When I was walking around look for food at Summer Game Fest, which there was no shortage of, I overheard a conversation from passersby that were laughing about someone crying as they tried out Tales of the Shire. Why? Apparently that person loved it that much, so after hearing that, I knew I had to try it out while I had a free moment.
I should point out that I’m not a diehard LOTR fan, nor do I really worship the ground that J.R.R. Tolkien walks on, but I do love cozy games. At the same time, farming is sort of a turnoff, but luckily for me the time I spent with the demo wasn’t about farming–it was about cooking, fetch quests, cooking, and fetch quests.
Part of the allure with this title is in its art style. Lord of the Rings typically brings on the gritty side of the fantasy genre, but when you think about The Shire, you think about peace, and there just isn’t a whole lot of peace demonstrated in any form of Tolkien media these days. Tales of the Shire is bright and colorful, and I had a lot of fun simply going into my hobbit’s house and dressing them up. You can even customize the little dude’s feet hair, which I found gross yet charming. I didn’t check if the female hobbits had feet hair, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t.
As far as how the gameplay went, it reminded me a little of Animal Crossing, except with a more detailed map and cooking. As I was walking around The Shire, I had to run errands for a female hobbit by the name of Marigold Potts. As mentioned, the game’s map is pretty detailed, but luckily you can find specific people in The Shire simply by looking them up through the map menu–which is definitely an improvement over Animal Crossing because if and when you end up looking for a specific animal and they weren’t in the vicinity of their house, you had search high and low, and they can be anywhere.
Anyway, upon finding Marigold, she tasked us with cooking for her guests. With that, I headed back to my hobbit’s kitchen and started cooking. Cooking in the game is pretty simple, involved, and enjoyable. Marigold expected us to make something salty, so when you do that, not only do you have to select the right ingredients, but you have to cook them in such a way where it actually comes out salty. In addition to chopping whole ingredients up, you have to decide if you want to pickle them or throw them on the fryer, and everything you do influences the flavor. There’s actually a graph on the bottom right of the screen that shows how flavor is impacted. Whether it’s chopping an ingredient into chunks or smaller pieces, or preparing them like a paste. All this matters, so while it’s easy enough to pick and choose ingredients that make sense for the flavor you might need, part of the fun is making it just right with the ingredients you have.
Upon finishing the salty dish and strolling all the way back to Marigold with it, she made us go home and cook another item. This time it involved an ingredient I didn’t have, but luckily, the farm in our yard supplied the ingredients we needed. The attendant with me mentioned that tending to the garden is one of your many responsibilities in the game, but I was happy that I didn’t have to do this right then and there.
So after I made the second item and brought it back to Marigold, she made me cook another item, which obviously got a tedious, but those are the brakes with cozy games like these. Noticing that I was getting a little impatient, the attendant told me I can move faster with the right trigger, so I tried that out and the hobbit began to skip–which I found absolutely hilarious.
The game’s cooking system is cool, but there might’ve been too much of it in this demo.
Since we’re on the subject of traversal, one more feature I wanted to mention was the waypoint system. If you’re ever lost in the game, you’ll see birds facing wherever you need to go. While I thought that was a nice and unique touch, I found them hard to see despite them being a good enough blue. Considering a lot of people are going to be playing this on the Switch in handheld mode, it’s something that I hope the devs address before release.
While there are some aspects I’m not really looking forward to, like farming, the demo for Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game was definitely a fun cozy experience that I look forward to playing more of, especially knowing that the game does indeed feature a story and as we saw in yesterday’s Nintendo Direct — Gandalf makes an appearance. Tales of the Shire is planned for this holiday season on every major platform.
When I was walking around look for food at Summer Game Fest, which there was no shortage of, I overheard a conversation from passersby that were laughing about someone crying as they tried out Tales of the Shire. Why? Apparently…
When I was walking around look for food at Summer Game Fest, which there was no shortage of, I overheard a conversation from passersby that were laughing about someone crying as they tried out Tales of the Shire. Why? Apparently that person loved it that much, so after hearing that, I knew I had to try it out while I had a free moment.
I should point out that I’m not a diehard LOTR fan, nor do I really worship the ground that J.R.R. Tolkien walks on, but I do love cozy games. At the same time, farming is sort of a turnoff, but luckily for me the time I spent with the demo wasn’t about farming–it was about cooking, fetch quests, cooking, and fetch quests.
Part of the allure with this title is in its art style. Lord of the Rings typically brings on the gritty side of the fantasy genre, but when you think about The Shire, you think about peace, and there just isn’t a whole lot of peace demonstrated in any form of Tolkien media these days. Tales of the Shire is bright and colorful, and I had a lot of fun simply going into my hobbit’s house and dressing them up. You can even customize the little dude’s feet hair, which I found gross yet charming. I didn’t check if the female hobbits had feet hair, but I don’t see why they wouldn’t.
As far as how the gameplay went, it reminded me a little of Animal Crossing, except with a more detailed map and cooking. As I was walking around The Shire, I had to run errands for a female hobbit by the name of Marigold Potts. As mentioned, the game’s map is pretty detailed, but luckily you can find specific people in The Shire simply by looking them up through the map menu–which is definitely an improvement over Animal Crossing because if and when you end up looking for a specific animal and they weren’t in the vicinity of their house, you had search high and low, and they can be anywhere.
Anyway, upon finding Marigold, she tasked us with cooking for her guests. With that, I headed back to my hobbit’s kitchen and started cooking. Cooking in the game is pretty simple, involved, and enjoyable. Marigold expected us to make something salty, so when you do that, not only do you have to select the right ingredients, but you have to cook them in such a way where it actually comes out salty. In addition to chopping whole ingredients up, you have to decide if you want to pickle them or throw them on the fryer, and everything you do influences the flavor. There’s actually a graph on the bottom right of the screen that shows how flavor is impacted. Whether it’s chopping an ingredient into chunks or smaller pieces, or preparing them like a paste. All this matters, so while it’s easy enough to pick and choose ingredients that make sense for the flavor you might need, part of the fun is making it just right with the ingredients you have.
Upon finishing the salty dish and strolling all the way back to Marigold with it, she made us go home and cook another item. This time it involved an ingredient I didn’t have, but luckily, the farm in our yard supplied the ingredients we needed. The attendant with me mentioned that tending to the garden is one of your many responsibilities in the game, but I was happy that I didn’t have to do this right then and there.
So after I made the second item and brought it back to Marigold, she made me cook another item, which obviously got a tedious, but those are the brakes with cozy games like these. Noticing that I was getting a little impatient, the attendant told me I can move faster with the right trigger, so I tried that out and the hobbit began to skip–which I found absolutely hilarious.
The game’s cooking system is cool, but there might’ve been too much of it in this demo.
Since we’re on the subject of traversal, one more feature I wanted to mention was the waypoint system. If you’re ever lost in the game, you’ll see birds facing wherever you need to go. While I thought that was a nice and unique touch, I found them hard to see despite them being a good enough blue. Considering a lot of people are going to be playing this on the Switch in handheld mode, it’s something that I hope the devs address before release.
While there are some aspects I’m not really looking forward to, like farming, the demo for Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game was definitely a fun cozy experience that I look forward to playing more of, especially knowing that the game does indeed feature a story and as we saw in yesterday’s Nintendo Direct — Gandalf makes an appearance. Tales of the Shire is planned for this holiday season on every major platform.
by Danreb Victorio
