pack or online in their "Sims store."

..unlike the sandbox approach of "The Sims 3" or "The Sims 2," this standalone ("Sims: Medieval" is quest oriented.)

Each hero has like 5 different full outfit options. That's it. Choose one of a handful of looks, change the colors, done. You can't customize anything else about their clothes.

*sigh* Well, I guess that makes my buy / don't buy decision easy enough. Ah, well... >_<

What's Turk doing outside the hospital?

That's fine with me. A few well done full outfits is better than a myriad of combinations, IMO.

EA bought it and turned it into an advertising department. Patients were sacrificed to Slaanesh, patron chaos god of the EA higher-ups.

Slaanesh is way too cool for them.

Well after having nothing to do today I ended up playing The Sims: Medieval for about 12 straight hours. That has to count for something.

One thing I wonder is, if in TS3, they call all the wine "Nectar" why is it that the wine in TS:M is called "Wine"? It has the same rating. The game actually just seems to be geared more towards people of older age groups in general. For one thing your Sims can actually outright kill another. Or feed him to a pit monster, which is always entertaining to watch. :angel:

Nice, death to all sims! Anyway, the nectar things goes back to the original sims expansions, when nectar was first introduced. My guess is that they kept it as part of the "legacy" of silly sims terms.

Never played TS1 or any of it's expansions. I don't recall Nectar being in TS2 though, which I played pretty religiously when I was younger. Well, younger then I am.

Nectar was in TS1 expansion pack 'Makin' Magic'.

Yeah, TS2 never had nectar making at all.
Sims Medieval seems to be aimed at a generally older audience, so that might explain why they thought that wine would be allowed to be called by its name.

Ah, magic. Man, when I was on the TS2 forum (Or, well, BB) one of the only things people would talk about was how much they wanted magic in an EP for TS2. The got it, then everyone started complaining about it.

Does it require Steam in any way? Or is it a good old product key like in The Sims 3?

Oh, I hope there's no Steam...

It will require Steam if you get the Steam version (If there is a Steam version). Otherwise it just uses the standard ol' CD-Key. Along with EA's new strategy of only letting you have certain things if you register the game.

I only now realised that this is a thread about a medieval fantasy game opened by speech by Patrick Stewart. Remind you of anything? ^_^


Don't worry, EA is hard at work fighting Steam as a copy protection. They love their own mischievous schemes.
Well, Sims at least stays DRM free. EA probably learnt their lesson about confusing more casual players when they included activation limits with Spore. Just a serial key during install here, and keeping the DVD in the drive. ^_^

Awesome, thank you!

Really tempted to buy this now. I love the Sims series.

So that was Patrick Stewart? I found myself thinking "Huh, that sure sounds like The Emperor." while listening to that. But then I thought "Nah, why would they hire Jean Luc Picard for a Sims spinoff?"

I dare say he even has more lines than in Oblivion.