REVIEW: ‘Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story’ Turns Cutesy Crafting Into Hobby Hyperfixation (PC)

An act as simple as pulling a frayed thread is enough to unravel a sweater, and likewise, a single stitch is the first step to creating one. In Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story, a crafting RPG developed by Lazy Bear Games and published by Riot Forge, this lesson is woven into the narrative and gameplay. The result is a fun and extremely charming adventure, though it’s not without its faults.

Taking the role of a reclusive customizable yordle, the cutesy humanoids from Riot Games’ League of Legends, players receive a knitted prosthetic leg from their best friend, who urges them to explore the world outside their home. Together, they venture into Bandle City where the player character inadvertently destroys the city’s portal network. This renders the unfortunate side effect of separating the various floating islands that comprise the yordle homeland, along with losing their friend in a portal in the process.

Determined to rescue them, the protagonist must master the art of knitting to reunite the city and restore the portal network. While the premise seems simple, the journey is anything but. The protagonist journies all around the islands, meeting fun characters, and learning valuable lessons about success, failure, and the limits we place on ourselves.

Bandle Tale’s themes are welcome but surprising, due to the overall cheery aesthetic that exudes from every character and environment in Bandle City. This is in part due to the vibrant color schemes and the expressive sprite work, but the islands have their own charm. The player’s home island, Yarnville, is lit by small crabs with lights growing on their back. Inspiration Island, a haven for creatives of all kinds, features a hungry, living mountain and musical bridges. One particularly imaginative setting is found on the underside of an island, decorated with waterfalls that rise into the sky, and stalactites made of salt, perfect for food or crafting.

The yordles themselves are all adorable and, despite most of them seeming one-dimensional, interacting with them is always a delight. Fans of League of Legends will get to meet several characters from the popular MOBA, with the chance to interact with them in a fun, new way that doesn’t involve killing them repeatedly. Even the way the player yordle waddles around is sure to elicit adoration. Put simply, it’s a game you’ll want to spend dozens of hours in, and you might just need to, to see your journey reach its end.

In addition to knitting, players can look forward to fishing, farming, raising insects, throwing parties, running a food stand and more. With four skill trees to work through, and with the story requiring and unlocking the use of more advanced skills, Bandle Tale does a great job of ramping up the difficulty and intensity of the work required. As an example, the earliest food stands require nothing more than an oven, but by the end of the game you’ll be serving meals that take almost twice the steps to prepare, while scrambling to work on two or three other orders simultaneously.

To its credit, all these seemingly random side activities feed back into the main quest: the food you serve gives the yordles the energy they need to party, which gives you more skill points to unlock more intricate contraptions and recipes. This steady advancement of abilities and technology is expertly designed, and it’s not confined to your skill trees either.

The player starts off in Yarnville, but they’ll spend most of their early time in Bandle Center, This is an island that hosts a school for inventors and artists alike. Helping yordles in need eventually leads them to three settlements on their respective islands: one for the agriculturally inclined, another for engineers, and the final island for artists, in the form of painters, musicians, and even chefs. Your quests across these islands initially seem isolated. However, as problems arise, you’ll find solutions on other islands, essentially creating quest threads that weave together to create a solid campaign of creation. Much like the skill trees, the story is well-crafted. It initially focuses largely on bridging gaps, mending feuds, and staying curious about the world.

Undertaking such a task would be impossible for anyone without some help. Of course, Bandle Tale provides. The player’s main base of operations is a magic backpack that can grow large enough to host parties or the aforementioned food stand, as well as carry all your materials. This mobile command center becomes the focus of your journey, growing with your character to contain all kinds of magical crafting stations. In addition to working through the skill trees, one of the best parts of the game is seeing what each improvement can do. 

Bandle Tale is generous when it comes to experimenting. Moving your stations is free, but if you ever need to move one to the outdoor crafting area or vice versa, deleting a station or any other item completely refunds the materials used in its creation. This prevents many potential headaches and truly stands out as an improvement that more crafting games could use. In a world designed to be explored and experimented in, to do otherwise feels like punishing players for engaging in curiosity. Bandle Tale shines in this regard.

Unfortunately, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows, even in an adorable city dominated by sunshine and rainbows. The islands, the story, and the characters are all a lot of fun to interact with and exist alongside, but the overwhelming cute aesthetic and crafting lose some of their luster by the end of the journey. Complex recipes do become easier to replicate, but even so, a late-game request could turn into an endeavor that has you running all around the various islands to gather materials to create a single item. Then, a few quest steps later, you may discover you need to create another bunch of that item, leaving players dreading the task ahead. There are certainly ways to mitigate that feeling, but without foresight, it’s difficult to tell where players should focus their efforts.

As any crafting game enthusiast will tell you, inventory management is often a hassle. Bandle Tale is no different, even with its quality-of-life improvements. You can expand your inventory (up to a point) and dump items at any time. They’re which are magically whisked away to a mail carrier for pick up later. This does a lot to reduce frustration. However, when you’re juggling a dozen materials and crafting machines that need other machines to work, anxiety starts to steadily rise. Additionally, while hosting parties and serving food are vitally important, running a vending machine full of crafted items feels very underutilized. There’s little focus on it from the story or as a necessary component to advancing your skill trees.

Despite these hindrances, Bandle Tale ties together a beautiful world, fun characters, and an immense but enjoyable crafting experience with a narrative that should resonate with anyone who’s ever doubted themselves. The result is a great, adorable surprise of an experience.

Bandle Tale: A League of Legends Story is available now on PC and Nintendo Switch.