BLACKTAIL Review - Good Tale, Tiresome Game
As good as the story is in BLACKTAIL from a popular online games provider Friv2Online Studio website, the gameplay of this game is just as awkward, annoying and unpolished. We tell in the review why you want to linger in this fairy tale based on Slavic mythology, and why you don’t want to linger in it.
Yaga is a young girl who was unlucky: an orphan since childhood, because of a strange mark on her face, she is forced to hide behind an impenetrable mask. Only her twin sister Zora understood her, and often defended her from the attacks of the villagers, who did not like the wonderful hermit.
It was rumored that Yaga studies magic, according to many, she is in cahoots with the witch Baba, and is involved in the mysterious disappearance of children in the village: Volko disappeared without a trace three years ago, Slavitsy was missing a year later, and a year later Dragoy did not return home. Now Zora has disappeared, and our heroine is left completely alone, without protection. Not wanting to remain an outcast where she is not loved, Yaga went to the forest in search of her sister and friends.
There, the girl did not find anyone, but she found a hut with a black cat and an eerie idol inside... Thus begins Yaga's journey, in which she will have to uncover the secret of her origin, learn about the events of the past and make a choice that will determine her future.
BLACKTAIL plunges into the world of fairy tales and magic, in which both Slavic and European myths are guessed. It is interesting to follow the adventures of Yagi, unwinding her story like a ball. Although the plot development is predictable, it does not become less exciting for this.
It's nice to deal with the problems of other characters, among which there are very bizarre personalities. You can be taken aback by the unexpected, meeting with intelligent mushrooms, the warlike Queen Ant or the charming Sudar Worm. Communication with them is a lot of pleasant moments of the game that can sincerely make you laugh: the game is crazy in a good way, and the wealth of the authors' imagination can only be envied.
The mood of the game evokes associations with "Alice in Wonderland": a world in which there are no rules, logic and a harmonious structure, which exists on its own and manages to remain complete and correct in its own way. In contrast to the carefree and funny characters, Yaga's story feels even more tragic, and this has a great effect on its perception.
NPCs are not only not averse to chatting, but also always happy to give the girl some kind of assignment. Whether the heroine agrees to fulfill it depends on her "moral compass". And not only from this: morality is affected by many actions, such as deciding to knock down a bee hive from a tree or helping a hedgehog that cannot get an apple from a tree.
All this inclines the arrow of the "compass" in the direction of evil or good, and opens up various possibilities for Yaga. For example, if the protagonist steps into the path of light, she gets more resources, and her ability slows targets in front of her. In turn, if you choose the dark side, you can get healing spheres in battle and drain health from opponents. There are many moral forks in BLACKTAIL, and not all of them are simple and unambiguous, so it is difficult to keep your “compass” strictly in the chosen position: as in reality, it can fluctuate back and forth, following momentary decisions.
But you can not talk with all the characters - more often you have to fight. The game takes place in an open world, a magical forest inhabited by various creatures. From spiders and carnivorous plants to gnolls and ice trolls, each of the monsters strives to hit Yaga hard.
In turn, the girl is armed with a bow with several types of arrows, a couple of spells that knock back and destroy opponents, a jerk that allows you to evade a blow, and a broom - however, contrary to expectations, you can’t fly on it: the broom sticks into the ground, distracting opponents while the heroine shoots them from a safe distance.
When it comes to skirmishes, the title cannot be assessed unambiguously. Shooting with a bow is not very convenient, ranging from the inability to spam arrows to the size of the enemies - some of them are too small to hit them easily. Considering that the monsters attack in groups and tend to get close, the battle can quickly end in defeat. I have a lot of experience playing first-person shooters on a controller, and I reach certain heights in this, but in BLACKTAIL I was uncomfortable.
There is also pumping in the game, which is quite difficult, given that in order to learn a skill, you need to find a scroll with a recipe, get special teeth from chests hidden in secluded places, which serve as something like talent points here, and also collect a certain amount of resources. After that, you can go to the Izba, throw the scroll, teeth and herbs into the cauldron and master the desired ability.
These skills are divided into four branches - hare, goat, crow and snake. They belong to several conditional categories: improving abilities related to the use of a bow, making potions, magic skills, pumping a broom, and so on. If you learn several skills from a certain branch, for example, snakes, the corresponding enchantments will open - passive bonuses, such as an increase in the number of arrows in your inventory or mana recovery after killing an enemy.
While leveling affects the gameplay by making Yaga stronger, it's depressing how actively the game pushes you to grind resources. They are needed here for absolutely everything, from learning skills to making arrows, and this significantly slows down the progress of the player, despite the fact that resources are scattered in abundance in the world. You have to stop very often to collect herbs and feathers, extract the eyes from spiders and extract honeycombs from beehives.
At the same time, the structure of the open world of BLACKTAIL is not so convenient that you want to explore it. Enemies constantly respawn in already cleared locations, which annoys and slows down: if at first it is interesting to fight them, then by the final stages of the game you try to bypass them, although it is not always possible to do this without losing health.
Platforming curved and buggy: Yaga can simply not grab the edge of the platform, which will lead to a fall and possibly even death of the character. There is no normal fast travel here, so in such cases, if you, for example, fall from a hill, you will have to look for a way to get back up for a long time.
And the rewards for a thorough study of the world are not always justified. In a hard-to-reach area where you have been trying to climb for an hour, a handful of resources may be found, while a chest with "fat" loot may be right in the middle of a bare clearing.
The game does not always inform the player that certain skills are required to progress through the story. For example, at one of the stages, the heroine finds herself in a cold area where ice monsters live, and many passages are blocked by blocks of ice. It is impossible to pass it without the skill of making ice arrows, and if you have not learned it by this time, you will suffer, constantly getting stuck and not understanding what to do next. Yes, many cult games of the past also did not lead the gamer by the hand, but modern game design taught that at least in story missions, the authors should provide all the tools for passing so that the player does not abandon the passage halfway through.
Finally, there are episodes in the game where it turns into a side-scrolling 2D platformer. This is the worst part of the title, and even though the scenes reveal important details about Yagi's past, the gameplay is so bad here that you just try to endure them, hoping that the run won't take too long.
BLACKTAIL lacks polish. With the script, characters and humor, everything is fine - even very good. For the sake of this, it is worth enduring tedious, repetitive gameplay, bugs and other shortcomings. We must also make allowance for the fact that this is the debut game for THE PARASIGHT studio, and for the first project, some mistakes are excusable. Let's hope that the next titles igrodelov will be a little more balanced.
