Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game review

Bilbo Baggins' trip to Lonely Mountain (and back again) in The Hobbit was roughly 2,000 miles. In Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game, I feel like I've run at least half that distance without ever leaving the tiny town of Bywater. I cook, I fish, I farm—but most of my time is spent using my big ol' hairy feet to skip back and forth between the dozen hobbits who regularly need my help.

That's not unusual for a life sim—I sprint like crazy through Stardew Valley, too—but despite all the bustling around I do in Bywater, there's not quite enough to do to fill my days. Some of the activities are good ones: the cooking system is one of my favorite in games ever, and foraging for mushrooms, fruit, and herbs across the rolling hills and lush meadows of a beautifully detailed Bywater is pleasantly chill, but fishing is too basic to be interesting and farming is a letdown.

And unfortunately there's not much to do in Tales of the Shire beyond those four things, apart from a bit of home decorating and some dress-up. In some life sims I'm always racing against the clock to finish everything I need to before the day ends, but in Tales of the Shire I'm usually diving into bed as early as possible to fast-forward to the next morning.

Roast mutton

In Tales of the Shire, you're a recent transplant to Bywater, a town so small the official hobbit government doesn't even consider it a real town. And who better to organize the locals into getting their act together than a complete stranger? Luckily, there's a great way for an outsider to earn the trust of the local halflings, and that's through their stomachs.

Cooking in Tales of the Shire is excellent—and yes, you can have all the meals Pippin helpfully listed in The Fellowship of the Ring: breakfast, second breakfast, elevenses, luncheon, afternoon tea, dinner and supper. Step into the kitchen and pick a recipe, then add the ingredients you've foraged or grown, like puffy mushrooms, shiny fruits, and hearty vegetables, and those you've bought or traded for, like meat, cheese, flour, and cream.

The ideal version of the meal you're making has a little target on your cooking HUD, and hitting it means adjusting the smoothness or chunkiness of the dish (depending on how vigorously you chop the ingredients) as well as the crispness or tenderness (which can be fine tuned in the frying pan, saucepan, and other kitchen implements). While the stovetop is sizzling you can also mix in extra flavors at each step, adding sugar, salt, cinnamon, butter, and lots of herbs and spices to make flavor combos that improve the quality of the meal.

It's a fun and tactile minigame I enjoy each time I do it: pouring some ingredients into a mixing bowl, chopping others with a big cleaver, then flipping and tossing them in a sizzling pan.

It takes a while to learn just how much or little to chop or fry each ingredient to precisely bullseye the ultimate version of each dish, but even if you miss the mark, the finished meals are always look delicious: sticky berry jams, crispy fish pies, tater slices with eggplant, mutton stuffed with cheese, rich vegetable soups, and tarts filled with fruits and cream. Even if I weren't trying to inch my way up the social ladder by bribing hobbits with food, I'd be whipping up meals each day just for the pleasure of it.

Not at home

I just wish the rest of Tales' systems were as enjoyable as cooking—and I wish there were more to do in general. Foraging is pleasant enough, especially because chasing butterflies and lightning bugs will lead you to hard-to-spot ingredients, a nice fairytale-style touch. The fishing minigame is a little too simple to be good, though, absent the layer of complexity of lures and bait most other life sims add. On the plus side, you never waste your time by fishing up trash, but I've never pulled treasure out of Bywater's rivers and ponds, either.

What I wish for most is a proper farm, even a tiny one. Just about every hobbit in Bywater has a small but beautiful garden bursting with plump veggies next to their hobbit holes, but in Tales of the Shire I'm only allowed to grow my crops in little planter boxes, not directly on the ground. I can move the boxes around and arrange them how I want, and I like that planting certain seeds next to each other will buff their quality—but the actual farming only requires you to plop a seed in a box and water it each day, nothing more. I feel jealous every time I sprint by another hobbit's house and see their beautiful, box-free farms.

Quests require a lot of running back and forth between hobbits to deliver messages and have short conversations. The main quest is a long one, to elevate the town to official status in the Shire, but to spread it out over the course of the game there are often gaps where you simply have to wait for the next part to begin by ending the day and starting the next. A lot of quests are of the "the princess is in another castle" variety: while trying to track down a missing book, each hobbit I questioned sent me to another, and then another. It's a lot of running around, and frankly, I'd much rather be at home cooking.

The last stage

I was happy to discover that despite the gentle, wholesome storybook look and feel of the game, the hobbits of Bywater have a bit of an edge to them. Despite Gandalf's love for the Shire, Tolkien's hobbits can be, quite frankly, a bunch of a-holes. In the fiction they're often petty, greedy, and deceptive (remember, Gandalf hired Bilbo to be a thief), and I'm glad some of that comes through in Tales of the Shire, from a mill owner monopolizing the town's supply of flour to an old coot of a farmer who doesn't believe his daughter can carry on his trade just because she's a girl. I even get the occasional chance to be mildly jerkish in my dialogue responses, though it doesn't seem to have an effect on the quests or make anyone dislike me.

With such a beautifully presented world and an excellent cooking system, it's a shame the rest of Tales of the Shire doesn't stack up that well. Gandalf sure loves the Shire, but I can't quite say the same.