Going Medieval Review Summary

Beautiful realistic graphics and addictive castle-building fun are marred by bugs, dumb AI, poor pathfinding, and bad optimization.

Beautiful and realistic graphics: Players frequently praise the game's visuals, noting well-made and improved graphics that contribute to a beautiful and realistic experience.

Highly addictive and fun gameplay: Many reviewers find the game extremely fun and addictive, with engaging mechanics that keep them entertained over long sessions.

Freedom to build castles: Reviewers love the extensive building freedom, especially the ability to construct castles and villages according to their own designs.

Strong medieval setting and building: The game provides a well-made medieval village simulator with a grounded historical setting that players find delightful to build in.

Comparisons to RimWorld: Frequent comparisons to RimWorld highlight familiar mechanics, improved graphics, and a 3D medieval-like experience with high potential.

Game Plagued By Bugs: Numerous reviews mention persistent bugs, even after full release, making the game feel unfinished and sometimes unplayable. Bugs range from minor annoyances to game-breaking issues.

AI Is Dumb: Both settler and enemy AI exhibit poor decision-making, such as inefficient building, ignoring orders, and getting stuck. This reduces game challenge and increases micromanagement.

Settler Pathfinding Is Poor: Multiple clusters report that settler pathfinding is problematic, with settlers taking inefficient routes, getting stuck, and ignoring shorter paths. This leads to micromanagement and frustration.

Little Content And Events: Players find the game lacking in content, with a small tech tree and few world events. This makes the game feel shallow and repetitive.

Job Priorities Ignored: Job priority settings are often ignored by settlers, who choose tasks arbitrarily or based on proximity. This leads to inefficiency and unmet needs.

Colony Simulation with Survival Elements: It is a colony sim that blends city building with survival mechanics such as resource gathering and defense. Players must manage settlers and ensure their survival against threats.

Medieval RimWorld-Style Colony Sim: Players consistently describe the game as a 3D medieval version of RimWorld, emphasizing colony management and survival. This core identity combines settlement building, pawn management, and medieval theme.

Vertical and Multi-Level Building: Building is not limited to a single plane; players can construct multi-story structures and build at different heights. This verticality adds depth to base design and castle construction.

Village Building and Management: The game focuses on constructing and managing a medieval village, including buildings, farms, and resource production. Players build settlements and expand them over time.

Castle Construction and Defense: A core aspect is building castles and fortifications to defend against raids and sieges. Players can construct castles of different sizes and design defenses.

Poor optimization and performance issues: Players consistently report poor optimization, high GPU/CPU usage, stuttering, and low FPS even on high-end hardware. Performance often degrades over time or with larger colonies.

Frequent crashes make game unplayable: Many players experience frequent crashes, sometimes multiple times per hour, and some crashes occur even with stable memory usage. This severely impacts playability and can kick players back to the desktop.

High system requirements and resource strain: The game demands high system resources, causing computers to become loud, hot, and heavily loaded. Some users report performance drops even with few entities.

Some players report smooth performance: A few players report that the game runs well, stably, and smoothly on high-end systems or with no issues. Some even achieve around 40fps on capable hardware.

Performance degrades in late game: As the game progresses and colonies grow, performance drops strongly, leading to laggy and unresponsive gameplay, sometimes like a slideshow.

Recommended for Colony Sim Fans: Many reviewers recommend the game for players who enjoy colony simulations and building games. They highlight its appeal to those who like managing and building settlements.

Appeals to RimWorld Fans: Several reviewers compare the game favorably to RimWorld, recommending it for fans of that game. They mention improved graphics and quality of life features.

Generally Worth Playing: Many users find the game worth the time and recommend it overall. They suggest it is a good experience and worth playing.

Good Value for Money: Reviewers often mention the game is worth the price, especially at $30 or during sales. They consider it a good investment.

Highly Recommended Overall: Numerous reviewers highly recommend the game without reservations. They express strong positive opinions and encourage others to play.

Community fair range: $15.00 - $25.00.

Game completion: 17.0h.

Session length: 3.6h.

Endgame: 50.0h.

Going Medieval is often addictive from the start, with players praising building and early management, but many report that enjoyment fades in the mid-to-late game as content becomes repetitive and performance issues appear.

Friction: Steep learning curve for colony sim newcomers; Inadequate tutorial and cluttered interface; Early resource shortages can lock progress; Waiting for research in the early game; Performance issues and crashes; Tedious colony management, such as moving workbenches or lacking task queues.

Unlock drivers: Understanding job management mechanics; Adjusting after initial difficulty; Trial and error across failed colonies; Using the tutorial for basic systems; Prior RimWorld experience; Playing with micro-management in peace mode.

Chill Medieval Castle Architect: Slow-paced sandbox building with a focus on vertical castle construction, decoration, and aesthetic design, avoiding combat or survival stress. Motivation: Creative expression and relaxation through building and decorating a medieval settlement without pressure. Stance: buy.

Rimworld Veteran Seeking Depth: System optimization, colony management, comparing mechanics to genre classics, and expecting robust AI, building options, and mod support. Motivation: Finding a colony sim that matches the depth and complexity of Rimworld or Dwarf Fortress. Stance: sale.

Hardcore Survivalist / Difficulty Tuner: Tuning difficulty, managing food spoilage, defending against raids, and attempting self-imposed challenges like lone wolf starts. Motivation: Overcoming survival challenges and customizing difficulty for a tense, high-stakes colony experience. Stance: buy.

Most cohorts report playable performance, but the 12-15GB VRAM and low-VRAM/16-31GB RAM cohorts show more mixed optimization and stability reports.

Windows 8-11GB VRAM: positive. Most users report smooth performance and good stability, though a few mention crashes or high GPU load.

Windows 12-15GB VRAM: mixed. Reports are split: some users still recommend it, but others report 100% GPU load, poor optimization, stutter, and visual or pathfinding bugs.

Windows <8GB VRAM / <16GB RAM: positive. All sampled users recommend it despite low-end hardware, but several report low FPS, overheating, or performance drops in larger villages.

Steam Deck: The filtered reviews show that the Steam Deck/Linux experience is hampered mainly by stability and support issues, not by small text, external launchers, or battery drain. Users report many crashes on Linux, repeated main-menu crashes, post-EA graphical and FPS regressions, and a perceived lack of official Linux support. A few users report that the game works perfectly on Steam Deck and has intuitive controls, but the repeated Linux crashes trigger the Broken category. Final friction score: 75.

Linux and Proton: Linux users report significant compatibility issues, including frequent crashes (especially in the main menu), graphical glitches, and FPS drops. Some users note that older EA versions worked fine on Linux, indicating a regression. While at least one user can reach matches and find them stable, the overall Linux support is rough due to launch reliability and stability problems. No Proton version switching or specific tweaks are mentioned, pointing to native Linux build issues.

Monetization: The reviews contain no direct evidence that this game sells in-game purchases, paid currency, loot boxes, gacha, battle passes, or any real-money shop. The 'coins' and 'slaver' references describe in-game trading mechanics, not real-money transactions. The remaining feedback concerns base-price value judgments, comparisons to RimWorld and its DLC, and speculative or desired future DLC. Under the evidence threshold and override rules, none of this qualifies as predatory monetization.

External guides: The dominant complaint across the filtered reviews is insufficient and unreliable reference data: the in-game encyclopedia lacks relevant entries, tooltips omit key details such as animal diets, and the external wiki stops being helpful mid-game. Users describe mechanics that are hard to figure out, an unfriendly tutorial, and being left to discover everything themselves, which matches the Tier 3 (Student) instructional-data barrier. Positive notes on the core loop and intuitive interface confirm the core issue is learning systems and finding content, not resource grinding, inventory valuation, or navigation/bug fixes.

Heavily inspired by Rimworld: Many reviewers note that the game draws heavy inspiration from Rimworld, often describing it as a medieval or 3D take on the colony sim. The developers have acknowledged Rimworld as a major influence, and players frequently compare the two.

Active developer updates and content: Reviewers consistently praise the developers for regularly updating the game with new content, improvements, and patches. Many highlight that the game is constantly being developed and that the team is responsive and interested in expanding the game.

3D perspective with Z-levels: The game adds a 3D perspective and Z-levels to the colony sim formula, which is both praised for enabling complex buildings and criticized for not always improving fun or playability.

Extended Early Access period: The game spent a long time in Early Access, with some players having owned it since the beginning. It has since reached full release, but the lengthy development period is frequently mentioned.

Compared unfavorably to Rimworld: Some reviewers feel the game falls short of Rimworld, citing worse gameplay, lack of depth, or poor copying of mechanics. They often state there is no good reason to play this over Rimworld.