Mini Review: Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game (PS5)

Tales of the Shire: A Lord of the Rings Game is a cosy Hobbit life simulator by Weta Workshop, set in the idyllic world of The Shire from JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.

After creating your own character, you arrive in Bywater, but despite living in an epic fantasy world, swords are of no use here and your biggest worry will be gathering the requisite ingredients to concoct an epic second breakfast.

As you’d expect from a cosy game like Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, the gameplay loop is relaxed and unchallenging. There’s objectives called ‘tales’ that progress a story mode, but the rest of the gameplay is mainly to befriend and improve relations with other Hobbit characters, typically by inviting them to meals.

NPCs have favourite recipes and flavours you need to cater for, and improving relations unlocks more recipes to collect.

There’s a strong emphasis on decorating you Hobbit-hole (house) and garden to personalise your experience. But other than cooking, fishing, and growing your own vegetables, the gameplay is flat and repetitive.

How much you can cook depends on the availability of vegetables, which means waiting for them to grow over several in-game days. Meanwhile, decoration is limited to your house and yard, unlike staples such as Animal Crossing where you can customise the whole map.

The graphics are certainly an acquired taste. While capturing the vibrancy of The Shire, they’re distractingly garish and poorly textured. Despite the simplistic visuals, performance is not great and the game notably frames while your character runs. The music is okay, but characters lacks voice acting.

Although capturing some charms of Hobbit life with gardening and cooking, other famous Hobbit pastimes, like drinking ale and smoking pipe-weed, are noticeably absent due to the age rating.

And while the world is decently sized for the genre, you can’t climb trees, swim, or even sit in your own furniture. Non-quest NPCs are static and won’t talk to you. It’s all very immersion breaking. Being single player-only means you won’t be able to frolic and cook with friends either, which is a missed opportunity.

In conclusion Tales of the Shire has a great premise, but will unfortunately leave most players wanting more. Its charms will potentially appeal to Hobbit fanatics, but with there being much better cosy games on the market, it’s relying heavily on its Tolkienian license to distinguish itself.