Black Book Reviews

great game

+ Интересный сюжет, основанный на [strike]реальных событиях[/strike] элементах реального фольклора. В титрах список на целый экран использованной литературы. + Отличное звуковое оформление, включая полную озвучку всех персонажей. +- Визуальный стиль простоват, но, если не придираться, хорошо передает окружение и настроение повествования - Карточные бои плохо сбалансированы и однообразны. Единожды собрав имбовую комбинацию менять ее смысла до конца игры почти не будет, только немного оптимизировать по ходу открытия новых типов карт и предметов (По моему опыту прохождения на обычной сложности). Игра недвусмысленно намекала на другие потенциально имбалансные комбинации, но пробовать их не находилось веских причин. - В карточных боях счетчик наносимого урона/защиты во время планирования хода не учитывает некоторые важные статусы. Приходится постоянно вычислять их в голове (привет молитвенный урон).

Loved the whole game, but especially the melancholic choir music pieces.

Я доволен. Рад сыграть в карты с Летучим Левонтием и заговоры прочесть с Василисой. Оень схоже с деревенскими будями: тоже будь внимателен и усмотрителен, останешься в достатке. Также матери рассказывал, интересные беседы и у перссонажей. Благодарю за своевременное дело, которое так ярко обновляет мою скромную жизнь: я понимаю и о банных обрядах, и о пасхальных яйцах ещё, участливей.

Good game overall. A lot of the terms were going over my head and eventually got tired of hovering over them. The 'open world' portion was kinda janky, but I guess wasn't too bad. Story was pretty interesting and the ending/epilogue was decently satisfying. Maybe if I do a second run, I can do a pure evil run.

quite disappointing this game generation where the producers do not include a ng+ function where you can enjoy the game with everything you had achieved i see no pleasure struggling to get strong or unlocking abilities but i cant enjoy replaying the game with a full power, build or a complete deck. iF you fill the need of the challenge restart a new game from scratch but dont force ppl to do that.

The game is being review bombed for political reasons. It's a good game and players should ignore the political context. Otherwise, they don't deserve good games.

My favorite game the year it came out. An incredibly, engrossing story with fun mechanics and a world that makes you truly feel like you are living in that time. A+ I recommend this game to all of my friends.

Completed the game the first time around as the "bad" witch and I just have 5 achievements left to get while I do my second playthrough for the good ending. It was fun and I really enjoyed playing around with the different cards you can get and get a good synergy going with your play-style. So far it only seems like the most popular card builds revolve around Waste and Curse so I don't see how you can make more viable builds without them but hopefully that's just my style lol. The game seems straightforward mostly with just a few options to choose from but it does affect other choices you come across which makes it interesting. I went through as much battles as I could but it seems that you don't get full upgrades of everything so you have to make your own choices. There's a lot that you don't even need and seems useless. Don't waste your time to upgrade your chorts or get more game currency if you're going for the bad ending. I'll have to edit my review once I go through the good playthrough but I think being good will be the hardest. Because getting the bad ending and getting all the chorts I ended up with over 600 sin lol. It will be difficult to get less than 130 but we'll see. The card game Durak was difficult at first but it's super easy once you get the hang of it. You don't even need the cheats, you would just need it for that one achievement. You can play the card game instead of battling demons but I don't see how that would be better, maybe if you're getting the good ending. Let me know in the comments lol. Anyway, the game was fun for me and I love the cards, especially towards the end. It was tricky in the middle but it gets easier. I grew to like some of the characters and even the demons! The lore is good too, a lot of reading but I loved everything I learned about Slavic folklore! Thanks to this game I even got good name ideas for my OCs lol.

It's a Russian deck building visual novel where choices kinda matter. [b][ + PROS + ][/b] * Great atmospheric sound * Neat simplistic look * Cool slavic mythos and folk tale references * Interesting 'sins' mechanics (could've used more implementation, but the idea itself is pretty neat) * Can play it with ENG / RU subs and voices [b][ - CONS - ][/b] * The deck builder is clunky and the amount of keywords provided is silly for how simple the combat usually is * The camera in some 'free roam' segments behaves strangely, pixel-hunting for interactables gets kinda annoying * That bloody fireplace in the 'IZBA' hub keeps making a crackling popping sound in my left ear and it's driving me nuts I say the game should've been two times shorter to be a fun and satisfying experience. While the plot is okay, its progression felt slow and partially tedious. I can see some people vibing with this kind of pace, but to me it felt like the devs ran out of ideas after the first couple 'investigations' and their story became a lengthy chain of glorified fetch quests from then on. The setting and visuals overall are quite atmospheric, particularly in cutscenes where the camerawork does all the heavy lifting. The artstyle is simple, but very charming, several locations are just delightful to look at. As for the card system.. The card system is stellar. No, not that card system, I mean the system of playing the card game 'Durak' and losing all my hard-earned money in it. Get it on sale, especially if you're into Russian / European folklore.