Black Skylands Review (Jackelmeir)
I really wanted to like this game. It has everything I like. Sky pirates, aerial ship battles, air krakens? Hell yes! But sadly, the gameplay is very repetitive, the story and characters meh, and there is a lot to refine.
Since it is a game about aerial combat, you would think there would be a lot of ship battles, yet 90% of the fighting will be on land and 10% on air (at best). Maybe 70/30 if you are only doing the main quests, but my experience was 90/10 since I did some sidequests, which are not worthy. Why? Because all the materials you could get as a reward are used for upgrading your FOUR buildings in your main base. Thats right, just four (I am not counting the shop, it is a one buy thing). Upgrading weapons, ships, anything else? Just plain money.
Speaking about combat, there are things like the sniper rifle, which you can upgrade the range. But what for? The range is already enough for what I can see on screen. I can upgrade the range to shoot enemies out of the screen that I cannot see... great design, guys.
The extra content like raids are a pain. Long quests that, if you get killed on the last second, you get nothing. 30 minutes of your life wasted.
And finally, the writing. It was already awful to have a plain, boring, Captain Marvel-esque main character, but I guess plain and boring sometimes can work for an MC. But...
... and here are the spoilers for the story...
...
In the end, there is a scene where your father tries to shoot you, and it is conveyed as a deep, tear-jerking scene. Finally, your father breaks down in tears as he lowers the gun, realizing he cannot kill his daughter, only for the daughter image show her... facepalming? As a "father tried to kill me, smh"? I do not remember the dialogue of that scene, but I know she said something dumb too.
Anyways, it might be a small thing, but it is a symptom of the rest of the script. It pains me, really, because this could have been a great story and a great game, but whoever was on the helm of this skyship should have let other captains take the lead (see what I did there?)
Also, sorry if my English is bad, second language.