Blacktail Review (E1ppa~)
Pick it up on discount if you enjoy shooting things with a bow. Game's rather mid in a sense that there wasn't anything special to it for me nor there was anything that made me either angry or irritated enough to remember it.
I kinda liked that atmosphere of a fairy tale with some parts of the game being "for children" e.g. mushrooms giving quests, ants and larva sounding like they are coming from a school theatre play. This unfortunately contrasts negatively with some choices of words in dialogue (like saying "fuck", "shit" and talking about killing characters). Probably could have been better.
I didn't like fighting normal gnolls all that much. Somehow they felt too much like "bullet sponges" and also there was something about how they looked which made me feel weird, I don't know. They amount of variety in terms of combat options and enemies feels rather lacking and was definetely running thin at the later parts of the game. Also pathfinding for enemies was working funny sometimes causing them to run in circles if they happened to be next to an obstacle.
Areas look great and there is probably just enough things to do in them for their size. I guess, autumn area could have been a little smaller with no loss, but it is no big deal.
Perhaps I've missed it, but there is no apparent reason to fully commit to either side of the morality. Either that is the case or the game is way too subtle about how being "pure evil"/"pure good" affects your run. I've seen few options for rotten/currupt personality but nothing story wise for the full commit which leaves me wondering if there was ever a point in killing these hedgehogs :(.
Not a negative per se, but haven't seen any explanation on what actions affect your progress towards queen and other statuses. Stat checks for these can be found as early as summer leaving me wondering if I've missed a whole chunk of the game which would further advance my progress for these titles. It's okay if the intention was for player to somehow figure it out on their own, but if this bit was intended to be understood by everyone, then the game failed to accomplish that.
A choice "go bad or go good" so early into the game was probably a mistake since the player is not yet familiar with the character to derive the decision from anywhere other than some random hunch.
Finally, I didn't really like the "post boss" minigames as well as "doll minigames". The latter feels like the same obvious puzzle repeated 3 times for no good reason -- probably should have been cut altogether and replaced with a cutscene. The former just felt out of place and the pace shift from the main game felt awkward. Maybe it is just me, I don't know