Yet Another Fantasy Title Grindalf Dialogue

Yet Another Fantasy Title Demo Impressions

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Comedy in games has become a rarity in recent years. Though there have been games centered around humor in their writing, High on Life comes to mind, these types of games witness a long gap between releases. But that hasn’t stopped developer Atomic Wolf from stepping up to the plate. Enter Yet Another Fantasy Title, a game that takes the “we don’t take ourselves too seriously” mantra and proudly wears it on its sleeve.

We checked out the demo during Pax East 2024 weekend to give you a glimpse into this ludicrous world that Atomic Wolf has created.

Yet Another Fantasy Title Takes Players to Yet Another Fantasy World….Sort of

Yet Another Fantasy Title is an open-world top-down action RPG. In the game, you play as a rogue who bites off more than he can chew to beat out knights to become the Chosen One. Naturally, the Chosen One is destined to vanquish evil from the land. Sounds about just like every other fantasy-theme game right? Well, you wouldn’t be wrong, except the game is ridiculous from the get-go.

The rogue decides to crash a party that celebrates the prophecy of the Chosen One. But to his dismay, he has a target on his back and quickly tries to escape his captors. Once he bounces, the rogue meets up with Grindalf, a has-been wizard with a bong attached to his staff. Grindalf begins to train the rogue to be the prophesied hero.

Yet Another Fantasy Title Grindalf Dialogue

One of the first quests you receive, after you bounce from the Chosen One party, is appropriately named “Pimp My Horse”. Those who watched MTV in the early 2000s will definitely get the reference but suffice to say Yet Another Fantasy Title goes hard for the millennial pop-culture references. The quest concludes with you escaping horseback guards and taking your ride to a magical plate to get it painted to a different color. If you ever played the top-down GTA games, then this will bring back memories.

Top Down Combat

Combat uses both the keyboard for movement and spells while relying on the mouse to aim. For the most part, it works well, playing almost like a twin-stick shooter. There are normal and heavy attacks, where the latter requires you to hold down the left mouse button to unleash. Unfortunately, once a heavy attack powers up you have to use it, so you can’t hold it down forever. You can also dodge using a spacebar and there is no stamina limit.

Casting spells works the same, you just aim and shoot off your spell. Magic is governed by the regenerating mana bear located below your health bar. We did see a plethora of spells in Yet Another Fantasy Title. From the tried-and-true fireball to a force push spell that pushes enemies away all around from you, the game comically sells some of its spells on the side of the road like fireworks on the 4th of July. And it happens to be conveniently located right next to a bandit camp so you can try out your new spells.

Overall combat is fun and works well but is quite wonky/janky. When you push enemies down, you can’t register hits on them until they stand up. Animations are on the stiff side, but again the combat is competent for the most part.

Wonky Movement

YAFT allows players to select different methods for player and horseback movement. This is important because it sets a point of reference for your character’s movement that could really impact your enjoyment/hindrance of the game. But what surprised me is that the Yet Another Fantasy Title also has options for horseback movement as well.

I selected the camera perspective for player movement and horse direction-centric movement. At first, moving from on-foot to horseback at first was discombobulating as I had to constantly reorient myself. But after some time I got the swing of things. However, the confusion would rear its ugly head from time to time.

Final Impressions on Yet Another Fantasy Title

It’s clear that YAFT is going for its own comedic spin on the fantasy RPG  genre. So far, it has delivered the chuckles in spades. However, the main point that could bog down the game is its rough edges from combat and movement.

The Yet Another Fantasy Title demo is available now on Steam, so be sure to check it out and wishlist it. The game is slated to release on April 10.