Remember when Diana Ross and friends brought soul into the land of Oz with The Wiz? In a different cultural twist, Beyond the Yellow Brick Road brings some Japanese flavor to a beloved classic by turning L. Frank Baum’s work into a turned-based dungeon crawler. It may not have Nipsey Russell, but is this reimagining worth the return to Oz if nobody’s home in Soulville?

The charm that accompanies Dorothy and friends comes primarily pre-loaded for those already endeared to the story, but the unique art style adds a nice new flair to characters. There’s not a great deal of character development or dialogue in the game. What is there, however, is well written and keeps the story moving along as the foursome sets out to defeat the four witches of the seasons and reclaim the Wizard’s magical eggs. Perhaps now is a good time to mention that the game doesn’t exactly follow the classic movie’s plot very closely. In fact, beyond the quartet of travelers and the titular Wizard, there are a lot of liberties taken including learning magical spells from Dragon Fathers (half-men/half-dragons) and prancing along Oz’s beachfront.

A lot of the enjoyment I got out of this game was in finding my way through the mazes that represent the different seasons in Oz. Pathways fork into multiple directions and because there is only one way out of each maze, it’s important to keep track of what ground you’ve already covered. Fortunately, at each intersection there are alterable street signs to indicate which directions you’ve determined are dead ends and which paths continue onward. The dead ends aren’t generally empty affairs, as many times you’ll find treasure chests or switches required to open gates on other paths. I found the entire exploration aspect to be relaxing and the fact that you can run past most enemies bypasses the constant bombardment of random encounters that unnecessarily bog down a lot of RPGs.

Of course you will need to partake in a fair amount of fights to gain experience for you characters and the game tries to add a little bit of uniqueness there as well. Upon running into an enemy, you are presented with four action slots that correspond to what party members you will use in battle. Logically, you’d want to take all four characters into the fight, but the game’s fighting system isn’t that simple. Each of Dorothy and Scarecrow’s actions only take-up one slot each, but the more powerful Lion’s take up two slots, and a single action by the even stronger Tinman takes up three out of the four slots. So the party you take into battle can be any combination that adds up to four, whether that’s Dorothy and Tinman or two Scarecrows and Lion, etc…

Choosing whom to use comes down to what type of enemies you are engaging as each of the four travelers has strengths against different types of foes. For instance, since he’s a woodsman, the Tinman is obviously strongest against plant-based enemies. The rest of the character strengths seem a little more random as Dorothy is best against the undead, Scarecrow puts a beatdown against fishy foes, and the Lion works best against shell-based creatures. Yes, there are enemy crabs in Oz. There are also poisonous penguins, buckeye nut-headed men, and cats wearing hoodies... lots of cats wearing hoodies. It’s a pretty varied cast of enemies, but strangely enough there are no flying monkeys.

The game controls entirely with the stylus with a rather curious virtual trackball used to navigate Dorothy about the environments. While this scheme felt a little imprecise to me to begin the game, by the end I actually think the controls work well for quickly darting around the mazes. Everything outside of movement is all menu-based, so the stylus makes perfect sense in selecting character actions or purchasing and equipping new equipment.

The main drawback that RPG fanatics may find in Beyond the Yellow Brick Road is the game’s pedestrian difficulty. While not a major concern for me, I will acknowledge that I progressed through the majority of the game just using a Dorothy, Scarecrow, Lion combo no matter what enemies were thrown at me. To further illustrate this party’s dominance, I should also mention that I made it all the way to the second to last boss with only unlocking one magic spell. This was due to my missing the fact that I needed to talk to the same Dragon Father over and over again for more spells. For better or worse, the game will also auto-assign what action each of your characters should perform in battle prior to each turn. So if you want to change who should be casting spells or which enemy a character should be attacking, you’ll have to manually adjust it. Generally, it makes reasonable decisions, though, so I just rolled with whatever the computer A.I. thought was best. There is only one attack for each character, and the spells are mostly support-based, so the depth of the battles isn’t much. I will say that defeating the bosses, especially the final two, will require some skill, strategy, and perhaps some luck.

All in all, I enjoyed the trip back to Oz. While not overwhelmingly difficult or groundbreaking, Dorothy and friends provide a nicely paced and entertaining experience with several unique elements. There’s a nice balance between the simplified battle system and the complexity of the maze environments that creates a relaxed yet interesting gaming experience. I’d recommend The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road to RPG newcomers or veterans that are looking for a lighthearted adventure.

Very Good
Outstanding | Very Good | Fair | Poor | Awful

Recommended Buy Price: $20.00
Current MSRP: $29.99

The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road was provided for review by Xseed Games. The game was played to completion in 18 hours. There are still some side bosses that I did not defeat. The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road is available exclusively on Nintendo DS.