You wake up nestled in the bough of a tree. A tall, bearded figure has blocked out the glorious sunshine that was bathing you in beautiful warmth from the tips of your hairy toes to the top of your balding head.Gandalfis here to accompany you on your trip to the village of Bywater, a stone’s throw away from the Hobbiton that is home to hobbit heroes Bilbo, Frodo, and Samwise. Despite the wizard’s surprising appearance, the kind of adventures that tracked the reputable Baggins name through the mud are not in store for you – moving house is enough of a kerfuffle without thinking about dragons or magic rings.
The start ofTales of the Shireis a laundry list of references and callbacks that will excite some players but turned me away. Thankfully, as soon as Gandalf leaves you – he’s only there for a brief cutscene – we move on from theLord of the Ringsquotes and get stuck into living the laid-back life of a hobbit.
The first act ofTales of the Shireis tutorial-heavy, but not overbearing. You learn the basics of cooking and gardening, but it’s clear from locked-off areas that there’s more depth to come in the latter. You meet Bywater’s small-statured inhabitants, and help them with their low-stakes woes. It’s immediately clear that levelling up your relationships with each hobbit in the village will be a core part of the gameplay loop, so getting introductions out of the way is key. But before you’ve planted a single seed, lit the stove, or waved a cheery “hullo”, you have to introduceyourself.
The character creator is lovely. It’s simple, but with enough options to create a hobbit full of personality. Interestingly, you can’t choose a gender in any sense other than moving a five-point slider. The unlabelled extremes seem to accentuate curves or create a more square figure, but whatever you choose, you’ll be referred to by gender neutral pronouns.
The limited clothing options (you’ll unlock more as you play) are also filled with individual charm, and another slider lets you choose your hobbit’s personality. This is where I ran into a problem. I created an old, grumpy hobbit – think Old Took or a Sackville-Baggins – and only realised once I started the game that holding the right trigger made your hobbit skip instead of walk. The walking animation is cute enough in itself, but the ability to skip forced me to abandon any hope of roleplay, and grumpy old Benbo became a happy-go-lucky hobbit in seconds. That’s what a move to Bywater can do to a hobbit, clearly.
You can choose your name, either picking from a list of Hobbity forenames (including some ripped straight from the books, like Bungo, Drogo, Hamfast, Fredegar, and Peony) or typing your own in. Surnames are more restrictive, omitting the ability to type your own name and forgoing any Tooks, Brandybucks, or Bagginses. A couple ofTolkien surnamescan be found – Bolger, Proudfoot, Underhill – but most just trade on vibes. Luckily, the vibes are immaculate.
Exploring Bywater is a joy. The art direction is perfect for the cosy genre, and the character and environment designs are simply lovely. I love the flowing wooden wyrm carved outside the iconic Green Dragon pub, although I’d prefer to be able to sit and drink a half pint rather than have the inn as an empty shell. It serves as a meeting place for hobbits, as a real pub would, but I’d like to be able to buy a drink to really sell the immersion. I’m trying to get away from the bustle of Bree here, let me have a sip of beer after a hard day’s graft!
While I loved exploring Bywater the first time, it did grow old. Many hobbits wanted me to embark upon glorified fetch quests and, while optional, I felt I had to tread the same paths over and over in order to keep my friendship metres high enough to progress. The worst offender was a sickly hobbit who needed various tinctures from Willow, the village healer, who lives in a hobbit hole carved into an enormous tree (a gorgeously designed set piece), on the other side of the map. Trekking between them was so tiresome that I was glad when another hobbit approached me to draw me into his pyramid scheme, an offer I literally couldn’t refuse.
However, it’s clear that Tales of the Shire’s main gameplay will revolve around growing ingredients and cooking them. For this to be successful, both mechanics need to have adequate depth while remaining fun. Unfortunately, neither has enough about it to really capture the imagination. Foodstuffs are realised in differently coloured piles of mush, chopping requires the simple input of tapping A, and growing your own ingredients simply consists of planting, watering once, waiting, and harvesting.
While the loop itself can feel moreish as you unlock new recipes and seek out the necessary ingredients to cook them, I’d want to see more mechanical depth here in the full game. you’re able to choose how much you chop vegetables in order to match an arbitrary marker on a recipe graph to make your meal better, but I either haven’t unlocked the ability to make dishes crispier or the system isn’t working, so I missed out most of the time. For such a core part of the game, cooking feels about as deep as the Brandywine, when we were really looking for the swirling waters of the Anduin.
I can see Tales of the Shire being a hit purely based on the ability to customise your hobbit and their hole – I know I’ll be recreating the home of my dreams when the game comes out in early 2025 even though there wasn’t much to it in the demo. It looks delightful and nails the vibes of living that laid-back hobbit life we’ve all dreamed of. But I worry that the gameplay loop will get old quickly if the full game doesn’t expand upon the mechanics of the first act.
Considering you’re not on a trek to Mount Doom, there’s far too much traipsing and not enough chilling out. The game is good, it’s definitely cosy, but it needs better attention to detail. I’d love different reactions from your dinner guests based on the time of day you cook your meal – are they over for breakfast, second breakfast, lunch, or tea? I’d love to cook using different methods (and inputs) to master different dishes – why does a pie require the same actions as a salad? And most of all, I want to sit down for a flagon of ale in the Green Dragon. If I can’t do it in Tales of the Shire I’ll have to make the pilgrimage to the real deal in New Zealand, and Eru knows I can’t afford that.
