The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road

Kombo’s Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don’t waste your time. This is why we’ve split our reviews into four sections: What the Game’s About, What’s Hot, What’s Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.

What the Game’s About
The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road is a new take on the old classic. The game starts in the same fashion: Dorothy gets caught in a tornado and transports you to Oz. You meet up with the Scarecrow, Tin Man and Cowardly Lion and that is where the similarities end. Instead of seeking audience with the Wizard, the Wizard seeks them and if they can defeat the four witches of the seasons, they will be given a wish that will come true.

What’s Hot
The process of re-imagining Oz must have been a very exciting task to the developers to undertake. The world of Oz in Yellow Brick Road is drastically different than that of the Judy Garland movie. The characters are more edgy and the world is created as such that it feels familiar but foreign at the same time. It’s like eating fish ice cream; you know what the ice cream tastes like but the fish flavor throws you for a loop. The story is quite good and the writing is top notch.

Combat system is a different twist on the standard command menu fare. You are given four moves each turn to attack the enemies. Dorothy and Strawman each use up one move where as the Lion uses two moves and the Tin Man uses 3. Each character as a different affinity that is more effective against certain types of enemies and it is up to you to decide what combination of fighters best suits the situation. Once each turn is over, you can completely change your party configuration depending on health, enemy type or your own mood.

What’s Not
Yellow Brick Road is not a very intense RPG. The game is more laid back and takes great effort to ease you into the experience and narrative. The lack of drive to push you into a unique world that is ripe for the exploration makes the beautiful graphics and character design seem to be signs that something happened that prevented this game from really opening up and expanding the Oz universe.

The trackball movement is a novel idea in theory, but it doesn’t really pan out like it should have. The linear paths you run along twist and turn with forks in the road where you have to make a decision. When you turn, the camera doesn’t do a very good job at keeping up and you can unexpectedly run into a group of monsters if you go too fast. Smaller adjustments to your position when you are near an object are hard to accomplish and make the items elusive targets to hit. I wasn’t sold in the least bit by the trackball style of movement as it seems to over-engineer the process of walking.

Final Word
Yellow Brick Road starts out as a promising take on a classic fairytale. You’ll quickly learn that you’re not in Kansas anymore and see the game for what it is, a mixed bag full of elementary role-playing.