BLACKTAIL is an action-adventure game developed by The Parasight and published by Focus Interactive. The game follows the origins of the mythical Baba Yaga, who in this game is but a young teenager searching for her sister Zora, who has gone missing without a trace. Armed with only her bow, and with a mysterious voice guiding her, Yaga sets out away from her village to find her sister and forge her destiny.
PROS:
For starters, this game is magnificent to look at. The stylized artistic direction, combined with the lighting and weather systems help to create a vast and imposing wilderness that also holds a great sense of awe and wonder. The player can often get lost in the forest, which is a good thing, as it allows the player to explore and collect resources, or find themselves in sticky situations fighting against the many enemies in the game. The music only adds to this experience, as it helps amplify the game’s mood perfectly. Traipsing through the woods is accompanied by quiet ambiance while approaching a dangerous-looking, ghostly hut is accompanied with a haunting bellowful choir. It elevates the experiences in the game as a whole to its greatest extent.
As for the gameplay, Blacktail offers a lot for the player to partake. Combat is a great place to start; the player is armed with only a bow and is set out to hunt for food. The player starts with no arrows, which guides the player to scavenge the landscape for ingredients to make arrows: sticks from shrubs and feathers from under flying crows. With these, the player is able to hunt a wandering deer for food, which teaches the player about the cooking mechanics, which apply buffs and debuffs to the player depending on how good or bad the food was cooked. Once the player reaches the hut later in the game, they get access to a cauldron, which serves as the main upgrading mechanic of the game. What works about this mechanic is it feeds directly back into the main gameplay loop of Blacktail, which is using what the landscape offers to you to progress. Upgrades are obtained through making potions, which use ingredients found through scavenging in order to make them, thus making every ingredient, every component, every detail of the world’s setting necessary to the player.
CONS:
And while this game’s gameplay is simple and effective, and the art style and music are superb to experience, the game struggles to bring it home through the ineffective portrayal of its main selling point: the story. The game follows the origins of the Baba Yaga, recontextualizing it to follow a young Yaga, a sixteen-year-old girl who searches for her sister while a dangerous being, Baba the Witch, stalks the woods, reportedly stealing children from Yaga’s village. And while this makes for a compelling start to the story, the implementation of it suffers through the game’s unending desire to portray the story as a mystery. Characters are introduced vaguely, the setting is explained vaguely, motivations are introduced vaguely. If the player is not constantly in the game’s journal reading every lore bit possible, they might find the explanations given to them outside of it a bit challenging to understand completely.
This ties into another issue with the story and the game as a whole, which is the morality system. When morality systems work, they help to amplify the story, giving the player a sense of influence over what happens. This game claims they offer this, but in reality, they fall flat. At the beginning of the game, the player is given a choice between wanting to be good or evil, and what they choose defines where they start along the morality line. However, this means that if say the player chooses they want to be good, they start out maxed out on the good side of the morality line. And when given options between good and bad routes, the game automatically chooses what path the player will take based on where the player lies on the morality line. Besides outside influences like freeing or killing birds trapped in a plant’s vines or other trivial means, the player is out of control of their own morality within the confines of the story, which causes the game’s story as a whole to suffer.
CONCLUSION:
BLACKTAIL struggles to tell its folklore-inspired story to its fullest potential, thanks in part to an ineffective morality system and vague characterization, setting explanation, and motivations. However, the game makes up for it in snappy, well-responsive and honestly fun gameplay and a fantastic art style and soundtrack. The game, as a whole, is a lot of fun despite its flaws and offers an incredibly large amount of content to offer. I’d highly recommend picking up this game upon release on December 15th.
SCORE: 8/10
BLACKTAIL is available for PC via Steam.
For more information, visit www.focus-entmt.com
Related: Reviews by Matthew White
An avid gamer, Matthew is also an aspiring game developer. Because of this, Matthew knows not only what makes a game great, but also the hard work and artistry required to craft such a phenomenal experience.
More Stories
TRASH GOBLIN Releases for PC via Steam Early Access
Captivating Musical Platforming Experience SYMPHONIA Makes its Way to PCs and Consoles December 5th
Season 5 of Ubisoft’s THE CREW MOTORFEST Begins Signaling Start of Year 2