Tales of the Shire

Hobbits live a quiet and peaceful life. They tend their gardens, pick herbs in the forest, catch fish in beautiful lakes, decorate their huts, dance, and enjoy delicious dinners with the other hobbits. Unless, of course, they embark on dangerous adventures with a magic ring, but that's a whole other story.

This is the quiet life you get to live in Tales of the Shire, a cosy life simulator centred around hobbits. You start out quietly by creating your own hobbit, then leave your hometown to start a new hobbit life in one of the Shire's most beautiful towns, Bywater.

You are quickly welcomed by the other hobbits, assigned a slightly worn cottage to live in, and then life as a hobbit begins right away. You quickly learn how to grow vegetables in your garden, how to decorate your cottage, how to cook in the kitchen, how to fish in the small lakes around the town, how to collect herbs and berries in the forest, how to host dinner parties to nurture your friendships, and much more.

However, not everything is peaceful and quiet in Bywater. There is a simmering frustration under the surface, and a few grumpy hobbits do not believe that Bywater is a real hobbit village. This is something that naturally preoccupies the hobbits, and therefore you are tasked with finding an old book where the town's rules are written down so that the matter can be settled once and for all.

Here, one of the game's fundamental problems becomes apparent, namely that the various tasks you are given are not particularly interesting. The way to find this book is to run back and forth between the same three or four hobbits countless times, because they are rather forgetful and therefore cannot remember who has the book and who they may have given it to. So the first 20 minutes in the company of Tales of the Shire consists of running back and forth between one hobbit after another, and it's just not very entertaining. And that's not the only time it happens, far from it.

Several of the game's other missions are more or less the same, just with different objectives, but basically, you do the same thing, namely running around the landscape talking to different hobbits, delivering various items to the hobbits, finding things in the surroundings (which are typically incredibly easy to find) and the like. It's just not very interesting, and these tasks quickly become trivial.

What is more interesting is the whole social aspect of the game and the quiet life that the hobbits live in harmony with nature. Your status in the town and your friendships with the other hobbits are very important and must be constantly nurtured. This is typically done by hosting small dinner parties where you serve the dishes that the other hobbits like best. There are a total of 120 recipes divided between different types of food, ranging from soups, stews, and roasts to bread, pies, and cakes.

In order to host these parties, you must collect, grow, or purchase the right ingredients for the dishes. The food must then be prepared in a surprisingly advanced cooking mini-game, and the better your dishes match the correct texture and, not least, the guests' tastes, the more your relationship with them improves and the faster you unlock new recipes, furniture for your hut, and other things you need.

This part works surprisingly well, as does the way you grow different crops. For example, you get higher quality vegetables if you plant them next to other vegetables that they go well with. The better the ingredients, the better the dishes, the happier the hobbits, and the more recipes and other things you get access to.

There are more than 40 different types of vegetables, more than 25 different herbs, and 12 different fruit trees that you can grow in your garden. As the seasons change, the types of crops you can grow in your garden also change, and the types of herbs you can find in nature also change. This means that the dishes you can create in the kitchen also differ as the ingredients rotate out.

In the pleasant lakes surrounding the village, you can catch more than 30 different types of fish, so the whole aspect of cooking, farming, and gathering ingredients in nature is quite extensive and more entertaining than assisting the other hobbits in the village. Unfortunately, you can't avoid these tasks, as they open up new recipes and other things you need to expand your garden and your hut, for example.

Tales of the Shire is a visually stunning game. The surroundings exude atmosphere and cosiness, changing appearance with the seasons, the menus are beautifully designed and everything fits together really well. It's clear that a lot of work has gone into the design of the game.

The designers have also created a clever way to find your way around the landscape, at least on paper. Instead of placing ugly computer game direction arrows in the beautiful landscape, you have to follow small blue birds that land on signs, bridges, and fences. You have to keep an eye on these birds and notice which way they are facing as the way they are facing is the way you have to go to reach your destination. It's a pretty good idea, but it takes some getting used to, and sometimes it seems as if the birds fall behind, and then you end up having to wait for them. Furthermore, in certain places, such as the town square, it can be difficult to find the birds, so even though it's a pretty good idea that fits well into the game world, unfortunately it doesn't always work optimally.

As mentioned earlier, Tales of the Shire is really beautifully designed, which is why it's especially unfortunate that it's probably one of the most unoptimised games I've played in a very long time. We tested the game on a PlayStation 5 Pro, and even on this machine, the graphics stutter and lag. I'm not usually overly sensitive to this kind of thing (I'm able to adapt to it), but here it's so bad that it's hard to overlook. After an hour or so, a slight headache sets in, and it's not pretty to look at, and we hope it will be fixed very soon.

The audio is pleasant, with a nice and fitting soundtrack and fine sound effects. There is a lot of dialogue in the game, but unfortunately, none of it is voiced. It was probably a question of budget, but they could have invented a simple chatter language, as in so many other games, but they didn't do that either, so it's almost completely silent when the hobbits talk to each other (except for a few grunts and exclamations here and there), and it seems a bit strange.

Tales of the Shire has been delayed several times leading up to its release, and it seems that no further delays would be allowed. Unfortunately, it seems that the game is not quite finished, and it could certainly have used some more time in the oven to improve its performance, because it's really not up to par.

The more basic things, with the boring and monotonous tasks, are probably more difficult to do anything about now, but unfortunately they also drag down the game's impression, while the cosy chores at home in the cottage and in one's garden are good and surprisingly well-functioning, and these things can easily fill several in-game days.

Tales of the Shire is partly up against games like Animal Crossing, Cozy Grove, and Stardew Valley, and here it simply falls short. It also doesn't really make use of the fact that it actually has The Lord of the Rings licence, as if you replaced the hobbits with some other short-legged characters and changed a few bits of dialogue here and there, it could be any game.

Tales of the Shire does many things right, but there are also fundamental things that it just doesn't quite get right, and that affects the game more than you might think. But if you're looking for a cosy life sim game to play over the summer, or if you just have to own everything with The Lord of the Rings' name on it, then take a look at Tales of the Shire, but be prepared for the fact that life as a hobbit isn't quite as inviting as you might think.