Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story is certainly not the kind of game you might expect to come from Riot, given their most well-known title is about as sweaty and high-octane as a game can get. However, this heartfelt crafting RPG is anything but sweaty, instead dropping you into the world of the fae-like Yordles, where you can knit, cook, and explore to your heart’s content – and at your own pace.
Bandle Tale puts you into the shoes of your very own customisable Yordle character, who has just undergone a reclusive 100-year knitting apprenticeship in the quiet town of Yarnville. When a party goes awry, causing a portal disaster that throws all of Bandle City out of balance, our little Yordle has to set out into the world to try to make things right again.
Expansive endeavours
At its core, Bandle Tale is a crafting-focused game through and through. The multiple skill trees are expansive, covering things from cooking, resource gathering, engineering, and much more. As you progress, items needed for various quests require more mastery of a broader range of skills. While many other crafting-based titles do get quite repetitive as you learn to make more complicated items, Bandle Tale manages to keep things fresh with a range of crafting benches, ways to collect resources, and upgradable equipment to streamline the process.
Crafting those tricky-to-make items feels less like a chore and more like something to take into your stride, which ultimately feels like a core message of the game itself as well. Sometimes extracting a refined resource forces you to wait a handful of seconds and take it all in, accompanied by a whimsical and welcoming (if at times slightly repetitive) soundtrack.
Taking it all in extends beyond crafting, too – in order to learn new skills, you’ll need to rack up points which are earned by crafting, socialising, and seeing beautiful sights and then sleeping (and dreaming) on it. There are even points on the map that simply invite you to look across vistas and marvel at the beauty of it all – earning you more points in turn. This skill system is a welcome way to weave in the lore of Yordles as a race deeper into gameplay, something that is likely to come as a welcome feature for League of Legends lore fans.
Of course, crafting isn’t the sole focus of Bandle Tale. In what I’d liken to mini-games, there are parties to throw where you’ll have to balance your guests’ likes and dislikes, decorate, and collect Inspiration from attendees in a short timeframe. There’s a food stand to run in a chaotic Diner Dash style of gameplay – Yordles don’t like to wait long for food. There’s fishing, lectures to host, home decoration, gardening, and plenty more. It’s the additional gameplay elements that help to keep gameplay interesting and engaging as opposed to feeling like a grind well beyond the first few hours.
When it comes to the overall pacing of gameplay in Bandle Tale, it’s totally up to you. You can craft your days away, nap when you want to, hold as many food stands or parties as you like, or embark on side quests alongside the main story. The game holds your hand just enough in most cases to be able to complete the tasks you set out to without too much confusion, and the level of tutorials provided isn’t overwhelming. A handy book filled with scout-style badges is a handy way to keep track of any one task you might be set on, often with some further detail if you get stuck. The one place this hand-holding does fall short is deeper into the skill trees, where sometimes a particular resource or means of using built equipment is less than clear. There were only a small handful of these occasions where I found myself bumbling around the map trying to work out how to find something that had less than clear instructions, but for the most part, discovering the process of each recipe was as enjoyable as the finished product itself.
Curiosity killed the Yordle (and satisfaction brought it back)
In and amongst all the knitting, fishing, and cooking, Bandle Tale invites you to be curious. Your little Yordle is seeing the world with new eyes, experiencing new things, and meeting plenty of new friends – many of whom will be familiar faces to League players. It goes without saying that the world of Bandle City is a sight to behold, too. The pixel art style is cutesy and bright – although some locations lean more into the dark and nefarious – in a manner befitting of many cozy games. But behind what might seem simplistic at first glance, there’s a depth to it that you’re encouraged to notice through quiet, slow observation.
The floating islands and varied buildings sometimes lean into surrealist-style structures with loops and twists, while other locations feel like they’d be right at home in The Shire. Look at any one spot for long enough, and you’ll notice new details, like nesting Snailcats or Yordles defying gravity underneath looming cliffs. In yet another way, you, as the player on the other side of the screen, as well as your character, must look with open, inquisitive eyes to take it all in. The one downside of these interesting structures and looping maps is the navigation using WASD – while not difficult, per se, the ability to point and click to move would have been a welcome addition to make moving around tight spots and diagonal or hidden turns that touch easier.
All of this is to say that Bandle Tale manages to bring all the best bits of crafting games and RPGs together in a cozy, brightly coloured package. The story itself is heartfelt and enjoyable and ties into the gameplay in a way that didn’t make me feel like I was crafting for crafting’s sake – everything had a purpose.
Bandle Tale is a game I will continue to return to because I simply enjoyed it, and as someone who often has to quickly move their attention to newer titles as they launch, I consider that a major mark of success. In a world where real life, and often a lot of the games in it, run at a breakneck speed, Bandle Tale is a soothing balm for it all. I’ll be thinking about this game for some time to come and walk away from my time in the world of Bandle City wanting to enjoy the world around me just that little bit more, savour experiences just a little longer, and maybe take up knitting while I’m at it.
Review conducted on PC with a pre-release code provided by the publisher.
Image: Lazy Bear Games, Riot Forge, Kotaku Australia
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