Review by: Tom Chick

Sims started off in the year 2000 living in boxes. Their boxes got bigger in The Sims 2 and even bigger in The Sims 3. But in Sims Medieval, boxes won't do. Now sims live on stages. In the course of moving around the kingdom, your sim will frequently step into a building. At that point, the camera changes. You can no longer fly around freely. Instead, you are fixed just outside the building, peering in through a wall which has been pulled aside like the curtain before a stage. It's even called the fourth wall in the manual. This sort of theatrical convention works perfectly.

In many ways, The Sims Medieval reinvents the original Sims' sprawling epic tale of the mundane moments in day-to-day life. Now it's at once simpler and more dramatic. It strips away so much, and yet it adds so much more. It is the Sims game for people who don't like The Sims and especially for those who do. It's brilliant.

Along with bigger boxes, the Sims series has progressed in terms of gameplay. It all started as Will Wright's aimless time management sandbox with virtual dolls. And from there, it morphed into increasingly goal-oriented gameplay, each Sims better than the last (Electronic Arts' occasional expansion pack shenanigans notwithstanding). The Sims Medieval is the best the gameplay has ever been in a Sims game, combining the focus and whimsy of some of the Sims console versions with the scale and freedom of the PC versions.

A die-hard Sims fan might panic a little to see sims' stats pared down so sharply. Where are the gauges to monitor fun, peeing, friendship, and comfort? But in Sims Medieval, everything is focused on an aptly named focus meter. A sim has a food and sleep bar, but everything beyond that is collected into a set of clever, sometimes funny, and sometimes even bawdy buffs or debuffs. It's all here, but it's not nearly as strident.

This streamlined system lets you play differently for different types of sims, who have different traits, and different classes, and different daily responsibilities, all in the pursuit of staying focused. Your priest has to give a sermon and pray. Your knight has to train and go on patrols. Your physician needs to apply leeches to sick sims. Your blacksmith has to make swords for customers. Your king has to listen to petitions and write laws. Your bard crafts poems and puts on plays.

All the stuff of a Medieval fantasy life is doled out among your set of sims, and at any given time, you're playing a single sim on the quest of your choice. Will you slay the dragon with your knight, or charm it with your bard? Will your king negotiate a treaty with another kingdom, or will your merchant open a trade route? Will your priest pray to find a missing child or will your spy search the underworld for him?