BlackbladeEP

A pretty solid RPG with some features that hold it back. The points in it's favor are a solid system based on a German pen and paper game, it's party based which is pretty hard to find now a days and has an interesting setting with the main character sailing up an down a river unraveling various mysteries. The story, dialog and heaps of throw away loot hold it back though. I can't say the story is horrible but it isn't captivating in the least and felt pretty forced to me. The dialog doesn't help, the voices aren't the problem just what they are given to say. It just ends up giving the world an overall fake feeling that an RPG shouldn't have in my opinion. Also there are so many damn barrels and chests with nothing but junk in them. Walk into a room with like 3 barrels/vases and a chest and end up with a few crafting components and something worth a little gold. Just bad design, put all that crap in one chest and stop wasting my time. This is made even worse with the two step mechanic of breaking the barrel by clicking on it and then clicking on it again to pick it up. Anyway, little pet peeve of mine that probably won't bother others as much as it bothers me. Fix those and this would be a nice little gem that I could wholeheartedly recommend to anyone who is a fan of this genre. As it stands it's a decent game though but really for die hard RPG fans looking for something beyond the standard lone hero saving the world in a sandbox setting that is so common now. It should also be pointed out that although the underlying system is good it unfortunately isn't actually explained to the user so you will likely need to search online to understand how it all works. There's not even a manual in any American release that I could find. Both Impulse and Steam did not include one at least. Pretty sad for a game like this.