Fake History Hunter

This article was originally a thread on social media, which is why it is formatted with lots of images and short responses.
The text is about the image below that paragraph.

I’ve been playing ‘Medieval Dynasty’, a great game set in the middle ages, but there’s of course always something to complain about, you know me.

The trailer:

So, the story is quite simple, it’s (roughly) 1000AD (I think) and you’re a young man escaping war and starting from scratch.
You’re supposed to start a little settlement, rule it and then make sure you get a kid who can inherit it!
Pretty original that last bit.

Most of the time you’re running around gathering stuff, building, repairing, doing little tasks and missions.
It’s a running & gathering simulator.
If you’re a gamer you’ve probably played games like this, sort of.

To my delight you can also steal stuff.

You have an inventory you can fill up, you can increase the weight you can carry by making a backpack, you need to eat, drink and make sure you don’t go outside in your underpants in the winter.
I learned that the hard way.

I was so happy when I found mead…

The buildings are a bit weird though, I mean this is just a wattle shed with no daub, I had to manually add that later.
Not sure medieval people would want to live in a twig shed like this.
In the real world daubing it is easy, just chuck some mud at it!

When I finally made the special daub recipe and got to daub the house it looked like a right old mess.
Look at this poverty!

Eventually you can afford a nice stone house, white plastered with a tiled roof but it’s still a bit dull and the houses all look the same.
This to me is the biggest let down in the game.

Here are some pictures of what early medieval (reconstructed) houses looked like that would have made this game look so much better:

But in the game it’s all poverty and basic.
Like this silly bed.
Nobody would sleep like this.
Just logs with some dry straw on it and an animal skin?
You’d go mad.
They’d at the very least cover the straw with some linen and sleep under a blanket.

Fires were usually in the middle of the house, much more practical and well, putting it inches away from a twig wall is asking for trouble.

This tavern also looks silly, it has no walls.
People sit here in winter, at night…

I know, I’m a history addict, obsessed with accuracy & authenticity, but to me this really is the difference between putting 100 hours into a game or 200 hours.
Its the difference between playing it for a while and then forgetting about it and regularly returning to it, even a year later just to go explore it or streaming a live walk through the city to show people how cool it looks, yes I’m looking at you Kingdom Come Deliverance 😉

Oh no… ORANGE CARROTS!!!
Back then carrots usually had different colours, white, purple-ish, yellow, etc.
For orange carrots to be the only carrot, wouldn’t be till centuries later.

Also silly: torches as street lights.
Torches rarely burn longer than 30-50 minutes, you’d have to come replace them every hour, so only useful for a short amount of time.

I love these messages when you load the game and it is true!
If you walk around without bathing and do dirty stuff like hunting, you get dirty and people literally refuse to talk to you!
Brilliant.

The game world is quite gorgeous though, it was a joy to explore it.
Well you have to anyway, because a horse costs a fortune so it takes for ever till you get one and till then you just walk and walk and walk.

But the best thing about the game is that you can procreate, it’s sort of the goal.
You have to seduce a lady, do as she tells you, buy her a stroopwafel and 9 months later….

loved this part of the game, it adds so much to it.
You have a reason to make your village wonderful, one day your son will take over, literally.
Either you hand over the village to him or you die and then you start playing the game as him.
But first childhood:

I couldn’t help but be proud of my little family.
Look at my son, already wanting to stab people!

Our village grew and I finally got a horse, which made a huge difference.
The village has a palisade but it has no real function, besides the occasional bandits in the woods & wild animals, there are no dangers in the game.

Oh and if you’re a moron, like me, now and then you crash into a tree.

Someone hurt my kid?!!
I WILL KILL THEM.

Before you know it your child becomes a teen.
Look at us sitting there all awkwardly.

I finally made a friend and took care of a bandit.

The game really is quite gorgeous.

In the evenings your villagers sit by fires, which looks cosy but they always go quiet when I get close.

This is my house, I tried to make a little bit of a manor/keep, it has its own walls within the already walled village.
And I added a food storage & kitchen to the house.
They’re public buildings but I pretended they’re just for my family.
I wish we had a longhouse 😦

What’s also unique and awesome is that all the people in the village have babies too and these also grow up and one day you walk around your village and there’s kids and toddlers and later even teenagers just hanging around and they’re kids of people you know.

And their parents get older!
You visit a trader after a few years and you realise they’ve aged!
And one day their child will replace them!
This is very cool.

Some kids are a bit creepy though.

“Come and play with us Danny”

Main street and our little market.

This is what my house looked like at the end, this is as fancy as you can get it.
Which I found disappointing.
Houses & interior decorating would have been so much better if it had been more historically accurate.

But just when I’m grumpy about the houses, some lady tells me I stink and I have to bathe in a nice big wooden tub and then I’m happy about the game again.

There are animals as well.
You spend a lot of time killing wild ones in the woods, which was unpleasant for a 1980s kid with ‘Watership Down’ trauma.
Nooo… noooooooo

But some are scary bastards who want to bite you in your backside.
Even then, I feel a bit bad.
I’m such a softie.

But you also get to buy animals for your village.
Awwwwwwwwwww

But er… as adorable as the pigs are, they didn’t look like that during the middle ages (source).

There’s also a lot of manual work to be done, eventually you get peasants to do it for you but till then you have to do it all, like chopping down trees (very satisfying).

OUCH.
Step back when tree is about to fall.
Good life lesson…

Eventually you can buy sheep, make sheering scissors in the smithy and that’s how you get wool which you then use for making clothes!

Eventually you get someone else to do this for you but you can make all sorts of wonderful items here.

I’m not so sure that spinning wheel is early medieval though.

You also get to have bees and make honey, but I’m afraid that outfit here, as cool as it looks, is not early medieval, perhaps not even medieval at all.

You also get to make metal tools, first you get the ore from a mine, then built a smithy and then you start heating and hammering.
Also quite fun.
Also nice to see female smiths, those really existed during the middle ages!
Although they probably didn’t wear men’s clothing…

But, very authentically, most of the work involves farming the land.
You get to create plots, clear them, plant seeds, throw manure, harvest, it’s all there.
And a lot of fun!
Again great to see women work the field, we know they did.

Throw manure you collected from your animals (ew), plough the field, throw seeds, harvest it.
It’s the circle of life….
and it moves us all…
through despair and hope!
It’s the circle of liiiiiiifeeeeeee

nd then you get grain that you have to thresh and grind, first by hand, then with a mill.

Then you bring it to the kitchen (which looks a bit iffy) and you can make a pie!

But eventually, after a VERY long time (this game is a time sink hole) I slowly lost interest.
The town is huge, looks after itself, my son lived to 18 so he can take over, but there just isn’t much for me left to do but wait for the sweet embrace of death.

So, conclusion.
It is a fun game, I enjoyed playing it but I think it would have been a lot better if it all looked a bit more historically accurate, but then again, I would, wouldn’t I?
Overall I was still impressed & entertained.
Worth a buy.

2026 update; The game has changed a lot since I wrote it, new updates & DLC’s show up regularly, so this review is a bit outdated by the time you read it, go check out the game videos to see what you can expect today: https://www.youtube.com/@rendercubeofficial/videos

And before you get upset, yes, looking for details that aren’t right and complaining about it is what I do.
Sorry not sorry.
If you like my reviews, check out others I’ve done here;

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