Yet Another Fantasy Title Review - Beer Belly Wizards - Try Hard Guides (2024)

Yet Another Fantasy Title opens up with the story of a dragon, the death of a king that plunged the kingdom into chaos, the Chosen One who is said to bring the kingdom back from the brink of ruin, and a rogue criminal running from the prince’s royal guard. Said rogue and chosen one end up crossing paths, and in a case of mistaken identity, the chosen one winds up dead at our criminally inclined protagonist’s feet. Afraid the kingdom may lose hope, our story’s Merlin character (Grindalf) helps to hide the body and manipulate public perception into believing our sleazy protagonist is actually the chosen one all along.

Yet Another Fantasy Title is supposed to parody the fantasy genre and its storytelling tropes. However, I don’t feel like it succeeds in parodying said tropes very often.

The introduction to the story, which I just covered for you, is maybe the most clever parody in the entire game. The idea of a chosen one narrative being a big coverup (with the ordained chosen one dying to his own stupidity) is a pretty clever twist on the trope. Seeing characters who usually play the role of great mentors or guides for our hero in stories instead talk about hiding the chosen one’s body and orchestrating false flag monster attacks on the city to gain you some credibility as a hero are fun twists that did not go unnoticed.

Then, other times, the game’s humor seems less like a clever parody and more like, “What if we took x thing from a famous fantasy story and changed its name!” Grindalf himself is a significant obvious example of this. The game is also full of what feels like “XD so random!” humor that can hit on occasion but usually missed the mark for me: taking the dragon language from Skyrim but making it ducks instead, giving a wizard a giant beer belly, police horses with red and blue flashing lights (a joke literally done in Shrek.)

The game will throw about a hundred of these misses at you and then win you over with something like accidentally hiding a body in a firework, or briefly mentioning something called “The Incest Crisis” without going into further detail about it.

You will notice immediately that the game wants to be Grand Theft Auto (GTA) set in a medieval fantasy.

This is obvious by the first time the police (guardsmen) chase you, with a progressively increasing “wolf marks” notoriety system tracking how in trouble you are with that law. The only way to get away from the law is to steer your horse into a “Trick My Horse” stop and have your horse “Painted.”

A Grand Theft Auto-inspired game set in a medieval fantasy setting isn’t a bad idea. However, I feel like Yet Another Fantasy Title doesn’t fully execute on this premise for a few reasons: first, it lacks the total freedom of a GTA title, and second, it sort of fails on the parody front, which is famous for GTA games.

The combat Yet Another Fantasy Title feels bad for the use of a better term. When engaging foes in battle, Yet Another Fantasy Title equips you with several medieval weapons and four spells gathered throughout your playthrough. You usually find yourself against small hordes of quick-to-kill enemies, and your tools simply feel utterly unsatisfying to use.

Melee weapons just see you flailing your sword, axe, or whatever back and forth, instantly stunning and quickly killing enemies so long as they don’t block the hit. Even with the stun, the attacks don’t feel impactful or fun to use, it’s like being in a pool noodle fight with a bunch of grown men.

Magic also doesn’t feel too great, yet it often completely knocks enemies down, quickly giving you the edge in a fight. Even against larger enemies, you can usually just cast a spell, hit them once or twice as they get back up, and then knock them back down again with another spell.

The controls don’t feel wonderful, especially when on horseback. It’s hard to explain other than saying you’ll be chased by the guard a lot for charging directly into one of them or another innocent civilian. Clumsy horse controls and specific quest triggers are the only real reasons you’ll have to run from the guard. The game is pretty linear, without much reason to deviate from the straightforward quests or roam around the map. Like I said earlier, it wants to be Grand Theft Auto but lacks some of the depth needed to do so.

I struggle to decide what I think of Yet Another Fantasy Title. Though it is full of spelling errors, the combat is dreadfully unexciting, and the humor seems to be hit or miss. Yet, it still manages to make me laugh on occasion. My experience with the game looked something like this: I would begin to yawn and lose interest during long stretches of horseback travel and boring combat encounters, yet I found that I was still playing to see what came next in the story. Despite it all, the dang story managed to wrap me up in it, and I was invested enough to dredge through the muck to get to the parts where this game shines.

Yet Another Fantasy Title isn’t for everyone. It isn’t mechanically reinventive or even up to snuff with many other “RPGs” or fantasy titles on the market. However, the writing sometimes just hits, and it has a habit of sucking you in when you least expect it. If you’re looking for a linear, somewhat engaging story and don’t mind the less-than-amazing gameplay that comes with it, Yet Another Fantasy Title is worth trying.

Try Hard Guides received a PC review code for this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in theGame Reviewssection of our website! Yet Another Fantasy Title is available on Steam and GoG.