REVIEW : Yaga (PC)
The blacksmith Ivan lived and lived in a fairy-tale kingdom. He was stout, bearded, in general, a respectable man, only one-armed. However, the stump is not the end of the world, a faithful hammer can be held with one hand if there is strength. He was besieged by another problem, more serious than disability – transcendent, supernatural bad luck. And the forged things, for no reason at all, fell into disrepair, and everything went wrong with the red girls, and the bird flying by would always throw something on its head – in short, fate itself always stood against the poor fellow. It was this phenomenal bad guy who pushed him to adventure – now he breaks through the skulls of forest evil spirits, drags Baba Yaga with strange gifts and is looking for all sorts of magic curiosities.
Yaga doesn’t just use fragments of fairy tales as background – Breadcrumbs Interactive created her fairy tale based on Slavic folklore. Funky, organic and surprisingly non-linear.
And Baba Yaga is against!
The hero became a walking disaster after meeting with the one-eyed Dashing himself; in fact, it also grabbed his limb and almost ate it whole. And yet Ivan escaped and lived tolerably without a hand and luck … until the powerful intervened. Baba Yaga had a conflict with the king of the surrounding lands, described in a heap of fairy tales: she came to the throne room and asked for bread, and he ordered the guards to escort the dirty old woman home. Naturally, the powerful witch did not tolerate such treatment in silence – she took and prophesied to the offender that his power would one day collapse because of the most unfortunate subject. And if the king decides to kill this sufferer without any fancy, it will collapse even faster. The ruler soon found a would-be blacksmith – there is no need to look for such fantastically unlucky citizens for a long time. But what to do with it, since it is impossible to solve the problem with a simple and understandable cutting off of the head? Of course, send “I don’t know where” for “I don’t know what” so that he certainly doesn’t come back!
Nominally Yaga– RPG action, and here we beat hordes of enemies in randomly generated locations. However, this process is accompanied by a huge (especially by “diabloid” standards) number of dialogues, funny situations and solutions. On his grandiose journey, the blacksmith regularly meets folk and not-so characters, and at the same time all sorts of dilemmas.
As if in a serious RPG, our behaviour on the go changes the hero’s outlook. The options are flat and uncomplicated, but what else to expect from a playful tale? Ivan is free to be a noble righteous man, a selfish greedy man, an aggressive blockhead-bully or impassably stupid Ivan the fool, sung in many legends. The last hypostasis, of course, has a hard life – this is far from a gallant soldier Schweik, whose exorbitant idiocy always turned into an advantage. But the ability to twist right and left, producing funny and absurd twists and turns, is in itself worth a lot.
A pair of dominant alignments determines which “perks” we will be offered when we level up. The skill sets are more or less consistent: for example, an aggressive Ivan can hit harder, a righteous one – to get more experience for reprisals against unclean creatures and discounts from merchants, and a stingy one – to tie the damage done to the number of coins in his pocket. There are also additions to three characteristics: mind (this is health, oddly enough), body (endurance) and fate, which is responsible for the frequency of failures.
With a hammer, everything is clear – hit and throw a boomerang-like Thor from “The Avengers”, but prostheses in Yaga original. The wheel from the cart serves as a shield, the shovel allows you to instantly go underground and jump out in another place, the bear’s paw throws away opponents, the sickle … well, it cuts, there is even a pitchfork on a chain, so that with shouts of “Get over here!” portray the Scorpion from Mortal Kombat. Since the hero is a professional blacksmith, we can create cool things with special properties on the anvil, stuffing ore, animal claws, feathers of wonder birds, runes of gods and other magical rubbish into useless basic junk. Scary pitchfork? Is a shovel sometimes digging up money? Long-range hammer? As much as necessary, there would be the necessary resources.
“Craft”, I must say, is not an option, but a dire necessity, because the dirty curse of Likh hangs like a sword of Damocles. Answers that contradict the current worldview, blessings of priests and common people, the use of witchcraft items, being in some “bad” places – everything inexorably brings the moment when bad luck will strike another blow, irrevocably breaking carefully made equipment. With the streak of the evil eye, the experience multiplier also grows, although this is little consolation. Ivan is simply forced to forge hammers in reserve and carry them with him – yes, the initial arsenal is indestructible, only you can’t fight much with it.
The battles, unfortunately, do not cause delight. Breadcrumbs
REVIEW : Helheim Hassle (XBOX Series X)
