![]() The combat in Black Book takes the form of a card game, played by taking pages out of the titular book. Vasilisa is always on a dark path regardless of how you choose to play - the scene at the start of the game where she gets her powers involves a short trip to Hell, where she's greeted like a promising new talent - but you can try not to lean into that. It's an interesting approach to the typical video game morality scale, which too often splits between sainthood and petty dickishness. That means you'll make less currency and have fewer skill points to spend on valuable combat capabilities. She's not getting out of this clean however you play it, but you can invest in ways to minimize the damage. It's not so much a balancing act on a karma meter as it's a question of how evil you want Vasilisa to be. That means you have to set them out to do petty acts against the countryside, each of which gives you cash on completion but also earns you some startlingly high number of Sins. However, Vasilisa also has a bunch of demons under her command who have to be given something to do at all times, or they'll torment her instead, which inflicts significant mechanical penalties. It decreases whenever she does something kind. Vasilisa gradually accumulates a stat called Sins that reflects her morality, which is increased whenever she commits a crime or consorts with evil spirits. In general, being a witch in 19th-century Russia isn't a heroic job. Her primary quest is always in the background, but much of Black Book is what happens to her while she's making other plans. While she searches for the information she needs, Vasilisa serves as the new witch and "knower" for the local peasants, where she chases off demons, fights ghosts, and deals with the occasional curse. If Vasilisa can figure out a way to break the other six, she can wish for whatever she wants, including the resurrection of her fiance, or so the old story goes. The Book in question contains many spells and is marked with seven seals, the first of which is already broken. To get him back, Vasilisa goes back to her old mentor Egor and takes up his role as a koldun, a practitioner of witchcraft and demonology, as well as his Black Book. She planned to ignore that and get married, but then her fiance suddenly turned up dead. Vasilisa is an orphaned girl who has the potential to become a witch. Even though that "terminology" is just keeping various Russian words intact, like "koldun" (witch) and "zagovor" (spell, prayer), I had to take notes as I played. Black Book has that issue you run into with some urban fantasy and weirder RPGs, where it's generating its own terminology so fast that it's easy to get lost in the shuffle. With new releases like this and Cris Tales, we're finally starting to see more video games that go further outside the typical Tolkien-by-way-of-Gygax pastiche. What I appreciate, though, is that this isn't anywhere near the typical Western fantasy environment. Black Book Review: Witching Hourīlack Book is a creepy walking tour through the 19th-century Russian countryside at night, where you're constantly perched on a razor's edge between being a full-on villain protagonist or a vaguely contrite anti-hero. If you would've liked Slay the Spire or Roguebook more with a 20-hour narrative mode attached, Black Bookis your particular jam. It's a digital card game with RPG elements, but it also has an exploration/conversation element that mixes in a little bit of classic '90s adventure game. It's hard to pin Black Book's exact genre down. ![]()
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