I’ve never been a fan of The Lord of the Rings, despite reading fantasy novels growing up, as the series never appealed to me due to the fact that the books didn’t catch my interest. Well, outside of The Hobbit, but that was due more to Bilbo Baggins, the protagonist, being a likable hero. However, I did start to come around when Peter Jackson’s movies of the original trilogy were released, and as I got deeper into the world, I started to wonder: what was life like outside of the adventures we had been shown? Tales of the Shire is here to answer that very question and give us a look into the life of a hobbit.
To Bywater
You are a hobbit on your way to live in Bywater, a small settlement close to Hobbiton that has yet to become a village. However, along the way, you decide to nap before coming across an older man in grey robes who offers to give you a ride to your destination. He mentions that he takes an interest in hobbits and their lives before revealing that he is Gandalf the Grey, and he thinks that you are what Bywater needs to reach their true potential. Now you are in Bywater, attempting to fit into a new place and allow the settlement to finally become a village outside of Hobbiton.
That is the main goal for the main story of Tales of the Shire: to turn Bywater into a true village, although how we get there is a little weird. In Bywater, two families have a generations-old feud, and this is now displayed between residents Farmer Cotton and Sandyman. These two men get into a spat about whether or not Bywater is a village, which you are tasked with making sure Bywater is a village using an old book of rules. This leads you on a series of fetch quests that wouldn’t be out of place for any other life-sim; however, the main quests I noticed would usually have you cooking and sharing meals with the townsfolk.
If I had to describe Tales of the Shire as specifically as possible, I’d say it is pretty clearly a life-sim with an emphasis on cooking, which is an interesting take. After all, most other life-sims focus on farming or interacting with the townsfolk, but here, cooking is woven into the very idea of progression. I found that after playing through the game, the story often devolved into the two men arguing with each other, while my character just volunteered herself to do whatever was needed. The entire conflict feels like it doesn’t matter beyond what I would expect for a life-sim. There were times when I wondered why there was even a main campaign, especially when some of the townsfolk felt like they could have had their own story. A great example of this is Delphinium, who ended up being my favorite.
Delphinium, or Delphi for short, is the local healer who has a problem actually healing, and she is very self-conscious about this fact. This gives her character a lot of depth, and some of her Friend Events focus on her mom’s legacy and her lack of skill. The other villagers do have some sort of story as well, but each is hidden behind random events around Bywater and fellowship levels, which increase by sharing meals with each villager. This alone would have given me enough reason to share a meal with each villager to find out more about them, but these events are too spread out and at times get lost amidst the relatively boring main story.
The one thing that exacerbates this problem is that you can’t talk to any of the villagers outside of events. Well, you can go up and press talk, but the only thing you can say is goodbye, and their dialogue doesn’t give any insight into their lives. Instead, once their event is done, they turn into a true NPC, and unless they run a shop or you can trade with them, the only thing you can say to them is bye. This is a huge disappointment, as in many life-sims, reading the interactable dialogue gives a lot of personality and details about each character that you don’t get here.
Unironically, this simple action made me care less about each of the hobbits in Bywater, even those whom I had an initial interest in. I feel that there was a major missed opportunity here, as the developers crafted interesting characters on the surface, yet there is no content to allow players to even get to know the characters. The story gives too much focus on Bywater becoming a village to the point that even basic interactivity with NPCs feels forced.
Everyday Life, Everyday Meals
As mentioned, one of the main aspects of everyday life will be to cook and share meals with the various villagers. However, this isn’t the only activity you can participate in during your time in the shire; there are three other important tasks for you: gardening, foraging, and fishing. These activities will get you more ingredients that you can use in your own cooking or sell off for money to buy more ingredients, such as flour or pork.
This creates an interesting dynamic that revolves around cooking, which is the most involved of these hobbies, as the others feel more like a supplement to cooking. Gardening, for instance, is mostly just a passive task that has you planting seeds and watering them before you leave them alone. I noticed that I didn’t have to water them even after a few days of having them grow, so I would check them and then walk away to continue my day.
This is a trend with every one of these activities, because foraging is something that you do as you run around the shire exploring every nook and cranny. I would constantly just pick up whatever I came across until my pantry was full enough of each item. Then, I’d sell them off whenever I needed money, which was frequently, because your source of income is dependent on what you sell at the town square. This meant that I was constantly scavenging for objects to sell to afford flour or more gardening plots for plants.
Fishing is a mixed bag; the actual mechanics are standard. You reel in the fish, being careful not to snap your line. However, unlike other games in the genre, there are only a few specific spots that you can fish at, and they must have fish silhouettes in them. Normally, this wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but I would see silhouettes disappear without any input from me. Sometimes this would even happen as I was throwing my line into the water. Needless to say, this was frustrating as I would prepare to catch a fish just to see most of them disappear and not come back. Luckily, fishing is an easy way to earn money, because one fish can sell for enough to buy at least a sack of flour, but the endeavor felt hollow.
Cooking, on the other hand, is the most thought-out process in Tales of the Shire. Essentially, each ingredient is given a flavor profile; these can be either salty, sweet, bitter, spicy, or sour. Flavor profiles will give the entire dish a different flavor depending on the ingredients you use. If you manage to use only two complementary flavor profiles, then the resulting dish will be of higher quality. For example, using only sweet and sour ingredients will make the dish sweet overall, but it is upgraded by the tang from the sourness, leading it to be of higher quality.
This system is very fun, and I found myself trying to figure out all of the combinations and ways to manipulate each dish for the flavor I wanted. This is important as once you invite any villager for a meal, you will gain insight into what they are craving, which is a meal and a flavor profile dish. You only need to cook one of these, so you won’t have to worry about making a certain dish sour when it is normally sweet and vice versa. If you manage to satisfy a craving a villager has, then they will send you a gift in a letter the next day; these range from furniture to more ingredients.
However, while the flavor profiles are fun to work around, the actual mini-game for cooking gets repetitive rather quickly, as it involves you chopping up ingredients to throw into a bowl. There are sweet spots that you need to hit, chopping ingredients will make the dish either chunky or smooth, and getting the right texture can give the meal a boost in quality. However, I was quickly able to perfect the system and throw the dish together without much effort. Eventually, I decided to just precook as many meals as I could and spend the rest of the day foraging. This hits right at home with my main critique of Tales of the Shire: there is so much promise here, but everything it delivers ends up rather boring after engaging with it only a few times.
Cooking is the most in-depth, but that ends up hurting it as the action quickly boils down to pressing a single button repeatedly to get a circle into a square for texture. Gardening is a set-it-and-forget-it endeavor that requires little or no input from you, making it feel hollow. Foraging is better left to picking up only the ingredients you need as you need them, rather than attempting to find something specific at any point. Finally, fishing is the most disappointing because of the lackluster way that you find fish, and it feels like the time of day barely affects what you catch.
I could go on, but really, these are the key systems at play here. Numerous great ideas exist in each of these systems, but the end result just feels half-baked. Variety of some sort in each of these actions would have gone such a long way, yet none of that is here. Between the lackluster systems, limited interactivity with NPCs, and a main story that fails to engage, Tales of the Shire unfortunately sits as a game with so much missed opportunity.
The Road Keeps Going On
Tales of the Shire is an ambitious take on a very popular genre that has set its roots in farming and social interaction, and the choice to focus specifically on cooking mechanics gives it a refreshing feel. However, after even just a few hours, it quickly becomes clear that everything you do almost feels pointless, as the game fails to deliver both meaningful and engaging systems in any regard. The villagers feel shallow, and the lack of interactions makes it feel like window dressing for an adventure that takes too long to complete.
It’s a real shame, as there is a fun experience buried deep beneath all of this. I won’t deny that I had instances of fun and some villagers grew on me, but I can’t say that my time in the shire was well spent. There was too much fan service for a world that I knew little about, and the main adventure felt so inconsequential that at times I would forget to follow it. For longtime fans, there is some fan service in the form of lore and character mentions scattered throughout. But even then, with a main story that’s unfortunately not interesting and a lack of engagement, who is Tales of the Shire for?
For me, there was little here to keep my attention, and holding onto the life-sim genre felt more like an excuse only to have a few ways to interact with the world. Maybe this is a game that can be redeemed through updates, as Bywater itself is enjoyable to explore. However, I feel that so much of this experience needs retooling that one or two updates won’t fix what’s broken here. If you are a fan of life-sims, you likely already have your favorites picked out, and, unfortunately, I feel Tales of the Shire does very little to justify pulling even the biggest fans of LOTR away, let alone newcomers to the series.
Disclaimer: Private Division provided a PlayStation 5 copy of Tales of the Shire for review purposes.
