A fairly interesting game that I uh...enjoyed. And stuff.
YOU!!! (dun dun dun!!!)
Well...uh...when you begin the game, you're employed as Elmira the pig farmer's lowly little pig herder (chances are, if you ever played any MySims game, you'd hate her...very unpopular character o.o). After staring at Elmira's ugly face for a few minutes while following her commands about learning how to control the game's camera and herding a couple o' pigs in the beginning, Buddy the Royal Messenger (who used to be a bellhop in the original MySims) comes runnin' in and screamin' to you about the Royal Wandolier Contest that King Roland is holding, and he APPARENTLY wants you to enter. And also, Lyndsay (new character) the very adventurous...adventurer comes in and also agrees with Buddy, insisting you'd make the best Royal flippin' Wandolier evarrr. You agree, and enter the contest after several tasks.
The contest acts as some kinda tutorial, and you can't lose it. Seriously. Even if you tried. The other contestants (Princess Butter the spoiled princess [who I'm betting you'd immediately hate as well once you get this game] and Barney the harbormaster) do nothin' at all. They just stand around like they didn't even enter the contest, just watchin' you finish this "contest" all by yourself. And Butter keeps screechin' about how she's gonna win...which you will probably facepalm at.
Once the contest finishes, of course, you are declared the new Royal Wandolier, as everyone else was just sittin' on their buttocks, not even tryin' to be the Wandolier. Barney was apparently just competin' for the second place prize (the toaster oven). And Butter (pain in the butt-er!) apparently thought smellin' roses and complaining about the lack of unicorns on the island was gonna win her Royal Wandolier status.
When you become Royal Wandolier, your task is basically to rebuild the kingdom. Yeah. If you're familiar with the original MySims, you probably know about the building aspect of that game, where all you do is build furniture for other blocky chibi peoples that like to slave you around alot. This game, the creativity aspect of the game went pretty zetta down, which many people didn't like. Um...I didn't really care (I was kinda bored buildin' furniture anywayz), but that might kinda suck for some people, I guess. The previously mentioned Lyndsay and Buddy will stalk you around in the game like two sidekicks. I personally didn't like 'em followin' me around, even though they both are fairly entertaining characters (kinda). It was very annoying. For example, if I jump onto a bed and sleep on it, they'd just run into the bedroom, stand there, and stare at me, waiting for me to move somewhere else (or maybe Lyndsay just starts randomly yellin' angrily some random Simlish at Buddy for no reason, your partners or other Sims will randomly interact with each other at times).
Instead of sittin' in your workshop putting a pile of blocks to make some wood look like a sink or a bathtub and then painting them with different essences and materials such as metal to make them look like something other than wood, you will instead be carrying around a Wand. "Oh, a flippin' stupid magical Wand, yeah, Blanky, interesting," you are probably thinking now. :O Or "No, I didn't think dat lol!!!". But instead of the game going through some loading screen and going through some building mode, your Sim takes out their Wand and you directly build through the current gameplay screen. Like, you can still see all the other Sims screaming "LEBORGLE" and "SU'LL SU'LL" to each other or whatever while you are building, as well as yourself holding up a Wand. You have to make your Sim move around while building. Like, for example, if you wanted to place a pretty window behind King Roland's castle, you'd have to make your Sim move behind the castle, turn the camera around, take a very pretty window from the Wandolier catalog, and then place it there. And then if you wanted to make the door, you'd have to run all the way back to the front of the castle, adjust back the camera, take a door from the Wandolier catalog, and paste it on the castle. I've heard from previous reviews that people found this a problem, but I personally did not really hate it or anythin'. ='
Oh yes, unlike the previous game, the furniture is completely premade. The only adjustment you can make to them is perhaps painting them with the paint mode in your Wand. For example, you can change the color of a wall inside a building, or change the color of the top of a counter. Also, your Wand is empty of powers and you can't build that much kinda furniture in the beginning of the game. But as you progress, you collect Scrolls, recipes that will unlock new powers for your wand. Lyndsay holds a magical bag that if the right amount of an essence goes in it, a new power will be given to the Wand.
Um...now what the flip are essences?! Well, they are objects/things that are found all around the MySims world. You'd be familiar with them (very familiar with them) if you've played the original MySims. For the people who are NOT familiar with essences, well...they is like stuff you collect: fish, flowers, fruits, several random objects, and maybe even living things that aren't fish. Essences sometimes appeared in the most inappropriate places, really. :O I mean, where else other than MySims could you find kitties growing on trees, eh? Or perhaps, digging up some elephants...? MySims Kingdom has essences placed in more appropriate areas...um...well...not really...I guess you can still dig up Bacon...and pick Musical Notes from trees...
But well, anywayz, the Scrolls tell of how much of a certain essence needs to like, go in the magical bag to get a new power for your Wand (and therefore, get new stuff to build). For examples, the Temple Scroll will require to fish for 5 Gold Arowana, get 60 Organic essences, and mine for 20 Silver essences. Once being able to collect all these essences, the game will alert you, and you go talk to Lyndsay to exchange these essences for a new power for your Wand. The Temple Scroll allows you to create a few plants with your Wand, as well as Italian columns and an Arbor, as well as a Unicorn Statue. There are Scrolls needed to progress through the game, and a couple of Scrolls that you don't really need to complete, but it will earn you some new powarz for ur Wand.
Many people think the process of collecting essences was very, very tedious in the previous game. I'm so very sorry to tell you gaiz, but I guess it's pretty much no different in this game. Collecting essences involve activities such as digging, harvesting essences (like kitties! AWWW) from trees, fishing, and new to the MySims series: MINING!!! WOW!!! (No I am not really bein' sarcastic here, if that's what you're perceiving it as. *shifty eyes* Just um...I dunno.) You mine by basically doing some kinda hot-cold kinda minigame. There'll be circular color signals and beeps showin' how close/far you are from the spot where you'll be minin' as you hit the walls for treasure. When it's blue and slow beepin', you don't has to be a genius to know dat means you're very far. Keep movin'. As you get closer, the beeps start getting rapid, and the color signals begin to turn red. Once you've found the treasure, you start hittin' the wall as fast as you could to get as much essences as possible. Prospecting/digging is kinda the same, only you're walking around with something that looks like a metal detector, and you're not hittin' walls, yo. Shaking trees is like holding the tree you want to shake with the B button, and then shaking your Wiimote back and forth. As for fishing, um...I don't wanna go drone on, so just find out yourself and play da game.
Like I said before, people find that kinda thing tedious. Most of the time, I just went with the flow, but I must admit it is kinda tedious. Like, OMG!!!!!!!111 I has to pick 40 Apples from the trees to complete dat Scroll?! D: Yeah.
Um...now onto the story. The dialogue of the characters is very bizarre and in my opinion, very humorous. The characters are all very so cute and whatever, and all look very different and have pretty diverse personalities. My favorite character is Leaf (I call him Leafman), who I am a very, very big (and zetta) fan of (he is the guy in my GameSpot avatar). He looks kinda like Link...but uh...I dunno...he is an Elf rockstar. If you don't have the game, get it and meet this zetta awesome Elfman. NAO. However, I should stop talkin' before I start dronin' about my obsession with Leafman. Basically, in the beginning of the review, I pretty much explained the main idea of the story here.
King Roland's kingdom is split into several islands. At first, you can only visit a few islands. But as the game progresses, you'll gain new maps to new islands. Eventually, you'll be able to visit all of 'em. Each island has its own story. For example, on Cowboy Junction, a thief is on the flippin' loose. On Renée's Nature Preserve, you'll be helping to build well...a nature preserve. =' On the Forest of the Elves (where the awesome Leafman is), the Balance of Nature has been...UNBALANCED! Uh oh! Spaghettio! Yeah. You'll be helpin' all the residents of the islands, which generally have about 1-7 Sims on each of 'em. All the islands have a different theme, like Spookane being dark and dreary, and Cutopia being cute. Each island's story is interestin', and the humorous dialogue makes it um...coolio! Though, don't expect such a deep story with all those excitin' plot twists that everyone loves. Like you know, The World Ends With You. o.o
The characters in the game all speak a language called Simlish, if you didn't know, like a traditional The Sims game (although, other than the plumbob and the Simlish, both games share nothing in common). Simlish is a gibberish language. These Sims always shout out Simlish while they talk. :O Sometimes there is occasional English, like "yes", but it can be often associated with Simlish. ("WIBSY YES!!!") It is fun to remember the language and it's kinda funny when they go screechin' some Simlish sometimes. Some people think it's annoying, or hate it for some reason. I dunno. =' I read a review on Amazon, and a mom was thinkin' the game wasn't in English or sumthin'. *shifty eyes* She thought she got a false copy from Asia or sumthin'. I dunno. They have actual voice actors speak Simlish for this game (one of them bein' Scott Menville, the guy who voiced Robin, the ugly boy wonder who is Batman's sidekick). Must be a fun job to speak gibberish and get money. :O
Um...I guess I should've mentioned it earlier, but you can, of course, customize the appearance of your Sim as well. And you can select even your own voice, so your Sim can join in the gibberish-speakin' fun. You start out with a few hobo outfits, but you'll unlock more as you help the Sims in the game. You can actually choose the gender of your Sim in the game, unlike in MySims where your gender is only determined by the clothes and appearance you give your Sim (so you could crossdress all the time in dat game). Unfortunately for all those crossdressers, exclusive outfits are now made for each gender in the ALL NEW...MYSIMS KINGDOM! Bummer, eh? Teh female outfits were pretty ugly. =/ All of them were either revealing (even though the bodies of female Sims don't seem to differ from da males), a dress, or just zetta ugly.
You progress through the game by gaining King Points, which represents King Roland's favor. A bar on the top left corner of the screen has some kinda bar representing how much points you have. Each time you garner a certain amount of points, the King Points bar level goes up. It's kinda like Star Levels from the original MySims, and like the Star Levels, level 5 is the max. You can add to this bar by completing tasks for the Sims of the kingdom and making them happy. When reaching a new King Point level, you gain new clothes, hairstyles, Scrolls, and usually maps to new islands. At the final King Point level, you get a special surprise. Oooh.
The game took me around 20 hours to beat. :O Well, no, I didn't play the game 20 hours straight, yo, the game records the amount of hours you play it. However, I found that it can take up to only 3-10 hours if you know what to do, and you skip all the cutscenes (I dunno why you would want to do dis unless you were doin' a speedrun or sumthin'). I personally like the game alot, but to those srsly srs hardcore gamers, I guess it would look purty stupid, eh? Um, I dunno. Some people like it, some think it sucks, some people like chestnuts. Anywayz, I dunno. You gotta see it for yourself to know whether you like it or not. Rent it if you're sooo skeptical, gosh. p.p
As you can tell, I am a huge fan of MySims...or maybe you couldn't tell. But uh...I's helpin' out as an admin on MySims Wiki (search it up on Google :O). Sooo, I think MySims Kingdom is awesome. :O Anywayz, just flippin' make up your mind. ='