Review: Tales of the Shire Makes Me Glad I’m Not a Hobbit

The quaint life of Middle-Earth Hobbits has captured the imagination of readers and movie-goers for years, and Tales of the Shire lets you experience that homely lifestyle. Despite its charming and promising premise, the game is so devoid of anything interesting that I wanted to march right back to Bree, Nazguls be damned.

In Tales of the Shire, you play as an original Hobbit who moves to Bywater. The villagers are all quite welcoming to you, and you can get to know them better by inviting them to your house for meals. Aside from hanging out with the other residents, you can also farm, fish, decorate your home, and buy new clothes for your Hobbit. You progress through the story by completing quests, which are usually simple ones like growing plants or fetching items.

As a disclaimer, I wasn’t able to get through a lot of Tales of the Shire. Shortly before it came out, an update lagged the game so much that it was completely unplayable. While Wētā Workshop fixed that with presumably another update, my progress softlocked when a quest item did not show up where it was supposed to. I even checked another site’s guide for the game to make sure I didn’t misunderstand the location of the item. For three in-game days, I circled around the area while doing my usual tasks of fishing, farming, and trading, but to no avail. I literally cannot continue with my save file.

I played enough to have a good idea, though, and I have to say that I’m a little disappointed. A cozy game depicting the idyllic life of Hobbits ignorant of the horrors of war sounds like a dream game for The Lord of the Rings fans. The emphasis on community—forcing you to interact with and befriend the Bywater residents to progress—is also fun, since it doesn’t allow the player to cheese the game with vast amounts of money. The problem is that the community in question isn’t a very interesting one.

All the characters, including your Hobbit OC, are pretty one-note. They lack depth and interesting personalities, so it’s hard to care about them at all. Talking to people outside of quests has them repeat a version of, “Hi, what’s up?” with no interesting dialogue trees beyond that, so there’s no point in speaking to anyone unless you have business with them. The canned lines can be inappropriately funny, like Nefi ending a conversation with, “What are you still doing here?” when we’re literally at my house. It’s hard to want to take part in the community when everyone feels more like bit characters than important NPCs.

The exploration and foraging’s not that fun, either. Navigating Bywater is a pain, as there are a lot of winding paths and obstacles for such a small map. The birds that serve as route markers are fascinating in theory, but annoying in execution. If you take a wrong turn, it’s impossible to tell when a bird is telling you to go back, meaning that I have to rely on my map more often than not. The days are also way too long for how many activities there are. I go to sleep during the evening in-game, meaning I skip an entire section of the day, and that still takes me about twenty-five real-world minutes.

Since this is a cozy game, the point is to take it slow and relax, so that’s not a big deal, right? Well, the thing is that you can usually complete everything you need to by the afternoon. After that, it’s just foraging and fishing. You can’t even hang out and talk with the NPCs because, again, they just repeat canned lines. Between the lack of meaningful activities and character interactions, the game can feel so painfully dull that it’s actively stressful, which is ironic considering its genre.

Tales of the Shire sounds like an interesting take on a Middle-Earth game, with its priority on the mundane rather than the grittier aspects of the world’s history. However, it’s just kind of boring, which is a shame since a cozy Hobbit game sounds like it should’ve been a home run. Maybe the game would have gotten more interesting as I unlocked more areas and befriended more characters, but since my progression has stalled thanks to some bizarre bug, I guess there won’t be a Shire for me anymore.

Tales of the Shire is available on the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC. Reviewed on PC.