Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game Review | Friends, Fun and Fried Fish for Dinner

I remember watching the first Lord of the Rings movie in theatres when I was little. I went with my dad who was a huge fan of the books. The theater was packed so we were stuck in the back row. I was completely captivated by the film, so much that I snuck out of my seat and sat further down on the stairs so I could be closer to the screen. So, when Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game was announced, I was so excited to be able to live the life of a hobbit in this cozy, calming life sim. 

In Tales of the Shire, you play as a hobbit who has just moved from Bree to an area of Hobbiton called Bywater. The town is very welcoming and (most of) the folks are happy to have a new face among them. You’ll slowly be introduced to a handful of hobbits that will become your closest friends throughout your adventure. The biggest issue that will pop up and become your main goal in the story, is that Bywater wishes to officially become a “village.” But becoming a village comes with many rules that you’ll have to help your new friends achieve. 

Your base of operations for the game will, of course, be your hobbit hole. When you first start out, it’s in a bit of disarray, but from the very start you can clean things up and decorate how you’d like. The main areas you’ll be using in your home, though, are your garden, your pantry and kitchen and your dining room. Eventually, more of your home will be unlocked and you can do even more decorating so your hobbit hole becomes a hobbit home. Sorry, I had to. 

One of the main mechanics of the game is cooking and inviting people to share meals with you. This is the best way to increase your friendship level with the other hobbits and gain more recipes for your recipe book. Each hobbit will send you a letter on the day of your shared meal to let you know what they’re craving whether it’s something sweet, spicy, salty or otherwise. If you serve a hobbit what they’re craving, they’ll give you a gift to say thanks. Leveling up friendship not only awards you with new recipes and gifts, but the hobbits will also help you in other ways. Willow, for example, will help you with upgrading and fixing your home. Delphinium will give you seeds to plant in your garden. It’s best to try and make friends with everyone because you never know what they’ll have to share with you. 

As I mentioned before, there is a main story to follow in the game that revolves around becoming a village, but at the same time, you’ll also get side quests from your friends and, eventually, you’ll unlock the job board as well. The job board is how you can quickly upgrade your skills in Cooking, Fishing, Gardening and Foraging. There are four leaders of clubs centered around these skills and if you complete job boards for them, they’ll award you with special things. Upgrading your cooking, for example, allows you to unlock more cooking stations for your kitchen. Upgrading foraging, unlocks more slots for your backpack. It’s well-worth taking a break from the main story once in a while, to complete some job board quests and gain more upgrades.

While I think Tales of the Shire is a pretty brilliant game, there were a few kinks I ran across. I played the game on my Steam Deck and there were the occasional frame rate issues or twitchy character animations and long loading times, but none of these really affected gameplay negatively for me. My other biggest gripe was with the cooking mechanics. 

At the time of writing this I have nearly eighteen hours in Tales of the Shire and I still don’t really understand how cooking works. Your goal is to reach a certain flavor and texture level in order to create the best dishes possible. You can up your deliciousness score by using ingredients that have higher stars in deliciousness. For example, a three star walnut can help the overall score of your dish. This was easy enough to understand, but the actual cooking, I could never figure out. It made sense that something like fish, you would want to fry in a frying pan before putting it in your dish, but how long to cook it was never a concept I was able to grasp. And it was the same as when I unlocked more cooking stations. Perhaps a more in-depth tutorial might have helped, but if I wasn’t able to figure it out after eighteen hours, it probably wasn’t going to click for me. 

And maybe that was just something I alone struggled with, and it never really affected gameplay for me. It’s easy to get two star and three star dishes while doing the bare minimum so I never focused too much on cooking things the way I thought they needed to be cooked. Some side quests and job board quests will require you to use higher star ingredients or cook higher star dishes, but because it’s so simple to do so, it’s not likely to give you a hard time. Which I do think, begs the question, what’s the point in having that as a mechanic at all if it doesn’t really affect things? Either way, everything else in the game I found to be straight forward and easy to follow.  

I am still playing Tales of Shire despite having finished the main story around the twelve hour mark. It’s just so much fun trying to figure out how to make a salty dish at someone's request, foraging for food and spending time with these hobbits that have now all become my friends. It’s a great game that, despite its minor kinks, manages to satisfy that cozy craving. The best things come in small packages and these hobbits might be small, but they leave a big, lasting impression. 

Breakdown

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

Developer: Wētā Workshop

Publisher: Private Division

Availability: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch

Game Length: 12-15 hours (Main Story), 15-30+ hours (Main Story + Extras)

Reviewed on PC via Steam Deck

Final Thoughts

Tales of the Shire is a silly and fun life sim with sweet characters, satisfying side quests and a heartwarming story. It combines mechanics you’ll find in Animal Crossing or Stardew Valley, but makes them true to a hobbit’s life. While there are some small adjustments I’d make, I’ll definitely be returning to the Shire again to have more wonderful hobbit adventures.