Blacktail Review: the myth of Baba Yaga in a fairy-tale open world

After spending several hours in the fantastic world outlined by the Polish studio we can finally tell you about this singular adaptation operation, which manages to bring the themes of Slavic folklore into the videogame field, without however avoiding stumbles due to inexperience as regards the overall realization. Indeed, we are faced with a product that is not free from shortcomings, even net of the excellent work done in the construction of its narrative universe. Element from which we want to start to explain – first of all – what Blacktail excels without reservations.

The birth of a legend

Of the many mythologies that appear recursively on the panorama of pop culture, sometimes establishing even more incredible myths and legends (by the way, here the special on the rewriting of Norse myths in God of War Ragnarok), the one of Slavic origin often remains behind the lines, trapped in a rich yet difficult past to reconstruct due to a tradition handed down largely orally.

Also thanks to a certain reluctance to want to translate what has been written instead, this mythological current appears today as a changing narrative background, in which numerous stories have been deposited. Baba Yaga, the monstrous old lady with magical powers who is the protagonist of Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, Czech and Slovak fairy tales, has her roots right in this context, and is a character as iconic as she is controversial. If it is true that she appears mainly as an antagonistic figure, a sort of child-eating witch as in the story of Vasilisa the Beautiful , in other stories she instead plays the role of a benevolent, albeit spiteful helper, inclined to give advice to the hero of the story. ‘adventure.

The idea behind Blacktail, it is evident, is not only to want to bring this enigmatic character within the videogame panorama, but also to enhance the multiple stylistic contaminations that have allowed its diffusion among the various Slavic-speaking countries, restoring the ambiguity that characterizes the figure of Baba Yaga in the collective imagination. To do this, The Parasight has decided to rebuild the myth from scratch, putting us in the shoes of an unaware and barely sixteen-year-old Yaga, who gets lost in the maze of an enchanted forest to find her sister Zora, who mysteriously disappeared from her native village.

An important crossroads immediately opens up in front of the very young girl: which path to choose between light and darkness? This is not an exquisitely narrative question, but rather a fundamental gameplay element of the whole experience. At the basis of the entire adventure there will in fact be a karma system that we will always have to keep an eye on, weighing up every interaction with the game environment and its characters.

Choosing, for example, whether to free a trapped bird rather than end its suffering by killing it will affect the alignment bar, which will in turn be responsible for some bonuses and can sometimes even limit the power of the skills that we will unlock.

Even more important is then deciding whether and how to help the wacky individuals we will meet on our way , such as Mr. Larva, constantly grappling with the demons of the Underworld, or the Queen of the Ants intent on colonizing mankind. After questioning ourselves about the intentions of these magical creatures, we will have to identify the path most in line with the ethical direction chosen at the start, all in a path of self-determination that deferentially refers to Slavic mythology: we will be the much feared child-eating witch , or a benevolent presence in full harmony with natural forces? From this point of view we can say that the work of the Polish team has pleasantly impressed us, proving to be capable of conveying messages of values, even important ones , against a well-constructed plot rich in nuances of meaning.

The interpretation, generally of a good standard, wavers only in some interludes designed to add a small dose of humor which, however, fail to fit harmoniously into the framework of a story with sometimes disturbing implications. But the way in which Blacktail is reconstructing the myth of Baba Yaga step by step reveals truly effective writing solutions , especially in relation to the system of moral choices and the peaks of pathos that in certain situations it proves to be able to reach.

An exotic mythology

The other great achievement achieved by The Parasight lies in having built a game world perfectly adhering to the legacy of Slavic folklore. To begin with, little Yaga will find refuge in a magical hut set on what appear to be nothing more than two chicken legs, a typical element with which the witch’s abode is associated. Or the presence of the many black cats, which serve as a fast journey back to the hut , are a clear reference to the story of Vasilisa, who often finds herself talking to Baba Yaga’s magic cat during his imprisonment.

However, it is not only on an iconographic level that Blacktail refers to the canons of Slavic fairy tales, but also and above all on a thematic one. In the work of The Parasight it is in fact possible to find some of the most important “functions” that the Russian writer Vladimir Propp identified in The Morphology of the Fairy Tale , an essay on the characteristic elements of Slavic narratology dating back to 1928.

The theme of estrangement is the certainly predominant one , which gives rise to the premise of the entire story, with the escape of the protagonist from her village. But there are also references to the ban – self-imposed by Yaga, who promises not to return home until he has found his sister – and at theinvestigation , on which many of the quests are based.

The only flaw of this well-chiseled mosaic of folk elements is the graphic style, which ends up colliding too harshly with the content depth of the entire product due to some choices that are not very appropriate in our opinion. We are referring in particular to the style of the celestial bodies, such as the moon and the stars, which are depicted in a stylized way , as a child could have drawn them.

It is a choice clearly aimed at reiterating that one is still living a fairy tale, and yet we do not find it too much in line with the level of depth that the narrative register often requires. In partial compensation, however, we must admit that, as a whole, the artistic direction sometimes manages to give the game worlda remarkable glance despite the obvious limits of the polygonal count.

A combat system to review

However, the problems relating to the gaming sector are more inescapable, where we encountered the same uncertainties we talked about during our Blacktail test.

The first-person setting ends up debasing the combat system based on the use of the bow, where inaccurate hitboxes and a general difficulty in calculating the distance from one’s opponents make the clashes cumbersome and most often frustrating. To this must be added the little fluid movements of the protagonist, which undoubtedly clash with the dynamism required during the combat phases, where we will often be attacked by gnomes throwing stones and mushrooms capable of teleporting quickly from one part of the field to another battle. And this even considering the presence of the lateral dodge, whose margin of evasion seemed really too limited.

After all, the development of the character through a generous skill treeit only partially addresses the shortcomings of such a poorly oiled combat system. There are very few and difficult to obtain skills capable of changing – however never radically – the approach to the clashes, and try to exploit the environment to one’s advantage.

For example, hitting a beehive at the right time could sometimes be a more difficult undertaking than expected. Reason why the battles are often reduced to a rather tedious hit and run, also thanks to an almost completely absent feedback from the shots and a frame-rate that in the most agitated phases wavers all too conspicuously. Even the boss-fights, although as a whole they try to promote varied playful solutions, are far from representing the focal points of the experience, sometimes revealing themselves as mere formalities, or – especially the optional ones – unnecessarily punitive clashes. The lack, however, of a practical method to replenish the health barnot only does it not find any kind of justification, but it ends up making the combat phases even more difficult to manage considering the large amount of damage that enemies will be able to cause us.

An unbalanced experience

Being an open world action with a clear survival vocation, the other essential component of the Blacktail play system is crafting .

The features of PS5 As clear as the cross-gen nature of the title is, the lack of use of the features of the adaptive triggers of DualSense has left us a bit disappointed, especially considering how well a weapon like the bow lends itself to that purpose . Furthermore, we encountered unsuspectingly long loadings for a game map that is not that extensive in terms of size. A separate discussion instead as regards the audio sector, which works particularly well in deploying ambient sounds and noises all around.

Attention is immediately placed on the need to procure materials such as wood, feathers, honey or more to build the arrows of your bow – between normal, sticky and magical – and other tools to which we will have access as the adventure progresses . The collection method is simple and intuitive (just pressing a button), so we will rarely feel the weight of having to fill our pockets. However, there will be situations in which the excessive consumption of resources will force us to fall back frantically, looking around for what is necessary to manufacture new arrows, perhaps interrupting a decisive battle. The centrality of crafting, in any case, is also reaffirmed from the point of view of progression, where it comes to replace a more classic role-playing framework. The skill tree does not refer to any level of experience, and to unlock new special powers it is sufficient to consume a certain amount of resources, provided that you have found the relative recipe first.

For this reason , exploration becomes a fundamental aspect of the entire experience, but it is precisely here that Blacktail’s open world content shows significant qualitative swings.

Sections with a well-articulated level design, with a multifaceted and original structure, are joined by other decidedly less successful ones, too dense with enemies and dispersive.

The result is an idiosyncratic game world, which ends up rewarding the curiosity of the most diehard explorers in a fluctuating way, alternating visually satisfying scenarios with incomprehensibly hostile and poorly thought out areas . Some areas related to the main quests are even counterintuitive to reach , also due to the absence of a mini-map that can guide the player during the exploratory phases.

If Blacktail’s intentions were to be an open world full of interesting places to discover, we must say that perhaps the biggest limitation of the title lies precisely in its very ambition. Even the addition of elements such as mini-games and 2D platforming phases is not very convincing, and is superfluous in an experience whose merits are certainly to be found more in the narrative and world building aspect .