I've been looking forward to Weta Workshop's Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game ever since the initial announcement. I mean, a cozy sim, set in the Shire, that let's me make my own Hobbit and live out my Hobbit fantasy? Sign me up.
Yet, after about forty minutes of gameplay with a preview build, I started to wonder whether or not Tales of the Shire could keep my attention.
Tales of the Shire aims to create a cozy experience where the most troubling thing you need to worry about as a Hobbit is who you are inviting to dinner. Set in the Third Age (the same time period as the events of The Lord of the Rings), Tales of the Shire sees you create your very own Hobbit who is moving to Bywater from Bree. You're shown to your new Hobbit hole in the village (this is a sticking point for old Farmer Cotton, apparently), which, in true life sim fashion, you'll need to spend time fixing up. While a Hobbit hole means comfort, it'll be quite a while before I'm comfortable in this hole.
Initially, I was drawn in by the prospect of living out a daily routine as a Hobbit in Hobbiton. Hobbits themselves are creatures of comfort, more delighted in food, drink, and good-tilled earth over the goings on and high adventures of the Big People, so I was pretty stoked when the first thing Tales of the Shire asked me to do was to make a meal for old Olo Proudfoot.
I am happy that the cooking minigame is more than just slapping some ingredients onto a list, pressing "A" and voila, you've got a meal. Much like Palia's cooking minigame where you need to first prep ingredients and then cook them, Tales of the Shire takes a similar approach.
You'll chop up ingredients, leaving some chunky and others smooth to create varying textures - you can even pan fry those ingredients before adding them to the whole dish to create more nuanced flavors. In the corner of the screen is a small graph showing you where your version of the dish matches up with the idealized version - it's a matter of getting it as close as possible.
Unfortunately, most of this amounts to just pressing a button over and over again till you're where you want to be, and then combining it all. I wish there was something more to this activity, such as watching out for overcooking, overmixing, or something more than just pressing a button a few times. The novelty of having to perform all the steps is somewhat lost when they all function and feel the same.
Tales of the Shire also doesn't give enough direction as to what you're trying to create, and at times, I noticed that some of the flavor qualities of an ingredient didn't align with the finished dish. Onions, in real life at least, when cooked, are sweet, yet frying an onion created a spicy dish in Tales of the Shire. Adding a bitter fish to create a bitter, savory flavor profile turned into a spicy one once the onions were added, ruining the dish without much information as to why.
This type of information is important, especially when the main way you'll build relationships with your fellow Hobbits is through inviting them to share a meal. The Hobbits, when they RSVP, will mention their favorite dishes or flavor profiles, and if there is simply not enough information being conferred, creating what you think is one dish might, in turn, create something completely different and ruin a meal.
Exactly how Hobbits fill their pantry in Tales of the Shire is through gardening and foraging. Gardening in the preview just felt incredibly basic. It could simply be down to the fact that this demo takes place at the very start of the game and there just isn't a lot unlocked right away, but with only a few planters, each holding a single ingredient, it wasn't necessarily compelling to keep up with them. I wish there was more freeform farming, like a Stardew Valley, where part of the fun of farming was planning out my fields, nurturing them with fertilizer and other items, and steadily watching them grow over the course of a few in-game days. I honestly could not tell the difference between a fully grown potato and the stages in between, and when I harvested them I was unsure of whether they went into my backpack or my Hobbit's pantry.
I did like foraging, though, and I spent a large chunk of time going off the beaten path to collect berries, hazelnuts, mushrooms and more. This was fun because I felt like I was actually living a Hobbit life: finding food anywhere I could to create a spectacular meal later on. I ended up simply giving up on farming and instead foraged for what I could and relied on gifts from other Hobbits to fill my pantry. Fishing is also a rather fun minigame, and I like how Tales of the Shire mimics the tension on a fishing rod when reeling a catch in. I also appreciate that you can simply throw the fish back if you don't have room in your bag, or catch the same fish repeatedly.
I will say as well, I do like some of the quality of life features, such as the ability to pull ingredients from your pantry to cook with, as well as being able to store meals there to serve up later on. I do find it odd that at a shared meal you can't feed yourself, but that will hopefully be rectified before launch. I also appreciate that if your backpack is full and an Hobbit wants to give you a gift, they will mail it to you, meaning there's no tedious inventory management just to complete a quest or complete a conversation.
However, one feature that is meant to be a quality-of-life help is actually more of an annoyance to me: the birds. To help guide you to your quest objective, small blue birds will descend onto a nearby fence post, lamp post, and more, facing the direction you need to go. This is, in theory, a cool way to help guide players around Bywater in a way that feels in touch with nature all around them. However, in practice, I found myself getting more annoyed at the birds than finding them helpful.
This was because oftentimes I would move quickly (being able to skip is such a nice touch), meaning the birds were playing catch up to me. They'd swoop in, sometimes two or three at a time, zooming in the middle of my field of view and ending up more a distraction than a help. I like the system in theory, but we probably don't need a new bird every five feet. I'd also love the ability to toggle it off for those who don't mind exploring a bit to find their way.
Visually, Tales of the Shire isn't going to win any awards, but I feel like the style suits the game that Weta is trying to make. It does look a bit dated by 2024 standards and even by cozy sim standards, but it has its own charm. It's hard to truly enjoy it when versions of The Shire from 2007 exist and look night and day better (I'm looking at you, Lord of the Rings Online). I will say, though, that I was really excited when Tales of the Shire worked natively on my 32:9 display - something that even large AAA games struggle to do consistently. Good stuff, Weta.
I do appreciate how densly packed the village square (circle?) feels, and the passing Hobbits give it an air of life that some games struggle to capture. I also loved the livestock simply roaming - the pig in the square reminded me of the pig who saunters into frame in Peter Jackson's version of The Fellowship of the Ring.
Unfortunately, while initially I enjoyed the Hobbits I engaged with, Tales of the Shire's initial quest is...well, bad and leaves a terrible first impression. After stumbling onto a conversation between Farmer Cotton and Ted Sandyman about whether Bywater is a village or not, I was tasked with finding a Book of Rules to send along to Michel Delving to make sure that the Assessor there agrees with Cotton's assertion it is. What unravels is a long-winded quest that saw me go to nearly every Hobbit in the Shire because no one can keep track of a single book, and ultimately felt like a giant time waster.
I knew that eventually I would need to meet everyone, but I felt like this could have been dealt with in a series of interesting quests, rather than one long and unengaging one - especially since some of the Hobbits I had to go to ask eventually were in the very conversation that started me on this sojourn.
It makes me worry that all the quests in Tales of the Shire will follow a similar uninteresting pattern. It could also just be this early first impression, but it doesn't instill me in confidence that'll be much different. Many of the Hobbits are also not particularly interesting, and while it was novel to see characters like Farmer Cotton and his wife, the sour Ted Sandyman, and a few others, that novelty wore off rather quickly when I was spending my time running back and forth to each.
As a result, after just under two hours with Tales of the Shire, I found myself feeling something I didn't expect going into this: bored. At its core, while Tales of the Shire does look like a Lord of the Rings game, it doesn't necessarily feel like one. As much as it pains me to say it, Tales of the Shire feels like it's missing passion, which was a surprising realization for me to grapple with the last few days, considering the studio developing the life sim.
I'm happy the team has decided to delay Tales of the Shire till March 2025, but I fear that even this delay isn't enough time to make its core systems a bit more compelling. But I hope I'm proven wrong because I desperately want Tales of the Shire to succeed. The setting is perfect for the style of game Weta is trying to make, and while the market might be getting saturated with cozy sims as of late, if Tales of the Shire can overcome its early hurdles, it could have just what it needs to cut through the pack and stand out on more than just its IP merits.
Full Disclosure: A Preview code was provided by PR for the purposes of this preview. Previewed on PC.
