GamePro has released their preview of The Sims Medieval from last week when they stopped by EA Redwood Shores. Here’s a portion from their writeup:
- You can actually “win” the game. You start by choosing a Kingdom Aspiration (e.g. “Biggest Kingdom”) and the game gives you a castle building with a Monarch already living inside. You play with the Monarch as if they were the head of your Sims household, feeding them and making them talk to other Sims — you can even have them fall in love, get married, and have kids just as in other Sims games. The playable Sim, however, has a daily job to do that comes built in; the Monarch has to write decrees or meet dignitaries, the Physician has to cure sick patients, the Blacksmith has to forge swords. Fulfilling the job and completing Sim-specific Opportunities (here called Quests) increases the playable skills and earns Kingdom Points that the player can spend to buy other buildings for the kingdom — like a hospital or a church. Each building comes with a new playable Sim character or two with their own jobs and Quests to fulfill that also earn Kingdom Points. Once you’ve built every building you possibly can and fulfilled all the Kingdom Quests that increase the size of the kingdom, you win that Kingdom Aspiration and that playthrough ends.
- You can win, but you can’t really lose, either — although you can die. Once you’ve selected a playable character, you can screw around as much as you ever did in any other Sims game — flirting with non-playable Sims, having babies, redecorating a playable Sim’s house, etc. Neglecting the Sim’s job, however, has consequences: if the Physician doesn’t cure enough patients or doesn’t cure them completely, he or she can be thrown in the stocks where other Sims (even non-playable ones) can throw tomatoes at them. Multiple trips to the stocks can result in execution. In theory you could get every playable Sim in your kingdom killed, but you wouldn’t get a Game Over screen.
