City Tales – Medieval Era Review — From Small to Sprawl

I’ve always been a fan of city-building titles, and I’ve recently had the pleasure of reviewing some excellent new additions to the genre. Farthest Frontier and Pioneers of Palia both came across my desk and seriously impressed me; both have their own unique takes on city-building systems that made each title distinct from one another, making both worth playing and showing off their own unique strengths.

Yet another fantastic city builder with its own approach, City Tales – Medieval Era has once again captivated me and stolen way more time than I intended to play for this review.

City Tales – Medieval Era is a city builder that sees you founding your own kingdom in a far-off, untamed land. Beginning with only a town hall, you eventually upgrade your city to include massive manors, a towering castle, and even connected baronies. The scale in City Tales – Medieval Era is truly impressive. Every time I thought I had built everything the game had to offer, I would unlock even more structures and build even more districts until my territory was downright intimidatingly large.

One of the ways City Tales – Medieval Era manages to pull off this impressive sense of scale is through its unique building system. While some structures, particularly forestry buildings like a woodcutting station or a gatherer’s hut, have a set size, most builds are constructed by laying out districts. Using pins, the player maps out a swathe of territory which is then assigned as a district, a farm, or whatever it is you happen to be building. This area then automatically fills itself with constructed buildings or assigns spaces for manually constructed buildings such as a blacksmith or church. If you’ve played Manor Lords, the build system in City Tales – Medieval Era is somewhat similar, but with the placement of homes and structures handled by the AI within designated territory rather than you designating a space for each individual building.

The game’s progression is inherently tied to the placement of your districts. In a similar vein to the Anno series, the homes of your villagers require certain specific resources in order to upgrade. This includes produced goods, but also proximity to amenities such as a well for water or a church or market district. When a new home is constructed or an existing one upgraded, you receive a flat sum of gold. Rather than periodic taxes, this serves as your main source of income, which is needed to build everything else in the game, so you want to constantly be upgrading existing houses or building more.

Rather than playing with survival mechanics such as disease or starvation, City Tales – Medieval Era is a game about production. Your citizens don’t starve, so instead the difficulty comes in planning out and supplying production chains that meet the needs of your ever-growing city.

Another unique mechanic, and one that contributes deeply to the game’s economy, is your companions.

You begin the game with a group of characters you call your companions, each one with their own unique personality and story to tell. Not only do they assign various narrative quests to you throughout your playthrough, but they are also essential pieces of your economy.

No production building in the game, be it a woodcutter or a mill, can function on its own until upgraded by a companion. Each new building must have a companion assigned to it for a period of time until it reaches its first upgrade and unlocks automation. Having your companions continue to work at that building level up their skill in that related area and provides the building with bonuses to production time, as well as further upgrades.

Companions can later be made to lead baronies, which are like small territory extensions outside of your starting area, where their skills really shine as they provide flat bonuses to every building in the barony according to their skills.

Between the game’s use of companions and its unique method of expansion and building, the difficulty comes not from keeping your city running, but more in managing space, planning your districts ahead, and managing the attention and usage of your companions. This gives City Tales – Medieval Era a sort of relaxed feeling. The game does not force you to progress faster than you’re ready for, and the difficulty is almost trivial since most issues can simply be solved by building more of the same production buildings. This is a unique approach that will appeal to some, but not all, city-building players.

I had a really great time with City Tales – Medieval Era. I spent way more time playing it than I intended to, and I kind of want to go back and start a new game as I type this review out.

There are, however, a few areas I had some issues with, which mostly amount to nitpicks. Specifically, I found the game’s max speed to be a bit too slow for my tastes. I also didn’t like that bridges wouldn’t form on roads that led across rivers or water. I saw a bridge in a picture for one of the game’s Day One DLCs, but they didn’t appear in my game.

That also bothered me a bit. Day One DLC for the game includes cosmetic packs, one of which adds animals and pets to your city. I really don’t like the practice of Day One DLC, especially when it seems like content that should just be in the main game already.

Regardless, I enjoyed City Tales – Medieval Era and found the game’s title to be, perhaps unintentionally, a source of future hype. If the subtitle in “City Tales – Medieval Era” implies that there can be a “City Tales – Industrial Era” or “City Tales – Fantasy,” etc., then I look forward to future titles in this potential series.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of City Tales – Medieval Era. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! City Tales – Medieval Era is available on Steam.