Black Book

Absolutely rules. You do have to treat it as kind of a mysterious game, since it's translated *and* it's deeply about the culture it's translated from, but if you have any kind of an interest in Russian folk traditions and Christianity and paganism and syncretism you're probably gonna want to buy in at full price. On the flipside, if you're Christian and not super comfy with the occult you may have an Extra Bad time here. Or you might be fine. It's a testament to how strong the writing and atmosphere are that I got some goosebumps, in a way I didn't from Faith. In Black Book you play as an apprentice witch whose lover was believed to have committed suicide, and so was denied a Christian burial, condemning them to hell. The only reasonable way to fish him out is by entering into a pact with the devil to crack some seals on an old book, and right away Black Book starts to show some nuance. It does use words like evil, but it's surprisingly slow to judge. Demons are compelled by their nature. People are driven by desires and by trauma. Witches are defined by their pacts with things. God is a set of rules that you can comply with, or suffer if you fail to. You can do evil witch stuff, which gets you money and power. You can do kind witch stuff, which makes the lives of others better. You can do godly stuff, which absolves your sins. You can treat demons kindly or attack them and the same is true of people. There's a lot of mechanical depth, even if the core battle system is a kind of wonky Slay The Spire, and the striking thing about Black Book is how much research is in it. This is a game that wants to teach, record, and preserve folk beliefs---and it is willing to do so in exhaustive detail. There's heaps of items, herbs, little interactions, journal entries, even a subsystem about picking dialog choices based on your understanding of certain traditions for more exp. There's an upgrade tree, which isn't actually that deep but there's a lot of it (take meaningless tasks for chorts, and then equipment capacity upgrades, and then take whatever you want, maybe splash in a level of cheating at poker.) Oh, yeah, there's a whole Russian card game that is badly explained but fun once you get the knack for it. It's kind of like War, but you can extend your combo and shove a million cards into the other guy's hand. Things being badly explained is kind of a throughline in Black Book. The translation isn't even super consistent, and it makes dialog choices feel kinda perilous sometimes. There's three girls and you're supposed to pick "the third from the left." Does that mean rightmost girl? Leftmost girl? She's also supposedly bloody but none of them are, so you click on one to see if there's more context and ope, guess you chose that one. On top of this, the clues for questions sometimes just do not exist. You'll get a journal entry that says "sometimes changelings replace babies with aspen logs" and the question you have is "how do you tell" and that's not in the entry lmao. However, the game has pretty generous difficulty settings and has a "skip this battle" option that does not penalize you and that the game's few puzzle fights would be genuinely unplayable without ("do exactly the right sequence of card drops" sucks already and it gets way way worse when it is not clear how *specifically* any given mechanic works.) I think in a game with less heart, I'd find these issues really annoying, but in Black Book they're easy to ignore because of how strong the rest of the vision is. I'll update as I play, but thus far it's been one of my favorite games this year, with a richness and earnestness that's hard to compete with.

Прекрасный представитель столь нишевого жанра. Хоть я и не любитель карточных боевок, но история, подача, атмосфера и озвучка - просто великолепны. Затягивает так, что проходишь залпом за несколько дней.

Ну что мои крепостные славянофилы. Очередной шедевр под названием "Чёрная кНииигга". Шикарная игра с интересным сюжетом, различными выборами, влияюшими на последствия. Пермские разработчики шикарно и с огромной любовью подошли к Коми-Пермяцкой культуре. Есть проблемы с интерфейсом (он не самый удобный и лучший). Картонная анимация персонажей. А вообще разработчики молодцы. Поддерживаю их в начинании и жду новых шедевров. ЗАЦЕНИ, ЗДЕСЬ РЕАЛЬНЫЕ ПАЦАНЫ, ЗА МОРАЛЬНОЕ ЗДОРОВЬЕ НАЦИИ. 8/10

15小时了,看着攻略勉强打完第二章.个人感觉问题很大,打5/10分,不推荐游玩. 音乐应该是加分的,甚至有局内收集(音乐),多是女生吟唱,跟教堂做礼拜似的,冲天灵盖,文化里没有,听不明白. 美术加分,比较有特点,有些没见过的新东西,俄国乡下那种空旷寂静冷冽的感觉,不错. 玩法上游戏的卡牌系统是我玩过最差的..词条多 且说明模糊(不知道是不是翻译的问题) 且排列组合,有种看excel表格的感觉,词条会相互影响,算伤害非常难受(我玩福佑流),只想无脑一点,没动力深究,数值脚填,拿新卡牌默认进你构筑,每次都要去手动移除??每张卡牌能带多张,没啥意义,都是以最低的13张卡牌来构筑的.没有什么正反馈. 剧情,专业词汇太多了,加上俄国人这个没啥记忆点的名字.只能看懂动词(夸张了)看的时候大概是这样的:xxx在xxx的xxx,你要去找xxx来帮助xxx解除xxx.都要愣一下去反应这个xxx是什么东西或者是谁还是什么精怪.精怪图志每个字都认识,但读完不知道是是什么意思,这可能需要一些文化的辅助理解??就像把中国的神话普及给外国人一样困难. 还有其他评论中说的一些bug 如存档,对完话,精怪安排好,存档退出,下次玩发现都要重新来一遍,这个手动存档和没有一样. 如人物走动,点一个地方模型要转个圈往前走,走的还慢,有些地方看起来能走,其实不行,还得退回去,能交互的东西还要等你靠近才出现标识,大视角的迷之移动,人物都出画面半天了也不跟着动,这些都导致我漏掉了很多交互,个人感觉人物的行走根本没必要做,进图后把能交互的用列表排开在一边就行了.谜题全靠攻略,看着答案都不明白问的是什么. 这些缺点交叉出现,导致我可以感受到制作者有花心思做,但玩起来异常难受且无聊且疑惑. 现在支撑我玩下去的动力是不喜欢玩游戏烂尾和不错的美术和期待后期可能理解的剧情.

I might be too harsh on deckbuilders, but I played too many and I dont care about this genre anymore. The game is very rich in slavic lore and if you are into reading and listening to a lot lore about slavic demons (and I am slavic so this should be for me) go right in. Personally I found the gameplay loop very boring and even though I was interested in the story, I couldnt get myself to play more because of the dull gameplay.

Игра купленная по случаю на распродаже оказалась неожиданным алмзом в моей коллекции. Отличная атмосфера и сюжет. Однозначо рекомендую к прохождению. Деьги потрачены не зря!

Узрела я диво дивное - игрище компьютерное. С первых же минут душу оно пленяет, сердце веселит. Озвучие сладкозвучное, яко хор ангельский, слух услаждает. Бой же картный, мерный и пошаговый - яко ратное дело: думай мудро, шаг держи верный. А рисовка в том игрище - ох ты ж батюшки святы! Зело красна, дивная, ажно дух захватывает, и взор мой не насытится! Сказываю вам, добры молодцы и красны девицы: воистину игрище сие достойно хвалы всякой и каждому испытать надобно! 10 бисей из 10!

感觉这游戏还挺不错的吧，有队友剧情，玩家的选择也会影响后续剧情，还在卡牌对战基础上插入了解谜、潜行之类的玩法，该有的都有了，甚至还有比主线好看百倍的民俗传说会随着在地图上的探索解锁，神话传说在口口相传中失真的主题我也特别喜欢。 虽然卡牌对战挺无聊的，本身就是纯算数，难度又不合理，要么打不过要么脚打，就没几场真正打得过瘾的，而且临近结局又是不能使用队友又是不能使用恶魔，强迫玩家在结局之前放弃已经用顺手了的卡组，只能临时从新组一套。而且我对这个游戏里善恶的定义太有意见了，尤其是风琴手的结局，我让他别结婚，最后他就被关进劳改营了，这游戏里结婚的人已经够多了吧，放过这一个难道不行吗？ 感觉主线剧情最大的问题是，未婚夫作为主角为了许愿上天入地的动力，居然0塑造。游戏里只能看到主角隔几天就对着未婚夫坟头哭泣，主角因为未婚夫被爷爷害死而愤怒，但她为什么要哭，为什么要愤怒，主角到底看上这男人哪里了，我最后也不知道，除非这游戏本意其实是让我让我代入未婚夫来的...... 玩了两把DLC，纯打牌无剧情，非常无聊，后悔买了DLC

Крутейший проект. Очень качественный продукт. Исполнение, сюжет и атмосферность выше всяких похвал!