It's not bad, but not what I expect or want from a Sims game.
WHAT'S THE SAME
In both games, you can design your own characters, furniture, walls and floors. The socializing system is almost identical, you can have kids, you can cook, your sims can work and improve skills and you can gather stuff like herbs and gems. And of course, the panels and navigation is nearly identical.
WHAT'S DIFFERENT
TSM doesn't allow you to build your own homes.You can place pre-made buildings and furniture and you can slap on some textures, but the whole architecture aspect from the regular Sims games has been dumped. Moreover, you can't rotate your camera freely, which occasionally makes for some botched gameplay.
You can create a family, but none of your sims age. Also, you can't control anyone besides your active heroes , so there's not a whole lot of point in creating non-player family unless a quests asks to you make them.
The same goes for socializing. It's there, it can be fun, but you don't have a whole lot of time for it between all the questing. Fortunately, you don't need it either.
WHAT IT OFFERS
Heroes, quests, quests, and then some more quests. Go here, go there, talk to him or her, find that, pay tax, buy this, sell those, do so and so, read this, write that, pay tax, fetch them, and so on. Multiply that by about a hundred times and you're getting close.
Don't get me wrong. The number of quests is huge and some are quite challenging. A lot of interactions are awesome, the graphics are great, the animations are diverse and often hilarious, and - lets not forget - it's medieval for crying out loud! Oh, and I love the way religion was done in the game. Also, those menial miniscule tasks can be quite addictive their own evil way, so you're pretty much set for a fair few hours of fun.
But before long, the game becomes a drag, grinding away one quest after another for the sole purpose of starting yet another equally dragging quest.
It's a pity, but EA cut away too many of the elements Simmers came to love. Quests can be fun, but not the way TSM shoves them down your throat.
I decided to let the game rest for a couple of days and pick it back up at a slower pace. A quest every once in a while should prevent both drag and boredom.