Medieval Dynasty Review (praxis)
Would I recommend this game to other players? I don't honestly know many who would have enjoyed the experience as much as I did. I really liked this game, but I also am very interested in anything to do with medieval daily life and Medieval Dynasty has so much detail and variety that is appropriate to a medieval (eastern) European setting. I loved the variety of foods and items you could craft.
Basically, I am a chore-game enjoyer. Sometimes when I game, I just want to do some mindless activity in a pretty place while getting that dopamine hit from whatever rewards the game gives me for doing that. No combat challenge, chop wood all day: yay! But I get that a lot of gamers are not like that!
The game is part farming sim, part survival crafting and part city management. It doesn't do any of those as well as other games I have played but the combination is a great concept and it's a lot of fun for the first 10 years or so of the game. I am currently typing this review while waiting so I can sleep until next season and progress another year so my heir can be 18 and I can have a happy hunting accident and 100% this and move on to something else.
The pacing is a little uneven. The first few years I had to increase the number of days in a season (the default is 3) just so I could get in all the questing / planting / building / villager recruiting / bandit loot seeking / log chopping / clay digging in that needs to be done to get going. By the end of the game, everything runs smoothly and I ended up dropping the number of days in each season and basically just waiting for time to pass. There's not much to spend coin on at this point other than yearly taxes and by the time your heir is a teenager you have more coin than you know what to do with. It's basically just a matter of managing keeping your villagers busy while trying not to hit the resource storage cap too hard.
The building is not super varied and I think the game would benefit from more decorating options (other than drop this item and kind of drag it to where you want it to be). There are plenty of decorations but trees, plants, varied ground cover would be nice. All the houses are basically identical but you can edit in small tweaks. It would have been nice to have more and different styles and sizes of houses. Also I really wish you could do more with the houses besides plant a little nuclear family in each one. There could have been dormitory style houses, multi-generational houses, boarding tenants, and things like that.
The questing is not good. Loads of 'run all the way across the map and give x person an item so they can give you an item for y person and then you run back again'. The exception were the heir quests. They were still fetch quests but you got to bring your kid along and impart some kind of lesson to him (it's always a him) during the process.
If you're looking for medieval fighting or combat, this is not your game. A few scattered bandits and hunting wild animals is mostly all there is, but you can craft fancy elite medieval armor for that (and then mostly wear it while you put poop on your fields. There's even a crest that unlocks for that!).
The 'dares' (challenges to unlock crests) were fun and I wish there had been more of that kind of thing to do during the last decade of watching my heir grow up.
Speaking of growing, I really enjoyed how the NPCs age over time. No one has died yet in my game but I am a little worried about some of the traders I've been visiting since I got to the Valley. The animals do age out and die, and new ones are born. It's kind of cool. In addition to aging, the population of your own village changes clothing each season and even improves their own clothing as the city becomes more prosperous. Lots of color and styles and variety and it makes the game feel full. (I also really enjoyed the snippets of pop culture overheard in some of the things your villagers say -- references to Star Wars, Pokemon, Lord of the Rings, The Wickerman, Assassin's Creed, and many many more were things I caught in bits of dialogue. There are so many they don't get repeated all the time and it makes the village come alive a little.)
While I was playing, the developer dropped an awesome update that lets you craft directly from your storages (in range) and it was such a huge quality of life improvement! I was impressed to see this kind of followup 3+ years after release and I hope that future updates continue to tweak this game and bring it from pretty good to great. Adding in colors and patterns for the buildings was a nice touch (and period accurate too!).
I hope this review doesn't come across as too negative because I did really like the game. I'd love to play it co-op but I can't think of a single person in my gaming community who would actually enjoy the experience.