Black Book (2021)

Usually, I give 5 stars only for exceptional storytelling, technical excellence, or drastically unique and innovative game mechanics. This game has none, although nothing stands out as particularly bad or boring in the graphics/gameplay department.

However, it is in my opinion a shining example of how real-world mythology needs to be blended with a game's world and narrative. The result is a great atmosphere for a game - not too hard but using the curiosity of the player, that search for the explanation of the various mysteries of life as a driving force.

Of course, growing up loving the Slavic fairytales and knowing quite a few of them, my bias on the subject is apparent but nonetheless, I think it's a great game.

Words cannot express how much I enjoyed this game. All this Russian folklore, epics, omens wow, how they pierce the soul at the level of "oh-oh-oh, my grandmother told me that too" because of which it becomes as interesting as possible to study the world of the game, but let's move away from my impressions and look at the real benefits of this game.

voice acting What annoyed me is that this game has a really COOL voice acting, and the game itself is not so expensive in comparison. with other games at its level, but each dialogue here is voiced by different voices and is quite at a good level

Gameplay by itself, it is quite simple, listening to dialogues, choosing what to answer and overthrowing the demons with your black book, some moments here are riddles that you have to solve from time to time, for the correct answers you get additional experience, but also everywhere there is a hint for half of the received experience. The main point here is the difficulty of the game, even though the game gives you a choice of 4 difficulties (I went through all of them on the third), all battles can be skipped WITHOUT loss of rewards if you really want to, somewhere I even saw that in this way the game can be completed in two hours, what's the point...

Skills, leveling, builds There’s really nothing to talk about skills, because there are frankly skills that don’t make sense to download at all, and there are skills that just have a “must have”, if you wish, skills can be reset, but builds (in this case, I have card sets) are quite an interesting thing, in the sense that it’s clearly where to roam, though the developers didn’t think much about the balance of the cards, so it’s very easy to make an imba deck and take out all the devils in a couple of moves (my fastest fight was with the boss, where I * processed it * for 4 rounds and then killed in 2 hits, lol)

History itself in general, studying demons and crushing them into the smallest details is interesting, no doubt, but the only thing worth considering is that the motivation of the heroine is clear, but for the player it does not seem significant (right now, a mini spoiler, but you will find out about it in the very at the beginning of the game), the heroine becomes a sorceress due to the fact that her boyfriend somehow died, everything is sad, but who this guy was, how their love went, we can only guess because we didn’t see any prerequisites for this, so however, there are no choices in the game at the level of "do something for the heroine and her boyfriend" and "do something else", if such a question arises, the first one automatically occurs, so it does not affect the game much. The world is still interesting to study, quests are interesting to pass and everything is interesting)

Separately, one could talk about * the sorcerer's fool * but I think it will be something at the level of a gwent in the Witcher) Yes, I spent a lot of time behind him, but this is already a matter of taste, but I just advise you to buy and play, I do not regret no matter how much.