With the new MySims Kingdom for Wii, Electronic Arts changed from ground up the game they offered last year and, happily, they managed to do a better job: MySims Kingdom is enjoyable and charming from the moment you start it – and if you are a fan of the Sims series the thrill will last to the end, so it would be a bad idea to simply ignore it because of last year’s game.
The story in this new title is pretty simple but the overall experience is more focused on storytelling than ever, which brings a bonus to the franchise that completely lacked a story. So, after you create your character as you see fit, you take part in a contest (that can’t be lost) which will make you King Roland’s new Wandolier. In other words, this means that you’ll be given a magic wand and your mission will be that of creating all sorts of things to keep the people in the kingdom happy. This further means that each new area you’ll visit will have its own story.
You’ll start with some very easy structures but as you’ll advance in MySims Kingdom, you’ll be gifted with complete freedom and lots of elements to use as you see fit: you’ll build all sorts of houses and machines and even complete some brain teasing puzzles in all the provinces of the Kingdom. But things, although charming, are not that simple to achieve: you can’t just start shaking the Wiimote and build! You’ll have to gather all sorts of resources by mining, fishing or treasure hunting or even by chopping trees. At first this is a very fun thing to do – wiggling the Wiimote around and stuff, but after a while it will become repetitive and boring. Thankfully, even though this resource gathering is a very important part of the game, you will only spend up to four-five minutes with the gathering process, which is fair and doesn’t make you throw away the Wiimote in the screen.