BLACKTAIL

Worth buying? What 300 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 300 Steam reviews actually say.

Very Positive · 83%Very Positive · 83%2022

−80%~~$29.99~~$5.99

US Steam price, checked 2 h ago

The verdict

A beautiful, story-driven Slavic folklore adventure with great voice acting and atmosphere, held back by repetitive, clunky bow combat and a shallow morality system. Skip it if you want deep action.

Great for

Story-focused players who love fairy-tale atmosphere, Slavic folklore and voice acting, and don't need deep combat

Main risk

Combat and resource gathering get repetitive and clunky, so the gameplay may not carry you past the story

What players love

Beautiful art and fairy-tale atmosphere

Mentioned in ~1 in 2 positive reviews

“The art style is gorgeous and unique. The world feels properly alive and every creature and every detail adds to the atmosphere.”
Steam review · 6.5 h played ↗

“Dark fairy-tale atmosphere, unusual characters, the interaction with the world of nature and fairy tales is conveyed very warmly.”
Steam review · translated · 32.8 h played ↗

“The forest looks absolutely stunning and the story kept me guessing the whole way through.”
Steam review · 15.6 h played ↗

Rich Slavic folklore story and writing

Mentioned in ~1 in 4 positive reviews

“The star of Blacktail is the amazing Slavic folklore setting. It's incredible! I was completely immersed.”
Steam review · 31.2 h played ↗

“The absolute strongest points of the game are definitely the narrative and the dialogue; it's clear the developers put a ton of effort into them.”
Steam review · 25.4 h played ↗

“The game completely captured me, the story is very engaging.”
Steam review · translated · 29.5 h played ↗

Excellent voice acting and humorous banter

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews

“The constant back-and-forth dialogue between Yaga and The Voice is genuinely hilarious.”
Steam review · 16.8 h played ↗

“superb AAA voice acting (everything is voice acted and the two main characters do an incredible job rivaling AAA games in terms of voice acting)”
Steam review · 26.8 h played ↗

Great music and soundtrack

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 positive reviews

“I especially want to note the music, it's perfect.”
Steam review · translated · 2.8 h played ↗

“the soundtrack is fire”
Steam review · 12.1 h played ↗

Morality system changes world and quests

Mentioned in ~1 in 9 positive reviews

“Your choices actually matter: going good or evil affects your mushroom alignment and even how the environment reacts to you.”
Steam review · 29.4 h played ↗

“the way the world reacts to your moral alignment really sells the impact it's meant to have on the game world itself”
Steam review · 9.5 h played ↗

Fun exploration and collectibles

Mentioned in ~1 in 9 positive reviews

“Exploration felt rewarding as there was always something to find tucked away somewhere.”
Steam review · 19.7 h played ↗

“the collectibles are all enjoyable to track down and collect, without ever really getting too frustrating.”
Steam review · 47.7 h played ↗

What players complain about

Repetitive, boring gameplay and enemies

Mentioned in ~1 in 3 negative reviews

“The whole world, exploration is very boring since each location is identical to the previous one besides few colors. Same enemies, same puzzles.”
Steam review · 12.1 h played ↗

“A pretty toy, but very monotonous. You walk around mowing down hundreds of mobs with a bow, and that's the whole gameplay.”
Steam review · translated · 1.2 h played ↗

Clunky, repetitive bow combat

Mentioned in ~1 in 3 negative reviews

“movement is way too clunky in combat for the amount of projectiles, trash mobs and exploding things that are coming at you.”
Steam review · 3.2 h played ↗

“You unlock new stuff, but it doesn't change anything. The skills don't change your playstyle. New arrows don't change the way your bow behaves.”
Steam review · 23.2 h played ↗

“Shot everything in 10 seconds? Open inventory and craft 9 more. Just a joke.”
Steam review · translated · 1.5 h played ↗

Morality system is shallow and unclear

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews

“It has such a minor impact on the story and gameplay that it would be easy to forget it's there, and what choices are marked as "good" and "evil" are laughably arbitrary.”
Steam review · 15.9 h played ↗

“Did it affect the story? I didn't see it.”
Steam review · translated · 20.6 h played ↗

Tedious resource gathering and arrow crafting

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 negative reviews

“The moment i realized i have to repeatedly grind for feathers and wood even after just 1 battle to make arrows all the time was when the game died for me.”
Steam review · 1.1 h played ↗

“10 hours of pure farming just to survive.”
Steam review · translated · 22.8 h played ↗

Poor explanations, confusing direction

Mentioned in ~1 in 8 negative reviews

“Insanely messy, fighting is not satisfying at all and nothing is explained well.”
Steam review · 1.8 h played ↗

“Quests and tutorials sometimes don't explain what to do, you have to guess.”
Steam review · translated · 21.4 h played ↗

Cringe dialogue and English voice acting

Mentioned in ~1 in 9 negative reviews

“the weirdest and possibly the worst decision here was to put an american accent, american idioms and other mundane, modern phrases into a tale from Slavic folklore.”
Steam review · 1.5 h played ↗

“These phrases in the voiceover, 'Ass, sorry ass' and so on, really pulled me out.”
Steam review · translated · 2.5 h played ↗

System requirements

From the Steam store page

Steam Deck: Verified

Minimum

OSWindows 10 (64bit only)

ProcessorIntel Core i5-3570K / AMD FX-4300

Memory8 GB RAM

Graphics4 GB VRAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 / Radeon RX 470

Storage20 GB available space

Recommended

OSWindows 10 (64bit only)

ProcessorIntel Core i5-6600K / AMD Ryzen 5 1500X

Memory16 GB RAM

Graphics6 GB VRAM, GeForce GTX 1660 SUPER / Radeon RX 590

Storage20 GB available space

OSWindows 10 (64bit only)

ProcessorIntel Core i5-3570K / AMD FX-4300

Memory8 GB RAM

Graphics4 GB VRAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960 / Radeon RX 470

Storage20 GB available space

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