City Tales - Medieval Era Review Summary

Last updated: 2026-01-31
  • Beautiful visuals and relaxing, enjoyable gameplay
  • Unique city-building mechanics and engaging companion system
  • Complex resource and district-based city building
  • Performance and technical issues reported frequently
  • Lack of depth, variety, and repetitive gameplay
  • Underdeveloped story, characters, and high price
City Tales - Medieval Era header

Emotions

What players like:

Common complaints:

Gameplay feedback:

Performance notes:

Recommendations:

Other player notes:

Review evidence

Why players say this

What players like

Beautiful visuals and art style: The game features vibrant and charming visuals with a beautiful art style that is visually appealing. The graphics are colorful and detailed, contributing to an immersive atmosphere.

Relaxing and enjoyable gameplay: The game offers a relaxing and non-stressful city-building experience with a calm pace and visually pleasing aesthetics. Players appreciate the lack of pressure and the enjoyable progression system.

Unique city-building mechanics: The game introduces unique city-building mechanics, such as the district system and organic street formation. These mechanics add depth and strategic elements to the gameplay.

Engaging companion system: The companion system offers engaging character interactions and storylines, adding an RPG element to the city-building genre. Companions help with micro-managing and provide unique stories.

High-quality localization: The game features high-quality localization in multiple languages, including German, Ukrainian, and French. This makes the game accessible to a wider audience.

Common complaints

Performance and technical issues: The game suffers from significant performance problems, including stuttering, crashes, and severe lag, especially as the city population grows. These issues make the game difficult to enjoy and sometimes borderline unplayable.

Lack of depth and variety: The game lacks depth in mechanics and variety in gameplay. Many players find the game repetitive and too easy, with limited challenges and strategic elements. The lack of variety in housing, military elements, and other features contributes to this issue.

Repetitive and linear gameplay: The gameplay is often described as repetitive and too linear. Players find that once they understand the mechanics, there is not much else to do, leading to a lack of replay value.

Underdeveloped story and characters: The game's story and character development are underdeveloped. Many character stories and quest descriptions are vague or incomplete, detracting from the overall experience.

Resource and production management: Resource gathering and production management are scattered and poorly explained. Players struggle to find resources and understand consumption, leading to frustration and confusion.

Gameplay and performance

Complex resource and production chains: The game features a deep and complex system of resource management and production chains. Players need to manage various resources and ensure that production chains are efficiently set up to progress in the game.

District-based city building: The game introduces a unique district-based city building mechanic. Players can create and manage districts, each with its own set of buildings and resources, adding a layer of strategic planning and organization.

Companion system with RPG elements: The game includes a companion system where characters can be trained and moved between buildings to improve production. This adds RPG elements to the city-building genre, allowing for character progression and management.

Relaxing and casual gameplay: The game offers a relaxing and casual gameplay experience, making it accessible to a wide range of players. The pace is slow, and there are no urgent or stressful mechanics like fires or wars.

Story-driven quests and missions: The game features an extensive story with quests and missions that drive the gameplay. These quests are integrated with the city-building mechanics, providing a narrative context for the player's actions.

Graphical and display issues: There are several graphical issues reported, including image distortion on large screens and problems with HDMI connections shutting down. Lowering graphic quality can sometimes resolve performance issues.

Positive performance on specific platforms: The game runs well on certain platforms such as Arch-based Linux and Steam Deck, with reports of smooth and bug-free performance.

Camera and control issues: Some players have reported issues with camera jumps and control configurations, although these are less frequently mentioned.

Vsync-related performance drops: Disabling Vsync can lead to significant FPS drops, affecting the game's performance.

Recommendations

Mixed recommendations for purchase: Players have varying opinions on whether the game is worth purchasing at its current state. Some highly recommend it for its unique concept and relaxing gameplay, while others advise waiting for more updates or improvements.

Suitable for relaxed gameplay: The game is often recommended for players seeking a gentle, relaxed, and strategically deep experience. It is particularly suited for those who enjoy slow-paced games and cooperative play.

Potential seen in future updates: Many players acknowledge the game's potential and are looking forward to future updates and developments. They believe that the game could become more exciting and improved with additional patches and features.

Suggestions for gameplay improvements: Players have suggested adding a sandbox mode with all features unlocked for creative freedom and implementing a more flexible system for unlocking objectives and buildings to increase gameplay value and scope.

Support for developers: Some players recommend the game to support small developers and appreciate the efforts of the creators.

Platform notes

Steam Deck: The game runs well on the Steam Deck and Linux, indicating good performance and compatibility. However, some users find the gameplay too easy and lacking in excitement due to the absence of difficulty settings. The controls are generally straightforward, but the district mechanics add a layer of complexity that requires strategic thinking.

Other review notes

Game in early access: The game is currently in an early access phase, which means it is still under development and not yet fully released.

More buildings and decorations needed: Players are requesting additional buildings and decorations to enhance the game's environment and customization options.