Medieval Dynasty review: Shape your destiny by your own hands

Medieval Dynasty is an interesting video game that takes the good parts from various games and creates an experience that lets you build your own story.

Developed by Render Cube and published by Toplitz Productions, Medieval Dynasty’s an open-world sandbox survival game. It follows a protagonist’s journey from becoming a simple runaway to becoming a town caretaker with a family.

There are parts of the game that I enjoy, in fact, a lot of them. However, there are a few parts of the game that are nothing but annoying and confusing, which I expect the developers to address after leaving early access.

Looking for Crossword hints & solutions? Check out latest NYT Mini Crossword Answers, LA Times Crossword Answers, and USA Today Crossword Answers

Shaping my Medieval Dynasty

Medieval Dynasty’s story follows Racamir, who runs away from his town after his place and parents are killed and burned down in a war. Set during olden European times, by the looks of it, he runs to safety in a nearby village, hoping to start a new life.

After a few back and forths with the caretaker of the town, who took over the duties after the player’s uncle died, the game opens for you, the player, to do what they feel like, well, in a way.

Medieval Dynasty (Image via Toplitz Productions)

Medieval Dynasty’s in its heart is a sandbox game, which lets a player decide their route. While there is a storyline that teaches the players the fundamentals of the game, it still wants the players to do what they want by themselves.

Although this was disappointing, the conversations were not voice-acted in general. I half expected the story missions to at least be voice acted. Even if they were not, it made me read through tons of lines of story text, which I do not generally mind, but in some ways, it tends to get annoying.

In terms of environment, the map is lush with vegetation and animals for players to hunt, and the character models are pretty well made. The game ensures that players feel like they are in a second home if they so wish to.

Chop woods, make houses, recruit villagers, and earn knowledge

The main loop of the game is straightforward. You start by building housing for your character to sleep at and a farm for you to cultivate food and manage your health.

Yes, there is full stamina, hunger, and thirst meter in this game, and even though it is not as in-depth in the way Kingdom Come: Deliverance does the same thing, it adds that survival game element to it.

The hunger/thirst can be seen at the bottom left (Image via Toplitz Productions)

Now it is entirely up to the players what they want to do, but the game half-expects you to build an entire town for you and your people to live in. To do that, you’ve got to learn buildings, tools, and many other things that can be done by earning technology points and Dynasty Reputation.

Technology points are earned by doing various bits of jobs, story missions, and in many ways of micromanagement. Dynasty Reputation ensures that people join your community.

Build the town of your choice by your own hands (Image via Toplitz Productions)

Players can recruit people sitting at the bonfire to work in their town in various occupations, and each piece of the building needs to be built by hand, which requires you to gather materials.

There is very minimal hand-holding in this game, and the game expects you to learn from your mistakes, go the extra mile and work hard, adding to the realism. If you are hungry, go and collect wild berries, hunt or fish. Don’t fancy that, then build a farm and grow specialized crops based on the seasons.

At the end of it all, the real goal is to survive with your community, as taxes are as real as they get in real life, and failure to do so will result in your community going bankrupt, which no one wants.

The fun of non-linearity

As mentioned before, the story and side-quests in the game purely exist to progress the storyline and rewards in the form of Dynasty Reputation and Build Technologies. This is required to expand the community you will be building.

Dynasty Reputation ensures how many people can be recruited at a time, and without it, recruitment of the populace for the community will not be possible. Similarly, Build Technology is required to develop and build complex structures, weapons, tools, etc.

But just like a good old RPG, this game allows players on the way they want to play. Almost every portion of the game can be tweaked before starting the game. The game doesn’t feature a traditional difficulty option. Instead, it allows players to tweak a particular aspect of the game, which they want to make easy or hard.

Something that made me even happier was the option to marry and raise my own family in the game. Very few games out there allow this. However, this game does, adding to the overall RPG experience.

Improve your character as he keeps on working hard and growing strong (Image via Toplitz Productions)

One thing that did irk me a bit is the option to not choose the gender of the main character. Granted, it is not a deal-breaker. However, having the option is always great and adds to a different experience.

Kind of sad, given that this is an RPG. Oh, speaking of that, in good old roleplaying game fashion, the game also features a skill tree in six different disciplines, which improves in-character behavior.

Performance

Medieval Dynasty is a beautiful game and truly brings out the beauties of the old European Middle Ages through its vibrant and lush olden worlds, filled with bushes, trees, jungles, rivers, and small towns.

For most of my duration of playing this game, it ran pretty stably on an NVIDIA 3060 in 1080p, high settings, maintaining well within 60fps. When you go to crowded areas with NPCs and animals, it is when the game shows its worth, dipping well below the 40s. Overall, it is a mixed bag for performance and optimization.

In Conclusion

In the end, Medieval Dynasty does what it wants to do and provides a compelling experience for everyone- being a survival RPG, where it is up to the players what they want to do.

Certain portions of the game could’ve been better, and a proper tutorial to teach the ins and outs of the game would undoubtedly be welcome. However, it will surely quench the leftover interest in the old European Middle Ages, which Kingdom Come: Deliverance left years ago.