(AfroGamers.com) Here’s a first for me on AfroGamers as it’s a modern game! We mainly look at retro stuff but I’m a big survival game fan and there wasn’t an abundance of those in the 80 and 90s. Medieval Dynasty was dropped late last year and it caught my eye but I just didn’t have the time to get around to it.
Over the Christmas holiday, I finally got a chance to sit down with the game and I must say: I’m impressed. This is pretty damn fun game that will test your management skills. Actually, I’d say that management makes up a little more than half of the game. Let’s get into Medieval Dynasty.
Storyline Progression
Let’s get the lighter lifting out of the way first. There is some story in MD where early on, it’s all about meeting your uncle’s former friends. After war breaks out in the land, the main character—Racimir—flee and attempt to head to the village that his uncle was the castellan or village chief over.
Once there, he finds that his uncle died a few years earlier. He was a part of a group with different names depending on the member you ask and his eldest friend takes over his position as castellan.
He offers Racimir the right to establish a village in the valley and that’s the foundation of the gameplay. I’m still going through the main story but I’m finding the side quests, hunting, and foresting more interesting.
Gameplay
Now this is where Medieval Dynasty shines. Developer Render Cube really delivered the goods here as it’s a stripped down survival game as far as it’s very realistic.
While I love zombie survival and some of the pioneering games of the genre, MD is close to Oregon Trail levels of pure.
Your main enemies are hunger and thirst but during hunting it’s possible to run into aggressive animals like wolves, bears, boars, and bison.
Rabbits, moose, and deer are docile and tend to run while you never really know with badgers and foxes. They might run or they might want the smoke. Something I’ve yet to encounter but are definitely in the game are the bandits.
Outside of hunting and combat but related, you’re able to craft all kinds of medieval period items and dishes. To craft the items, you’ll need to do a ton of resource gathering mainly in the form of tree clearing and gathering but you’re also able to mine.
From there, you’ll need to build your homestead but you’re also dealing with a technology system. This tech system is basically your character’s familiarity with creating new things and can be raised by doing associated activities.
For instance, crafting items and making food raises production and cooking respectively. Plowing fields and planting crops raises farming. All activities give some sort experience and that plays into skill building and unlocking technologies.
Quick Hints
The earlier you’re able to unlock different technologies as early as possible. I’d recommend doing it before the story brings it up since the main story’s quests might not keep up your play style.
You might want to focus on farming but the quest line doesn’t ask for you to farm much for a while. An important piece for your village will be the well.
You’ll want that as soon as possible but you can float on buckets of water and water skins if you have one or two other villagers. In tandem with roughly any upgrade to houses, you going to need the woodshop because eventually planks will be necessary.
Then again, you can always ask villagers in different settlements about where to find certain resources or materials. Mind you, the villages where you want the really primo materials are always far out of the way. Just know most of the stuff sold by stores cost an arm and a leg.
When starting a new game, you’re able to change a bunch of the game world’s settings. So, you can play it straight up or make it so that more XP is awarded for different activities, remove bandits, or make crafting faster.
On this note, I’ll recommend changing the length of a season. The default is a little too fast. I currently have a game on fifteen days equals a season and it’s a bit of a crawl. I’d say ten days is probably the sweet spot in this regard.
Is Medieval Dynasty Recommended?
The ultimate goal is to build a dynasty and a settlement that is the envy of your neighboring villages and settlements. It’s a fun mix of survival and small-scale city building. However, it can be a bit on the grindy side of things. There’s no end to having cut down trees, find straw, travel to villages that are ridiculously far, and accidentally running into dangerous animals while taking a straight shot from a village to your settlement.
It’s extremely repetitious and the winter is probably the season that will slow everything down. If you’re not up for a grind, Medieval Dynasty might not be for you but I definitely find it to be an extremely fun game. Far from the most exciting throughout but you will get a lot of time out of MD.
Staff Writer; M. Swift
This talented writer is also a podcast host, and comic book fan who loves all things old school. One may also find him on Twitter at; metalswift.