Game: Medieval Legacy
Genre: Strategy, RPG, Adventure, Simulation
System: Steam (Windows)
Developers | Publishers: NineToPlay
Controller Support: No
Price: US $14.99 | UK £13,99 | EU € 14,99
Release Date: April 18th, 2025
A review code was provided, many thanks to NineForPlay.
The civilization simulator has tons of variants and subtypes, with one of the most popular varieties currently being the legacy simulator. “Legacy” is a loose term; they tend to be classified as either a strategy with role-playing elements or colony sims. Crusader Kings is the grandest example of this type of game (with Dwarf Fortress coming in close for the truly unhinged, like me), and The Elder Scrolls: Castles is probably the most casual example. You’re controlling lineages down the years, dealing with the consequences and the little victories, until their era ends for reasons fair or foul.
The best ones are big games, simulating not just your family but the politics and socioeconomics surrounding them, which may include lore and marriages and commerce tracking and — hey, come back! Anyway, the big games try to balance Excel-sheet gameplay with fancy graphics. A few, like the classic King of Dragon Pass, create a compelling game with minimal art. Balancing these while still making an intricate sim is difficult work. Enter Medieval Legacy: a game with an unassuming name, and a deep pit of stats under the hood. Is it fun? Let’s find out. I will tell you up front. I would not classify this as a cozy game, unless you’re like me and think Dwarf Fortress is relaxing.
Settling Your Medieval Legacy
Whatever you do in this life, do not skip the tutorials for strategy sims. Medieval Legacy has a decent one that’ll cover the most important detail you need to know: check every menu and learn what they hold. The information you need to select your next move is somewhere inside them.
As you actually start a game (with tutorial enabled!!) on the normal/medium mode, you’ll begin with a lonely farmer boy, who’ll be tutored by the head of one of the neighboring families. All the granular details will be randomly generated, except in the tutorial state, which will give you a few consistent extra boosts to help you learn the game. Your neighbor will walk you through your first planting, how to get your lad a lady at the local tavern, what to do when tragedy (a simple illness, for training purposes) strikes, and how to move things from inventory menus to your family so they can actually wear or use them.
It won’t take long before you’re on your own, staring at the minimal number of things it feels like you can do and the lurking Next Month button. Each month, new events are set in motion that could grant you a boon or set your dinky farm on fire. Which definitely happened to me at least once. As we say over in Dwarf Fortress, losing is fun! You learn from the tragedies, you get a laugh at the most slapstick deaths, and you try again. Medieval Legacy is both deep and compact, so starting over isn’t a big deal.
Spreadsheeting Your Way Through History
I keep making cracks about Excel. You will not actually need nor want a number cruncher unless you are really good at these kinds of games and go deep into the commerce system. That said, Medieval Legacy needs you to keep certain financials and stats in mind as you decide if your fledgling family is going to survive via becoming the regional “security consultant” (read: thief) or trying to get your farm thriving well enough that you don’t starve through the winters and can start expanding your land and your laborers.
Guess which route is easier. You’ll learn a thing or two about impoverished communities and the uphill battle they fight for basic necessities. And the King, who has a very nice, very large castle in the middle of town, does not care a whit. My first run had King Simon the Warmonger, and our beans ran out in the second winter while the brigand camps looked nice and cozy. My second run, my lil dude was “testing vaults” for other families all over the map. Our social status tanked like a bad date, but I expanded my farm and found a free mine. Call me Lady Capone, King I-Didn’t-Even-Look-Because-You-Suck.
Once you actually get your family stabilized and can handle minor disasters, then you’ll probably need to start paying attention to fluctuating market values. The menu will display you a terrifyingly broad document you can assess each month, but just pick out your preferred wares and focus on those.
The Nits and Grits of Making History
In contrast to the Big Guns of Civ games, Medieval Legacy has a vastly simpler aesthetic that resembles, affectionately, Indie Pentiment. The text uses a basic but legible “old style” font, and the portraits and maps are simplified, slightly cartoonish versions of that monkish manuscript-style art. It’s not swag, but it is efficient, and it helps keep the overall tone of the game.
The menus are mostly efficiently set up, but as noted, the market value tab is intimidating and not very sortable, and if you are new to such games, you may still find the overall menu style overwhelming. This is also where I get to note that while the game plays well on the trusty Steam Deck (menu-driven as the game is, the touchpad and shoulder key make for an effective if quirky mouse), the text is often teensy when there’s a lot of data, making this better for laptops.
Studying this small text will also reveal the occasional forgotten word or misspelling, but I never found anything that confuses gameplay. The developers are German and have overall done an excellent job making their English clear.
Conclusion
Medieval Legacy is a game that will feel dry to those unfamiliar with grand strategy and lineage games, with menus that may intimidate and a realistic unfairness to your struggle, even on the introductory Medium setting, which makes this not the best entry point for gamers intrigued by the premise. To you, I beg, try King of Dragon Pass, or the cozier Echoes of Plum Grove as a launching pad. Then come join us over here in numbers land.
But for those of us that don’t mind being blasted with a whole lot of information and countless ways to flub your run (ask me about my hundreds of hours in Stellaris), Medieval Legacy is a pretty darn good legacy sim. The month-to-month turns give you plenty of time to putter through the menus, talk to neighboring families, and decide on your course of action.
While it seems like there’s not much to do at first with your minimal resources, there’s much more lurking around to discover, making for a slightly clunky in places but earnest and enjoyable sim. I liked this game a surprising amount, and will continue to plug away at it until I get a family I can be proud of. But my score should be taken with caveats for the comfier gamer, and I wish the early access demo was still available. Still, at a budget price, I highly endorse giving this game a fair shot, so long as this kind of thing is your jam.
Final Verdict: I Like It A Lot
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