1 
0 Medieval Dynasty is a survival strategy builder by the Polish developers Render Cube. First released on the PC in September 2020, finally arrived on current-gen consoles last year. After a lengthy wait, it has now been released for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
The middle ages have never looked so good
I am never really sure about the survival RPG genre, I think this is in part to not having enough time to get heavily into them. I love the concept and always plan to spend time, and inevitably restart due to time away. However, everything that I had seen about Medieval Dynasty had me intrigued would this be the game to break that cycle for me? Read on and find out how I got on playing on the PlayStation 5.
Gameplay
Medieval Dynasty casts you in the role of Racimir, a young man fleeing war and determined to take control of his fate. Your journey will begin when you are lonely, inexperienced, and poor. With time, you will demonstrate many talents, become a leader of your community, and create a prosperous dynasty for generations to come. As you hunt for food, gather resources, and craft equipment, build a house, establish a thriving village, and start a family, you’ll experience many unique gameplay experiences across genres. Building your own legacy is challenging because of winters that are tough and unpredictable events that occur.
A nice feature is the ability to play the game in either first or third-person. The third-person perspective was the best choice for me since it was easy to see what was going on around me.
A wooden axe will be your first craftable item, allowing you to cut down trees and make everything you need to start building. I found a lovely area when searching for a space for my village. This area had a waterfall and someone left a bronze pick-axe behind. Remember you are starting your own village and not expanding the first one you come to. Try to find a place where you can find what you need and still be within 1200 meters of Gostovia. In Gostovia, you will begin the stories that are essential to progressing in the game.
One aspect that I found frustrating was being able to simply walk through deep lakes as if they were a forest. Despite the fact that there is some resistance that slows you down, there is no swimming and there are no changes to the character animations. A small thing, but it still bugged me as it felt like a basic implementation. The slow progression really affects the enjoyment, this is partly due to the price of the fast travel system.
Activities
Hunting animals, farming crops or mining for rare materials. These are a few of the ways you can make money and all have their own building type to go with it. For example, the early hunting lodge allows you to dry meat. These are simple ways to increase the value of goods, dried meat sells for more than meat on its own and it is the same with roasted meat. It is here where you need to watch your coin as it’s very simple to make a mistake and miss out on easy money.
Bandits are going to make life awkward as you navigate between villages so ensure you have items to defend yourself. The cost of getting a ride to another town is crazy-expensive especially early on. Some abandoned areas may give you some coin but even the basic round trip would cost 700. This has a huge impact on the progression which is to continue stories you are in for a slow walk across half the map.
Graphics & Audio
The graphics are amazing, Medieval Dynasty really gives you that atmospheric feel. Light beams through the trees as you walk through a forest. Currently, I would go as far as to say Medieval Dynasty is the best graphics for its genre on the PlayStation 5. Characters can become dirty so it’s worth taking a dip in the river to keep fresh and clean.
The different seasons produce some of the best settings and show the contrasting environments. I especially loved winter, it looks so picturesque and with a title like this, it makes a massive difference. I mentioned the earlier problem with the lack of swimming character animation, it really should have been implemented as it feels somewhat lazy from the developers to not have this included. You can’t even blame the fact this is “Medieval times” as swimming has been around a lot longer. The PlayStation 5 version has now been updated so that it will run at 60 fps something it lacked when originally released.
The audio is great, roughly 25 tracks make up the game, and when you mix this with the hustle and bustle of day-to-day life. The weather is great, especially the rain storms provide some really nice audio.
Longevity
Medieval Dynasty is a game that you can easily spend hours playing. Take those first steps towards creating your own village filled with unique characters by building your first house. Get married, and have a child that will be your heir. Realistically you are looking at a minimum of 35 hours for most gamers which will be a basic game completion, all the way up to over 160 hours for full completion.
Final Thoughts
Overall Medieval Dynasty is a great title that has a few flaws that stop it from being fantastic. The lack of excitement at times and the slow progression will likely put off some gamers. If you can get past that then you are in for a much better time. As you go forward you do unlock much better items and buildings so stick with it.
Medieval Dynasty is awarded the Thumb Culture Silver Award
Disclaimer: A code was received in order to write this review.
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