[Review] Black Book - Nintendo Switch

Developed By: Morteshka
Published By: HypeTrain Digital
Categories: Adventure, RPG
Release Date: 08.10.21

For love, anything is worth giving up. For Vasilisa, this was aspirations of becoming a witch. Unfortunately however, the love of her life passes way. Stricken by grief, Vasilisa stop at nothing to bring him back to life, even delving deeper into the dark arts, and using the titular Black Book. The Black Book requires she find Seven Seals to order to use it’s power, so she begins her quest.

Vasilisa isn’t just out to do dark deeds, the contrary infact, she’s also a bit of a gopher for the townsfolk, to help them in their time of needs, especially when demons are involved. It starts with a bit of an interview of sorts with the person requesting your assistance. Lest you choose to help and answer the right questions, on our quest we go.

This is like a traditional RPG. You see your goal, usually the demon to take hold of, or remove. Your path is a bit branched however. You *can* go right to the demon, battle and stage by stage, or you can talk a few detours. This I’d recommend. Doing this can grant you more cards, better cards, or even heal you. This is to say if you play your…cards right and succeed in battles.

Lets discuss battles. This is a card based game, with turn based combat. You’ll have defensive and offensive cards. As much as you’ll want to, don’t just go full ham and charge in guns a blazing. The defensive cards have the perk of making a buffer for damage. Consider it extra health points. Some enemies, especially those stronger demons can and will kill you quickly if you don’t use your cards like this. Fights will most likely go slower, but your chances of winning will be higher.

Between journeys, you’re going to want to send your chorts off to pester other people. Otherwise, they’ll just torment you. This usually has them just be general nuisances. This can net you money and make your sin go up. Then again, you can just ignore this, it’s up to you.

Black Book employs the use of a skill tree. Fighting, having proper knowledge of terms and answering requests and question properly will level you up and let you fiddle with what skills you want. Make your chorts bring more back, start battles off with an advantage, hold and use more items. Even just being stronger as a whole.

Black Book happens to be one of those games that I don’t think is very good looking or sounding, but I like how it presents itself regardless. A key component is very much eastern European folklore. The game goes all in, to the extent of having a glossary for terms. It’s in one’s best interest to keep these in your head.

That said, if you have no interest in any of that, your drive to play the game might wane. The game is so drenched in it, if you don’t care, the push, regardless of good gameplay to go on just might not be there. I personally have very little interest in the folklore, but was invested in the gameplay. I like card games. And if you are interest, you’ll get a lot more mileage of the game.