With giants like Dragon Age, The Witcher, and The Elder Scrolls practically dominating the RPG scene, it’s difficult to bring something entirely unique to the table. Sir Whoopass: Immortal Death doesn’t try to do anything different. It actually makes a point of doubling down on just about every RPG cliché there is for comedic effect, and that is where it shines. It’s not a game that takes itself too seriously; in fact, it spends a lot of time making fun of itself, and that’s what makes it fun.
Story
If you’re looking for a game where you can fully immerse yourself in a fantasy world and its lore, you’re not going to get that with Sir Whoopass. The story is pretty basic and, again, pokes fun at the typical RPG stereotypes. It starts on a dark and stormy night – something that the narrator makes sure to point out is purely for dramatic effect and has no bearing on the story itself.
You play as Sir Whoopass, a valiant knight and prisoner of an evil wizard known as the Immortal, the antagonist of the story. After a short tutorial where the game introduces Lucy – a magic skull who helps you track objectives and learn the game’s mechanics – you break out of prison and begin a heroic quest to defeat the Immortal and end his reign of tyranny. To do that, you’ll have to search the world of Weirdwood for the Legendary Villain-Beating Artefact, which is your only chance of defeating the Immortal.
It’s a pretty straightforward good-versus-evil story – one you’ve probably seen many times before – but that’s exactly the point. The narrator even draws attention to this with his fourth wall–breaking commentary. So, even if the story itself isn’t particularly engaging, the writing, with the near-constant jabs and sarcastic comments, was enough to keep me interested.
Gameplay
Sir Whoopass is a pretty standard hack ‘n’ slash with some spell work woven in. I felt that the character movement was a bit sluggish at points, and the hitbox was sometimes a little off, which took away from combat that was otherwise fun and intuitive. There are three types of attacks: fast (sword), heavy (mace/hammer), and ranged (wands), and you can swap between each weapon type at will.
Blocking is easy since you don’t need to time it to make an enemy stagger, and rolling into the majority of enemies will knock them over, giving you a chance to get a few good hits in before they recover. You can even take down most enemies in one or two hits, which makes you feel pretty powerful when you’re up against one or two enemies, but if you get swarmed and need to heal, just chow down on a garden gnome. Yes, you read that right. Our valiant hero replenishes his health through biting the heads off poor, unsuspecting garden gnomes.
As you progress through the game, you will level up, which allows you to invest points in certain stats and buy new weapons from the somewhat deranged-looking blacksmith. You can further improve these weapons by finding chests filled with rare and legendary upgrades that boost your current weapon’s damage. There are also a whole bunch of hats to find. They might look a bit dorky paired with such badass-looking armour, but each one provides a different buff, so they’re worth it. Then again, if you want to go all in with the goofy outfits, there are several on sale at the pimp my protagonist store.
Sir Whoopass mixes things up with platforming sections and deadly traps you have to avoid, offering a break from the combat that I genuinely enjoyed.
Satirical Elements
I’ve said it before, but Sir Whoopass is a game that pokes fun not only at itself, but at other games in the genre. As a nod to Skyrim and the fanbase’s tendency to hoard them, wheels of cheese are treated as collectibles, hidden all around the map. Unfortunately, you can’t eat them since Sir Whoopass is on a gnome-only diet – so you’ll have to make do with hoarding them in traditional Skyrim fashion.
The developers have hidden plenty of secret areas too. Some are clearly meant for players to find whilst others aren’t. There’s nothing really to find in the latter, but the developers expect us to stumble across them anyway because that’s what we do. I climbed onto the roof of a house in the starting village and found a small note from the developers telling me I wasn’t supposed to be there. There’s even an achievement for visiting an out-of-bounds area.
From falling pianos and shark attacks to the rage-inducing Flappy Knight mini-games and relentless IRS agents that chase you for tax avoidance, there is plenty of random stuff going on to keep you occupied as you explore Weirdwood. There were plenty of times I found myself pleasantly baffled by the random chaos – especially the Little Red Riding Hood parody section.
Performance
My only real issue with Sir Whoopass was the performance. I can’t speak for other platforms, but on the Xbox, it was pretty laggy at times. For the most part, it ran smoothly, but I found that the game lagged quite badly after loading into a new room or if there was too much going on. I’m not sure if it was by design, but the cutscenes after completing specific dungeons also seemed to be laggy and somewhat low quality.
Then there’s what I mentioned about the hit boxes. There were quite a few times when my attacks just didn’t hit when they should have. Certain weapons made the issue worse. The last, supposedly ultimate sword, for example, was powerful enough to one-hit-kill most enemies, but it often missed the mark.
Final Thoughts
Aside from some issues with performance and seemingly inconsistent hitboxes, Sir Whoopass: Immortal Death is actually pretty fun. The combat, whilst clunky, is easy to master, and with traps, platforming, puzzles, and mini-games, there’s a nice variety of gameplay. The main questline was a little repetitive – it was mostly dungeon diving – but I really enjoyed the Little Red Riding Hood side quest. It would be cool to have a few more of those, maybe based on other classic fairytales, to break up all the dungeon diving and give you more of that do-gooder feeling.
This game’s humour isn’t going to be for everyone, and the performance could be better, but it’s a nice little game that provides a few laughs and doesn’t take itself too seriously. To put it simply, it’s dumb fun.
Developer: Atomic Elbow
Publisher: Atomic Elbow
Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5
Release Date: 9th May 2025
Gaming Respawn’s copy of Sir Whoopass: Immortal Death was provided by the publisher.
