(TL;DR AT THE BOTTOM)
Tales of the Shire is the first major cozy game made for the LOTR franchise, and takes place several years before the first events of The Lord of the Rings, starting in early summer. You play as a Breelander hobbit newly arrived in Bywater who moves into a hobbit hole formerly owned by an esteemed local figure. After being welcomed by one of the locals, you settle into Bywater life, getting to know your new neighbors while learning the basics of gardening, fishing, foraging, and cooking.
The main quest revolves around the locals campaigning for Bywater to become its own village rather than merely a suburb of Hobbiton, but there are a myriad of side quests to complete, all of which contribute to your total progress in-game. Your major priorities will be getting through the quests and increasing your relationship with the most prominent local hobbits. Later on you will unlock clubs with missions that will increase your status and give you rewards ranging from aesthetic items to stuff that actually helps in-game - like more pack space, more kitchen apparatuses (absolutely essential for the best meals), more garden space, etc.
You increase your relationships with your new friends by inviting them to meals and cooking dishes. On the day of a meal, you'll get mail telling you what flavor a guest craves, and you'll get items from them the following day if you satisfy their cravings. The better a meal, the faster the relationship increases (5-star meals are better by far than anything less). Most of your recipes are given to you by hobbits in gratitude for your increased friendship, so you want to try to get in a meal every day. At first you can only host meals at your home for two guests at a time, but as you increase your relationship with others and do quests, several more areas unlock with more seating and scenery. At certain relationship levels you'll also get a little bit of story involving your neighbors, and often a material benefit (trading for certain items, expanding your home, etc.).
Also dotted here and there at various times are "tales," which are little mini story moments with friends or moments of reminiscing. Occasionally they open up a new side quest, and often these tales contain more obscure nuggets of Tolkien lore.
The seasons (14 in-game days per season) change through the year, and what you can forage, plant, and fish for changes with it. There are achievements for getting every fish, crop, forageable item, etc. and a completionist will need to put in the work each season to most efficiently get everything, though that first summer will be fairly difficult with it being so early and you still starting off with low level stuff.
The most robust parts of the game are gardening and cooking. You get a plot (multiple plots later) of land by your hobbit hole to do whatever you want with, along with a couple basic garden beds (you can get more and better ones at the market). Plant your crops in the planters and keep them watered. Often it's better to put multiple crops in the same garden bed because some go well together (and flowers go well with everything) and produce better quality yields. Cooking takes place in your home kitchen. You use the ingredients required in a recipe, and you try to get the right balance of texture (crisp/tender and chunky/smooth) to hit the best rating. You can also get a bonus for optimal texture or for flavor balance. The cooking minigame is more robust than the cooking mechanics in a lot of other games but I've seen others that are a bit more in-depth (like in Immortal Life).
Customizing your clothing and your hobbit hole is also quite nice. There are a ton of choices for clothing, accessories, and especially home decor you can get from the shops and (in the latter case) as rewards for sating meal cravings, and even the floors and inside and outside walls have a variety of styles. As design is not my forté and I didn't want to take too much time on it during my Let's Play, I didn't spend as much time on decorating my home as I could have; but those with a greater predilection for home design will love this feature.
Despite the graphics being last gen or before, the environment of Bywater is lovely in all seasons. However, the graphics strained my computer far more than last gen graphics should. Expect possible choppiness in denser areas, especially the town center and the Green Dragon Inn. The soundtrack isn't particularly groundbreaking (certainly not on the level of E33, South of Midnight, or Hades 2), but is very fitting for the relaxed Shire setting.
This game was developed by Weta Workshop, and despite what the detractors say about black and brown hobbits, you can tell the people who made this game are diehard lovers of Tolkien. Nods to the Legendarium abound, from the more obvious (Gandalf, the Cottons, Sandyman, the Green Dragon Inn, references to Bilbo and the Gamgees) to the more obscure bits of Middle-earth backstory (including from the Appendices and The Silmarillion) that Stephen Colbert-level diehards will appreciate.
The final thing to say is regarding completion time. I purposely pushed to get through the main story as quickly as I could and finished Act 3 (the final act) in half of an in-game year, right at the end of autumn - a little over 19 hours of gameplay in my playthrough. There were still some sidequests remaining, but if you do what I did, you'll be working a lot longer to maximize friendships and club ranks and get the epilogue to 100%, and that will likely take close to an in-game year, give or take. At the time of this review my save file is most of the way through my second winter, with over 68 hours logged, and beyond a few missed fish, tales, and recipes I feel like I've exhausted what this game has to offer at present.
I have a few improvements to suggest:
- More endgame content. Once you've done the quests and maxed out clubs and friendships, there's not much else to do.
- Several friendship milestone dialogues reference the main quest as if it was still going on, even if you beat it long before. It would be nice for the dialogue to adjust to reflect that for those with similar playthroughs to mine.
- An anniversary event, set for an in-game year after the main quest is completed. The nature of said main quest makes such an anniversary event very fitting.
- Optional romance mechanics. Some obviously would be excluded (most of the Cottons, Sandyman, the young child, possibly a couple of others), but several other villagers have some nice romance arc potential.
CONCLUSION: Tales of the Shire is a decent cozy farm sim with fun quests and a ton of Tolkien lore that fans will love, but it should really run better with the graphics level, and the lack of content after five or so seasons in-game may dampen a desire for longer play.
RATING: 7/10
TL;DR: PROS AND CONS
Pros:
- Tons of Tolkien fanservice, from the obvious to the obscure.
- Most quests are fun, and the story has a decent amount of pathos, sweetness, and humor.
- Robust gardening and cooking.
- Rewards for milestones in friendship and clubs.
- Nice friendship dialogue.
- Very fitting soundtrack.
Cons
- Short completion time for the main quest.
- Little to do after quests, friendships, and clubs are done.
- A game with PS3-PS4 quality graphics should really run much better on a 3-year-old computer.
