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Taking A Look At Medieval Dynasty | Sponsored
Medieval Dynasty is a game that just released in early access and it’s amazing. There are some quirks to the game and a bit of a learning curve. There are already a bunch of things to do from building a town, farming, hunting, and trying to survive the wild.
Early Access
This game is in early access and it just came out in on September 17, 2020. While there are some issues the game has odd quarks so far I have had an excellent experience for how far along this game is in development. This is one of those games you do need to work out for yourself several things.
The game does look amazing. With that said I turned down my settings a bit for the time being. I’ve noticed when being in the starting town that performance can sometimes tank while other times be decent.
I do during long play session reset the game at least once. That seems to help with any performance issues I start to notice once the game has been open for a few hours. I suspect over time as the game developer pushing out some patches for that to improve.
With this being in early access do expect there to be several patching going on sometimes more than once in a single day. If you are someone with a metered internet connection early access games like these can be a bit of a struggle with how often they could be pushing out a patch to fix something for the players to have a better overall experience.
I also noticed at least for my hardware that the page to save the game on or load the game while in-game takes a little bit of time to load. It’s nothing bad but you are going to notice every time you go to save the game you might have to wait. The game does autosave every in-game day.
There are also some things for now that feel quite short. Each game season only lasts 3 in-game days. So I highly recommend you get used to playing a little bit in the dark and carry some torches. If you go to sleep the instant you can to speed through the night you might feel there just not enough time to get everything done.
While the game does have some questing and information skill pages. Quite a few things are left up to the player to work out what something means. You might read the description of something and wonder “what is that implying?” I have also found a few situations where an avid gamer like myself had no issues understanding how something worked but I could see someone who is not having a hard time. More times than not trial and error gave me the information I needed to better understand how something worked.
Other than these things you quickly get to use. The number of issues I have had has been far and few between. With a simple restart of the game usually fixing anything that I ran into for the most part. If not there a chance the game will end up patching a few hours later to fix something like issues there have been with farming or you have the unstuck button in the main menu to resolve an issue.
Town And Management
One of the biggest parts of this game is going to be building out your settlement. The game has quite a few different buildings and types of things so far to build. This also includes going out and recruiting NPCs to your town. With some of the costs, it can become a bit tricky to try and keep everything moving.
A major reason you find yourself needing to build out your town from a single small house to a bunch of buildings tends to be around getting a wife. I chased after getting a wife for almost a year and a half in-game. Thankfully by then, I was ready for her.
NPCs in your town need specific buildings to be able to get supplies from. For instance, when they need wood to heat their homes they get wood from the resource storage buildings. When they need food they go to the food storage building and so on. This also means you need to keep these buildings stocked with the required materials otherwise the mood of the NPCs you recruited will decrease over time till they leave.
You can also see from the screenshot above that my resource storage building is in a bit of disrepair. You do need to check up on buildings from time to time and fix them up. Some times walls will break down and you need to repair them with whatever building material went into making it.
This also means once you get a wife she needs several buildings already set up to be happy in your town. If not she is like any other NPCs unable to acquire needed things like wood or food. There is also a catch since this is a dynasty game and you need an heir to your dynasty at some point. Not only are you going have to take care of a child but your wife is also not going be working for several months.
I have have not had an heir born yet. I think I need to work further on increasing my wife's moods before that is even an option. That is however something I still have yet to work out as I’m meeting her basic needs which only brings her up to a 60% mood level.
The good news is you can assign NPCs to a building to perform needed tasks within your town. Even better not all of these buildings need to be close to your town to get a benefit from them either. For instance Woodshed, I which has a 50 range for the NPC to farm logs and sticks at you can build right in the middle of a forest.
NPCs also have their skills so I found it always best when getting a new person to make sure they can’t do a job better than I already have someone assigned to. You can use inspection mode while out and about in other towns looking for people to recruit to see who is even available to try and convince to join you and what skills they have.
The game even has a management page to help you understand what is going on and for housing and job assignment. I wish it was a little more fluid as you will find yourself having to back out of pages a couple of times. For this being an early access game it is decent enough for now.
Outside of needing to pay attention that you have enough supplies to keep the town going like wood and food. Every year in spring taxes come due. While you can fall behind on them for a while sooner or later they need to be paid. With my current town of 12 buildings and 5 people that was over 1k in taxes.
The game itself also requires you to work on the main quest line to be able to increase the building limit. If you are not staying on top of that you will find it’s quite easy to outgrow the tiny town you have set up. Even at 12 buildings, I feel like I need more. As people need homes to live in and there a few buildings you need for crafting among other things. This starts to limit how fast you can grow your town while still keeping everyone's moods high enough to not leave.
It does feel like efficacy is going to play a key role in being able to keep a town afloat. While I was in a somewhat transitional period of finding new people to come to my town and already having some people there I was putting more time than wanted into doing all the work myself. It also did not help that t had a low skilled for the job lumberjack who was not keeping up with the town's demands until I replaced him with someone better.
Other Actives
There is more to this game than just trying to find a wife and building out a town. There are some social aspects, hunting, exploring, and doing quests as well. I can only see this improving over time as the game further develops.
Another big part of this game is working on your relationships with other NPCs. This is done through a simple interaction of having a short conversation via “do you have a minute?” Where if you pick the right answer you gain approval and if not it decreases. There is also a further aspect you have to work on if you are in the purist of a wife. This is why I didn’t have one till the second year in-game. They just dint like me for who I am I guess the story of my life.
With this being a survival game you do need to be on the lookout for things that want to kill you. There are bores, wolves, and bears among many other animals in this game. The last thing you want to be is mauled to death by a bear and not have an heir. While I’m not quite certain yet what happens at death as I’ve yet to die. I can only suspect it would be game over for me since the wife refuses to have a kid as of yet!
You also have the usual survival aspect that you can come to expect to see in games these days. From making sure you have enough water and food to keep those bars topped off. Along with being dressed accordingly for the weather from the four different seasons so you don’t freeze to death. I found these elements to not be too hard once you have established yourself. It can be a bit dicey in the early days if these things are new to you in a game.
There are also a ton of different items to craft from weapons to clothing. All these things you need to either go out and gather for or buy the materials from traders in the different towns to be able to make. You might also need to buy the blueprint and build a special building just to craft an item.
One of the things I do love doing so far is just exploring. There are nine different towns to check out for quests and see what they have for sale. Along with discovering where different animals roam on the map. I would spend more time on this part of the game if the seasons where not as short and my town could handle be being gone for prolonged amounts of time.
I even spent a few hours trying to find a cave. It appears the area I have set my town up in is not close to a cave for mining ore. They are also one of the better ways to get a lot of rocks for crafting which I use the end product for selling and covering my taxes, seeds, and anything else I need for my growing town.
Final Thoughts
While the game has not been out for very long yet in early access I have been having a blast. Sure there are a couple of bugs and quarks here or there that I can only hope will be worked out in the short term. They by no means had enough of an impact on my gameplay to become frustrated. The experience has simply been amazing and I can’t wait to unlock higher tier buildings, grow my town, and hopefully my medieval dynasty will survive.
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Information
Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar. Screenshots are from the game Medieval Dynasty. If you are thinking about getting this game and are looking to support me further consider using my Epic Games creator code: enjargames at checkout or using this referral link to be sent to the store's page.
Disclosure: As a creator in the Epic Games’ Support-A-Creator Program, I may receive a commission from certain purchases.
Disclosure: This game is in early access.
