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At A Hobbit Day Showcase, developer Wētā Workshop and Private Division shared a playable demo of its upcoming cozy life sim and announced a new release date.
Tales of the Shire will be released for Nintendo Switch, PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and Netflix on March 25th, 2025.
The gameplay demo has received mixed reviews. The reviewers have criticized the unimaginative quests, ugly graphics, and overall lack of charm. Others have praised the cozy life sim’s intuitive gameplay mechanics, cooking and fishing features, and diverse character creator.
PC Gamer Criticizes Tales of the Shire’s ‘Lack of Substance’
Kara Phillips for PC Gamer mentioned the game’s lack of identity, saying it was “frankly just disappointing,” while also criticizing the “pointless” farming.
Phillips clearly wasn’t a fan of the story missions, which apparently offer a “never-ending chase for information with no real reward,” speaking to one character after another.
PC Gamer’s review also mentioned the “complete lack of substance to mechanics, characters, and even dialogue.”
Tales of the Shire ‘Doesn’t Feel Cozy,’ According to GamesRadar
GamesRadar’s Andrew Brown was similarly unenthusiastic about the demo, which left him “lukewarm”. He did praise the “intricate” cooking, including foraging for ingredients, but ultimately felt the “dull fetch quests” and lack of longer-term goals let the game down.
The visuals also attracted some criticism from GamesRadar, with Brown commenting that the game didn’t feel cozy, with the Green Dragon Inn “bare and empty,” while the rain was “pixelated and ugly.”
Brown noted that hopefully these issues can be improved before launch, but that currently the game feels like “a generic life sim with a thin Middle-Earth veneer.”
Polygon has a Positive Take on LOTR Life Sim
One of the more positive takes on the gameplay demo came from Susanna Polo at Polygon, who called it “the best fresh take on a Lord of the Rings adaptation I’ve seen basically ever.”
Polo praised the character creator, which they called “delightfully robust,” and enjoyed the cooking, but agreed with others that all the walking around to talk to NPCs for quests could become a bit repetitive.
Polygon’s review also spotted some visual bugs, but with six months to go before release, noted they hoped the developer could iron these out.
Cinelinx Loved Tales of the Shire’s ‘Intuitive’ Gameplay Mechanics
The most positive review of all came from Jordan at Cinelinx, whose YouTube review praised the “intuitive and familiar” gameplay mechanics and waxed lyrical about the cooking and fishing.
However, Cinelinx’s video criticized the game’s built-in guidance system, which uses flocks of birds to guide the player to quest goals rather than a typical arrow or marker. This can be confusing as the birds often blend into backgrounds and are hard to follow.
Jordan felt the game was on “the right path overall,” but noted it wasn’t exactly “breaking the mold” for a cozy life sim game.
Finally, IGN shared the gameplay demo, with unimpressed readers commenting on the lack of voice acting, and others mentioning that Tales of the Shire felt “like a mobile game.”
With its release date next spring, there’s still plenty of time for the game’s developers to take on board all feedback, both positive and negative, and make improvements to Tales of the Shire.
