No building, creating a family or watching kids grow up. And after you finish New Beginnings, all you can do is repeat.
I will try my best to leave (semi-constructive) criticism and give both negative as well as positive feedback on the different aspects of this game.
First a short list of what great features they neglected to make part of the game:
1. No way to manually build your own houses.
This really frustrated me, my absolute favorite bit about the earlier Sims games was how you could create your own buildings. Here we get default and very small buildings where all we can do to change it is buy furniture.
2. No creating a family.
You can create a "Hero", have him/her marry someone else, and even have kids. But apart from extremely limited dialog options, this has no effect whatsoever.
3. No aging or playing as a kid.
They removed the realism bit about people actually aging. The closest you'll see is an npc go from toddler to child in a day or two, and then simply stopping their evolution.
We can't play as children/control them. The reason EA gave us was that "you can't do that in real life either". But I guess in real life you can control adults just fine. D'oh.
4. No playing with multiple characters.
This was the worst bit. They have made a Sims game in which you can only play 1 character at a time. (Granted, there are a few exceptions to some quests that require 2, but even then the characters are pretty much independent from each other.)
5. No replay value whatsoever.
I stand corrected, this was in fact the worst bit. I actually enjoyed playing the game at first, it was different, it missed a lot of stuff, but also did some right (which I will comment on later). And what really made me play it, was the aspect of new stuff once I had finished New Beginnings. Boy was I utterly disappointed.
Once you have completed New Beginnings (which happens automatically after running out of quests points), you unlock the other ones. Want new maps, characters, and quests? Not gonna happen. It is the exact same map, with the exact same npcs and the exact same quests. The only thing different is the end goal and what order you create your heroes and do the quests. It's 100% repetition.
And this is very unfortunate, because whereas in The Sims 1, 2 and 3 (and the hundreds of expansion packs) you'd play again and again, or just for a really long time as one lineage, in Medieval you can't do either.
Now for what they actually did right.
1. Excellent design.
However small the map is (and it's very), it's much less mundane as what EA has made before. It has beaches, forests, cliffs, a sea. You name it. It's a very beautiful place.
The design of the different clothes, furniture and buildings are all impeccable. It really does fit the age.
1.5. The Grim Reaper
Okay, the design of the new medieval Grim Reaper was absolutely breathtaking. He was no longer dressed in all black, which strangely didn't make him seem less evil. I really loved that guy, and kept on dueling people to the death just to see him again and again.
2. Well thought out professions.
They really did a number on professions. In played a major part in the Heroes day to day life (actually it played the entire part), and I thoroughly enjoyed a lot of the different things you could do as a particular Hero.
3. The Blacksmith Hero.
I know this should be under item nr. 2, but this requires its own. The forging of weapons and armors, and the unlocking of more, was absolutely perfect. I wouldn't change a thing. By the end of the game, I still had a couple items I still hadn't crafted, and it's one of the few things that might make me go back (to sandbox mode though, since I don't want to start all over.)
4. Quests.
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with quests. I thought they were fun, although most of them seemed strangely similar. The fact that the game was pretty much all about the quests, ruined it a bit. But yeah, 'still pretty fun.
And to sum it all up.
I had honestly expected much more from this latest installment in The Sims franchise. It could've been great, but failed rather badly.
EA wanted to do something different, I get that, but removing most of the aspects that made The Sims so good and popular, was a very poor decision.
The game had me hooked for a good 7 or 8 hours, but mainly on the prospect of experiencing new stuff once I had completed it.
So, is it worth playing? Certainly. Is it worth paying for? Not unless you can find it in a $5 bin at Walmart.
I give this game a 5.5/10