I felt like 2022 was over at this point.. But as we got to the middle of last month, we got a new game.. Blacktail, which hasn't been the focus of much attention, but we should watch out for it. That's because the developer is Focus Entertainment, who gave us the Tale nominated game A Plague Game of the Year. Let's get these formalities out of the way, and is it a game that deserves to be included in a long list of survival games?

A soul searching journey

The story of Blacktail gives us a taste of a world that is not just a romance that sees the twins Yaga and Zora. The second is the lost sister, who is considered the crutch that Yaga relies on on the path of her life. With all this, Yaga must disregard her dark abilities in the past to lead her future and focus on finding her missing sister in that lonely forest full of everything… No, no, dear reader, I mean literally everything.

Yaga's inner voice is your true guide, the one that gives you the key to explore your abilities. The game treats you as pure magic, everything is based on magic and you don't see anything natural in Blacktail from the beginning to the last moment of the game (except for hunting some animals to eat).

The story unfortunately has a notable negative point besides being a mini-game, which are preferences after all, I felt at first that I was in the depths of the story, I didn't even see her sister or anything like that or I didn't even have some feelings. I was put in events to find a missing person and I have to find her .. like that. I expected a slower introduction than this, but anyway the story follows the direction of telling the world for the story and that forgives the introduction a bit.

A world of faded colors, no place for the weak

The forest the game is set in has the feel of many games, sometimes when the sun shines on a bridge I feel like I’m playing Kena, and for a while when darkness falls with Yaga’s voice in my head I’m reminded of the atmosphere of Hellblade. The game is open world, of course, so it can accommodate a survival game like Blacktail, which has plenty of secrets until I pull back the curtain. Everything I find brings me closer to not only finding Zora… but to finding the mysterious legend of Baba.

The world gives you the opportunity to explore and has almost all the survival elements, you can hunt some animals to maintain your health alongside some useful flowers and I can't forget of course.. fishing, but I didn't find it really difficult to survive very often. When I lose my health, I just walk around the forest to pick flowers or hunt some animals which I don't consider a big challenge for me. But a newbie in a survival game, first Blacktail, will have a lot of fun, so this is relative.

But unless my relative is doing actions, it's actually easier than I expected. There are a lot of obstacles that you'll encounter if you're running fast in the world. I prefer to run and speed up if you're going on a mission, but be careful, keep an eye on everything that's going on around you. It's possible that some bees will appear from their hive or bats if you're going through a cave. And that kills you in seconds and you'll be defenseless because you're running with the bow on your waist.

Fortunately, Yaga has an enemy-boosting ability that charges every few seconds, so she can maintain her strategy of running away from an opponent immediately.

I liked the fast travel method, cats are actually the way to travel in the game, just by pressing E the camera will zoom in on the cat's eye and immediately go to another point on the map where a similar cat is located if you want to go back at any time. You should have believed me, dear reader, when I said that the game of strange and enchanted things has no end.

Great art direction, hats off to your dubbing

The graphics were quite modest, but what made them special was the artistic direction, the color scheme, and the visual effects present in each scene were distinct. The effects of switching between sunny and dark areas are smooth and make me feel immersed in every aspect of Blacktail. I have to give a couple of shoutouts to the very distinct voice performances of each character in the game, this performance can be considered one of the best of this year without a shadow of a doubt.

Technical performance

• Intel Core i5 11th Gen
• 16GB RAM
• Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060

The game was running at this performance at 1080p resolution with the settings turned up to the maximum, the game should run at 60 frames per second or much more at these “medium” technical specifications and at a higher resolution, but in many cases I was surprised by a sharp drop in frame rate in these parts, unfortunately it was a disappointing surprise for me, but anyway after the day one update things have improved, but some problems are still present.

Blacktail Review and Rating

Positives

Negatives

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