Black Book

Black Book was reviewed on a PS4

What if all of humanity’s troubles were caused by a bunch of mischievous demons, that wander around in the middle of the night, wreaking havoc on puny humans. That’s the world of Black Book in a nutshell. A world that’s based on Slavic Folklore, in which demons are a constant annoyance, causing famine and pestilence on a daily basis.

In Black Book, right from the start, you’re thrust into the bowels of hell as you chat up the devil himself. You play as Vasilisa, a young sorceress who lost her beloved, and wants to bring him back to life, using a demonic artifact called the Black Book that has the power of granting a wish to whoever uncovers its 7 seals. A destiny she once abandoned, she finally decides to take on the mantle and become the witch she was destined to be.

What is Black Book?

Black Book is a modern version of a text adventure game, with a fun and fluid turn-based combat system that’s simple yet engaging, and with a few RPG elements sprinkled on top. From its opening animated cutscene to its end credits, Black Book is as polished as a AAA game, even if it lacks their scope. The stories told here are enchanting, compelling and they do a great job of introducing and fleshing out all of the characters. Most of the characters are fleshed out and relatable, even the evil spirits have their own motivations and desires. Taking place in 19^th century Russia and heavily inspired by Russian folklore, this tale of antiheroic witches and sinister demons is a breath of fresh air.

The audiovisual presentation is stunning to say the least. Dark sound effects and gloomy ominous ambient music draw you into the game’s bleak world as you explore each area of its rural environments. The gothic art style perfectly complements the game’s melancholic ambiance as well. Even in locations that are set during daytime, you can feel the tension in the air as the wind softly but menacingly howls and the crows soar across the cloudy sky. Black Book is dedicated to engrossing you in its dark but hauntingly beautiful world. Oh, and the best part is that all of its dialogues are fully voiced and the voice acting isn’t all that bad actually.

A few locations that are essential for your main quest can be explored in the traditional telltale games fashion. Meaning that you can control Vasilisa and move her between several locations, solving simple puzzles and collecting a few herbs along the way. The camera perspective is fixed and smoothly transitions between each location. However, these instances are merely a small portion of the game’s lengthy story mode.

Let’s fight a bannik at a banya with our army of chorts.

Are you as clueless as I am when it comes to Russian folklore? Well worry not, because the game introduces a unique system that should be absolutely commended and implemented in every modern game from now on. During conversations, the characters will utter the names of demons, sorcerers and other terms related to the game’s Slavic myths and legends. The game will give you a brief explanation about each word with a simple press of a button.

You don’t have to go to the menu, or open a new window just to read a 3-pages thesis about a certain demon. A simple popup will give you a line or two of explanations. It’s fluid and simple. Instead of relying on a codex that’s accessed from the menu screen, the game cleverly and seamlessly integrates these tidbits of information directly into its gameplay elements. There’s still a huge codex to go through though, so get your reading glasses ready.

You’ll often put that newly gained knowledge to good use as you’re often asked during conversations to answer a question that only an all-knowing witch like Vasilisa would be able to answer. Answering correctly grants you some extra XP points and pushes you to spend the time to learn about the folklore presented in the game. For me, learning what an izba, a chort, a bannik and a banya are was an integral part of what made Black Book such a unique game.

By the time you’re done with the game, you’ll be fully knowledgeable in Slavic folklore. Not only because the game keeps mentioning these Slavic words, but also because the stories and quests surrounding them are memorable. Even the side quests that are brought to you by the neighboring villagers are witty and cleverly written. In the world of Black Book, people often seek witches, or knowers, for help and guidance on any supernatural elements. You’re often asked to do things like investigating a shadowy figure at a mill, or performing an exorcism on a bathhouse spirit or even curse someone’s mother in law.

Black Books is split up into several chapters, with each tackling a new threat and introducing a variety of new characters. You travel across a map from one location to the other. On each location, there’s an event or an encounter where you get the option of choosing a bunch of dialogue options. Some options will lead to a confrontation and a battle while others skip the fight altogether. This gives the game the charm of the old 90s text adventure games, where you get to sort of choose your own adventure. Picking the right dialogue choice can sometimes help you discover new locations, new traders or merchants and even fight off new enemy types.

A Deck Building Turn Based Combat System

The turn-based system is intuitive and fun. Vasilisa casts her spells and curses using pages from the Black Book. These pages are either defensive or offensive, represented by white and black pages respectively. The defensive pages can restore your health, grant you a certain buff or a shield. While the offensive black pages can debuffs your enemies, poison them or deal damage to them.

Casting shields protects you from any damage that’s equal or below the amount that you casted. However, the shield breaks at the end of the turn regardless of your enemies’ attacks. This provides the opportunity of strategically managing your health and shields while keeping track of the amount of damage that the enemy will deal you.

During each turn, you get the option of using three different pages, however, the pages are also split up into keys and orders, and you can only use one key page during your attacks. The combat system might seem rather complicated, but I assure you that it’s simple once you try it out for yourself. The game doesn’t do a great job of intuitively explaining all of its combat systems, but with enough trial and error, you’ll master them in no time.

As you gain more spells and pages, you can build the right deck and prepare yourself beforehand for any annoying boss fights that ignore certain curses or spells. All in all, the combat system in Black Book is easy to learn. It’s fast paced and does a great job of providing the right amount of challenge. Some of the boss fights can be troublesome though. A particular early boss fight, an evil mermaid, caused me quite some trouble, as a single one of her attacks would drain most of my health. Only by experimenting with my deck of pages was I able to defeat her.

These frustrating fights were made even more annoying due to the lack of a chapter selection screen. The autosave system was generous, no doubt about that, but I would have liked to reset my progress even further so I can try and gather more herbs or more pages for my deck.

Let’s chill at the Izba

When you’re not out fighting demons in the middle of the night, you can spend a few minutes at the game’s hub area, your grandfather and mentor’s izba. There’s a few activities to do, such as playing a card game called Durak, talking with your companions, uncovering more of their origins, and managing your chorts. Chorts are demons that you can take under your wings and command them as you see fit.

Chorts are restless and as such, they’ll torture their master (i.e. you) and apply debuffs during combat if they don’t have any evil activities to do. That’s why you’ll have to assign each one of them to a different mischievous activity to do around the villages. Spoiling rye for the villagers, summoning thunderstorms, and even causing a drought are some of the ways that they can torture the poor villagers.

When they’re done, you gain a few coins that you can use to buy a few Christianity themed herbs and items such as psalms and the leg of a saint to name a few, these can help you during your battles by restoring health, granting a shield or debuffing and buffing both you and your enemies.

Sending chorts to do their evil deeds fills up your sin meter, a meter that can influence the game’s ending. Your sins will also increase because of your choices during the game’s events. Robbing someone’s grave or stealing a peasant’s coins are some of the ways that you can increase your sins.

Overall,

Black Book is an atmospheric game that meaningfully explores Slavic folklore, Myths and legends that are mostly unknown to western audiences. This helps set the game apart from the traditional AAA RPGs. The fact that the game is authentic and doesn’t shy away from using Russian terms is a true blessing. It often challenged my own beliefs when it came to what a demon is or isn’t, and the same can be applied to any of the creatures that you meet in the game. Black Book wears its Slavic origins sleeves and is all the better for it.

Even if we set aside its engaging narrative, its combat system, its art and visual style, even its dialogues are all perfectly crafted. With more than 20 Hours of content, Black Book is absolutely worth a buy for anyone who’s interested in Slavic Folklore, deck building or turn based RPGs.

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Special thanks go to HypeTrain Digital for providing us with a review code.

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