You're a newcomer to Bywater, taking over the residence of a respected elder of the area. Fresh-faced and willing to help, you decide to go around and commit to the idea of making Bywater a village. You're creating a speciality dish, getting to know the locals by inviting them over for a meal, and participating in clubs to earn rewards like additional cooking stations and a fishing rod upgrade. The game loop is satisfying, and as you complete tasks and give residents their favorite kind of meals, you'll get rewards like furniture to place in your home. In this aspect, it's one of the best cozy games out there.

There are 120 recipes in Tales of the Shire, which can be gained by giving townsfolk their favorite dishes or fulfilling their cravings.

The customization element is fulfilling. You can place new furniture in your home as easy as pie, fitting in couches, stools and all manner of knik-knaks at your pleasure. You can also change the style and walls of your home. You can make the wallpaper a deep red with the Dark Abstract Flower color or add a plum pinstripe to give it a darker flair. You can also go for a Gorgeous and Green Tile or a Simple Wood for the flooring. It's a nice bit of customization that's not seen that much in the cozy genre.

It's satisfying to plant your seeds and grow your own vegetables. You'll see your garden grow over time. The process of cooking is wonderful as you chop each ingredient to the correct smoothness or tenderness. You can also season your dishes in the pan with ingredients like Bacon Grease, Cinnamon and Butter.

There are a few issues with the gameplay, though. You'll have to run (or skip) around the village over and over and over again, causing some irritation. It's repetitive to go through the same paths and you'll have to store ingredients at your home constantly due to the initial low amount of bag space. You can upgrade it later, but many hours later. You do have an unconventional navigational system that can help you on your little adventures. Birds fly up to sign posts and point in the direction you need to go. Most of the time, they land ahead of you, but other times, you need to wait for them to arrive. They can be helpful, but in the big market in the middle of Bywater, you can be lost without their guidance; the map's UI doesn't truly help much either, unless you know where you're going.

Talking about the village, the game sees a massive frame drop, even on the PS5. Whenever Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game boots up a new location, it drops frames as well, making it a somewhat uncomfortable visual experience. It's not too horrendous, but it pulls you out of Middle-Earth for a few seconds before the game fixes itself. You can tell this game has a brilliant art style, using watercolor as one of its main bases. The architecture is stunning and each of the character designs are charming. During cutscenes, the main character bobs up and down in excitement in such a cute manner.

The world and graphics themselves, however, are to be desired. The environment in the background is heavily blurred and some of the assets lack detail. The trees and foliage in particular don't look fantastic and seem ripped from a PS2 game. They do sway in the wind, however, which is a nice touch.

The fruit, seasonings and vegetables all look how they're supposed to be, and the meals you make do have visual details you can't find in even triple-A games like Final Fantasy XV. The way that your character cooks the food, on the other hand, is questionable. As they make the dish, it looks like they're cutting into slop rather than an actual ingredient.

Wonderful Hobbits To Meet

What helps you feel cozy is the cute storyline of Tales of the Shire. Each resident has their own personality and as you get to know them more, you'll find out their backstory. It's engaging to get to know them, and there are rivalries in place between certain Hobbits, too, that have to be resolved. The overall concept of trying to improve Bywater is a gripping one as you slowly but surely see improvements across the area.

Unfortunately, during the review process, the story and gameplay reached a grinding halt. There's a quest that has you try to retrieve a character's trousers while they're in the water.

As you search for the trousers, it doesn't let you go out of the area, playing an annoying cutscene. It seems like the developers have made it too small as you see a twinkle of blue in the distance. Funnily enough, my cousin Jack Penwell at DualShockers reached the same point and encountered a similar issue for their review. Thankfully, this issue seems to have been fixed after booting up the game on July 27. Hopefully, other bugs like this don't show up later on. It's odd this has happened, even though there have been multiple delays.

Despite this major issue, Tales of the Shire features wonderful sound design. The upbeat flute sound that plays during cutscenes perfectly establishes the whimsy of the main character. The music is relaxing and sounds like someone from the Shire would play it. Whenever you go to sleep, it also plays a magical little melody that feels suited to a happy-go-lucky world such as this.

Closing Comments:

Tales of the Shire: A The Lord of the Rings Game has the potential to be one of the best cozy games out there with a wonderful art style, engaging characters and an entertaining game loop. It struggles, however, with the lack of a fast travel system and overly repetitive game design. There's only so much running (or skipping) you can do before it gets grating. The mini-games like the cooking and fishing are fun, and collecting ingredients in the beautiful Shire is a great distraction to the stresses of real life. What ultimately kills the game right now, however, are how some bugs kill your progress. It might be best to play Disney Dreamlight Valley while you wait for these bugs to get fixed.