• Slavic mythology, one of Yaga’s selling points, has a pretty good representation in the game’s world. Encountered characters, whether friendly, hostile or indifferent towards your struggles, are deeply rooted in this very specific lore and display strong emphasis on traits that are a common drive for fairytale-like storytelling. Turning points within the plot, monsters that mirror people’s fears and flaws, wisdom intertwining with superstition and foreshadowing of events by dubious characters are a norm in Yaga, just like they are in a typical Slavic fable.
• The game looks really pretty with its hand painted environments. Animations are quite basic, but perfectly fitting for the presented visual style. Character and monster designs are unique. There is enough eye candy to keep the game’s world fresh despite limited diversity of landscapes. On the visual side, Yaga does its job quite well.
• As much as the attributes and personality traits you develop don’t feel impactful on their own until the very end of the game – they are just out there, you’ll be perfectly fine without paying any attention to them – it’s an interesting idea that the choices you make shape more than just outcomes of your interactions with NPCs. Every time you level up, and you do so after gaining enough experience and finishing a stage, you pick an extra skill based on your actions throughout said stage. Being righteous, aggressive, foolish or greedy – four stances you can take – actually impact your gameplay in addition to just the story part of the game.
• One of the more important aspects of the game’s mechanics, crafting, allows for quite of lot of diversity. While scarcity of metal ores, the mandatory material for any weapon or tool, may initially scare you away from smacking that anvil, you’ll eventually get enough of these to try and pick your favourite combinations of properties for your inventory. And because there’s many, many ingredients to choose from, each hammer or hook you smith can vary significantly from the previous one.
• Most of the soundtrack is comprised of songs that reach out to traditional Eastern European folk music and mix it with modern sound. For majority of time it works really well. You get to enjoy more laid back and cosy tunes when strolling through fields or forests and some sick, hype beats when it’s time to fight. The further you go the better the music gets, though because of more frequent, faster paced battles closer to the finish line, it also switches too often between roaming and combat tracks.
• If you’re a fan of purposely bad puns and over the top humour, you shouldn’t be disappointed in what Yaga is serving. Writing is overall okay, but it’s the joyful, hilarious moments that tend to overshadow their more solemn counterparts.
• There is a dog in your hometown that you can pet :)

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• No idea whether that was the developers’ intention or I’m reading too much into this, but I still want to see playing as a one-armed blacksmith as a nod to inclusivity. The man doesn’t seem to be hindered at all by his handicap and proceeds to become a hero of the tsardom. How cool is that?

• There’s usually multiple options to choose from during your quests and dialogues, and each shapes your personality (that influences some things in the game, like quest rewards and further options), but in the end, most of the times there’s no clear indication of what exactly your choice brought upon you and the world. Even though you see some of the consequences of your actions right away, in the overarching story they are very hard to pinpoint.
• In addition to your weapon, there’s a couple of tools to use in your journeys. While it’s great to have variety in terms of equipment (among other things), you probably won’t be using most of these anyways, since they are extremely situational. In a way, there’s a choice. In reality, though, there’s a chance you’ll only make it once and then stick to it through the whole game.

• Once you’re done uncovering new stuff, the gameplay becomes a necessary evil to serve as a filler for the story. Last quarter of the game was a seemingly endless loop of very short walking/combat sequences, with an occasional loot chest every now and then. That’s unfortunate, because even though an interesting tale is still being spun, segments between its consecutive parts, known as gameplay, become increasingly tedious.
• And speaking of tedious, the worst offender here is the combat. It’s very stripped back, with only a couple of actions available – that is attacking, tumbling and using a tool. Such a simple system wouldn’t necessarily be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that you’re forced to go through hundreds of fights that play exactly the same. Boss encounters bring in a sprinkle of freshness here, but there’s only several of these in the entire game.
• Map layouts are uninspired, and after a couple of levels you’ll have seen all of them. It’s pretty much just corridors that branch out occasionally, with battling arenas everywhere and a few of extra locations, like teleporting ovens (what a cool design, by the way), anvils for crafting, secret areas which aren’t that hidden at all, or NPCs giving you unimpressive side quests that often finish in less than a minute
• Last, but definitely not least: the most interesting part of the game’s mechanics, Bad Luck, which also serves as the core of the game’s story, is also the most disappointing. Bad Luck increases each time you use a magic item (that is, every one-use item in the game, even food) or behave against your personality, resulting in increased experience gains, but also higher chance of breaking your weapon. In reality the difference is unnoticeable, since there are no numbers to signify any of these boosts/debuffs, you can easily get a full level – and that is all you can get in a single stage – even with no Bad Luck, and your weapons and tools break anyways. To be fair, the game doesn’t do a good job explaining some of its other features, like shrines. Yeah, you can interact with them in a couple of different ways, but what’s the purpose? No one knows.

Information / Review English

Gameplay / Story

Pro

Contra

Conclusion

Information / Review Deutsch

Gameplay / Geschichte

Pro

Kontra

Fazit