If I can be a King, then I'm probably sold on it. 

The review made it look pretty interesting for me. I always ALMOST liked the Sims games, but they never quite appealed to me. It's risk, but this might just be something I like. Plus I'm a sucker for unlockable characters, especially if using them is something you can do as part of the main story and not just when you finish the game.

To me, when I read, "The Adventures are done off screen," in other words they just occur behind the scenes, that blew the RPG any thing of it.  I can just imagine all the fighting ending up being a limp, overcooked noodle like what World Adventures brought.  I was very disappointed in the sparring.  The same goes with just simple things as Ghost busting in Ambitions.  Doing that career felt more like paperwork than any thing else.  And Spore, I bought it from Impulse when it went on sale, what a mistake.  I couldn't really play past creature, and even that started to really annoy me.  Socializing when you just climbed out of the tide pool?  And the further you advanced in Spore, the more moronic and simplified gameplay became.  If I wanted some basic mindless arcade, they could at least have left us in the tide pool.  That at least felt like an old arcade game.  Shoot, I can remember back when playing a game that was similar on the Mac.

In the game, you controled things like surface and cloud albedo, tectonic activity, etc.  You created conditions and spawned life.  It felt much more intriguing than the current crop.  Seems like every thing EA touches has the ingenuity and thought sucked out of it.  Not that Blizzard does much better, but at least they have cheesie, entertaining stories.  I tend to like cheese. 

Even in Medieval's case, the intro-video was hilarious, but it did nothing to sell the game or give even a hint of what was in it.  It seems to me, they've kept it so secret because I have the feeling the game play isn't up to par.  They hope to sucker in some initial purchases from outside their normal fan base.

- create a sim similar to Sims
- what you can do with this sim (monarch)
=> sit on a throne and hold court (Oh skippy)
==> pushing bills into law and issuing edicts doesn't sound all that fun the way it's described

=> furnish the various buildings, but not actually build or design any of them
=> Play dress up
=> do the basic tasks/chores of the unlocked characters, ala Sims
==> I suspsect they don't have as many needs, chores, due to controlling multiple Sims and the need to cut down on micromanagement

=> adventure off screen, akin to jobs, before ambitions, to unlock things - this really burns it.

Note nothing on combat, exploring or crafting.  All that was covered was rudimentary socializing and doing a job according to a characters, "caste" which I don't like either.  I mean, where is the RPG in here?  Did I miss some thing?

There are some videos and other information, just to check out.

http://www.ea.com/the-sims-medieval

I didn't realize this was coming out this month, I thought I read it wasn't until Summer.  

Same here. I have often wondered what medieval people would think of our modern civilization. I bet they would be very impressed with our social and technical advances, but would be rather appalled by what they would perceive as our total lack of physical activity. I think part of the appeal has to do with the idea of actually doing physical stuff on a day to day basis, although as a 5'7" wimp I would probably not have a great time unless I was born to royalty - ha! fat chance.

Plus when you account for the fact that our bodies have not been ravaged by disease and improperly treated injuries, many of us are probably in far better physical shape then many of the people back then were.

Ooops! Double post.

I've played way more of Sims 3 than I care to admit to any human beings iRL.  You know, you guys are Special.

I'm also pretty damn bored of it now, so just uninstalled it.  I can definately see buying this in short order, but I'm waiting to see if it shows up on other download services before buying.  No point in preordering if they're just gonna turn around and paste it elsewhere afterwards.

lol my wife's drooling over the game and gets rabid any time I mention it. I already have to get it for her for her birthday next month. It looks kinda fun for what it is I think, but then again, I'm not really hard core into the sims either. I know the intro video has Patrick Stewart doing the voice, so that makes it full of Win if you ask me..lol.

That isn't actually the end of Fable 3 though.  That's like the middle.

That game was wack though and I'm done with Molyneux.

 My better half loves it as well, but I had a harder time getting into it. It's not that it's bad, it's quirky and pretty much exactly what I expected from my limited runs with the other Sims games. I don't like how almost everything is done off-screen (but I realize that that's how The Sims works), or that you couldn't design your own buildings, or that I had to reset everything after I had depleted my quest points and finished my Ambition. Worst of all, on the second Ambition, I restart with nothing. Yet, the buildings, layout, pathing, minerals, trees, flowers, quests, literally everything else is exactly the same as the first. I would've enjoyed different quests, or at least different locales. It felt more like I had deleted all of my saves right before the final boss and restarted, than completed phase 1 of the game.

 My lovely lady didn't mind though. She doesn't like it as much as the diner-dash games, but still likes it. She isn't bitter toward most of the industry like me though, so maybe that's the problem.

As a side note, her APM in Diner Dash would probably outrank most Grandmaster League SC2 players. It's ridiculous.

This and then this:

Means it is a dead-dog, boring game for me.  Looks like I was correct in not getting it for me, and feels typical of the sims series.