Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story review

Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story is for the management addicts among us. It thrives on incremental additions introduced at a perfect pace, allowing you to craft, farm, and party hard while making friends and saving the world at the same time. It’s perfected the loop where collecting resources feeds into new skills you unlock which allow you to build a new piece of machinery and progress consistently, whatever task you’re trying to complete. It also helps that the visuals are gorgeous, warm, and fuzzy, with characters that help to bring it all together.

You play as your own created Yordle, a cute as hell hamster-like critter from the town of Yarnville. You’ve never seen anything outside of where you reside, and just as you finish 101 years of your apprenticeship, the portals connecting the entirety of Bandle City collapse. Sad news indeed, but honestly, it’s the best thing that could have happened to me. As a result, I was able to explore the various areas at my own pace, play how I want, and experiment with different crafting opportunities while being a part of one of the sweetest little worlds I’ve ever seen.

Obviously, you have to restore the portals with something called Portal Yarn, and there is an overarching story that explores what happened and why, but the real magic of Bandle Tale is working things out for yourself. There is somewhat of a tutorial, but it can still be confusing, especially working out how to craft certain items or where to find what you need, but by being patient and reading through the skill trees (which play a big part of progression), you’ll start to understand what Lazy Bear Games wants you to do. Most of what you have to do is complete quests for the various Yordles scattered across the map, which leads to new areas and potential new skills. Fish, cook, catch bugs….there’s so much to do that makes doing it all well worth your while.

Everything you do earns you emotion that translates into skill points when you sleep. Upon waking, you can spend them on a range of different skills across categories like knitting, engineering, and magic, which allow you to find new resources, build new machinery, and more. There are elements of farming and selling like you’ve likely seen in Stardew Valley or Story of Seasons, but Bandle Tale is very different. It has a similar focus as Fae Farm did from last year, where progress is gated through its quests. It’s a solid approach as you never get ahead of yourself, but you’re also never in above your head.

Once your Yordle leaves Yarnville and sets off on the adventure of a lifetime, you carry with you a portable backpack that can be set down at specific locations. By pulling different rolls outside it, you can lay down an area where all your workbenches, looms, and junk recyclers are, allowing you to keep all your important crafting contraptions located in the same place. This is where you’ll get your cloth, ink, wood, stone, iron, and other important items for building things for both yourself and the locals. Another roll that can be laid out in front of your backpack is the food stand, which leads to a minigame akin to Overcooked.

You’ll have to cook specific dishes for those that stop by within an allotted time, where you have to chop it up and prepare it first, then shove it in the oven before they get bored and walk away. Doing well raises your standing in the town and also gives you stars to spend at various shops. You’ll also get to throw parties which have certain requirements, such as picking the right music and lighting, and having the right kind of furniture like a dance floor and chill-out area. There’s a ton more to Bandle Tale, and it’s always introduced at the right time, just after you feel like you’re starting to get to grips with everything, a new idea is presented to you that fits in perfectly.

I adored the characters in Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story. The NPCs are so cute and funny, and there’s so much personality portrayed solely through the written dialogue. The stories that take place between the portals are also a lot of fun to soak up, with the university being a big favourite of mine. I gave various lectures to students and at the same time gave myself new customisation options for my backpack. The 2.5D pixel art is stunning, with new areas retaining some of the beauty of the previous area while standing on its own with vibrancy that never gets old.

Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story is a wonderful management/RPG title that manages your progress perfectly, and while you do have a certain freedom, you’re never left struggling when knowing what to do next. I did get a bit tired when having to walk from one place to the next, as you do find you have to walk around the maps a lot, but thanks to how beautiful it looks and the charming characters you’ll meet, it was never a flat-out chore. The crafting is so satisfying, and the new items that are introduced with the robust skill trees will give players so many hours of enjoyment.