An incredibly rich and beautiful experience. The world and character design is vibrant and enchanting. Voice acting is truly superb and stands out above a lot of Triple A titles I have played recently. It almost has the vibe of a PS2-era action adventure game, but with a far more expansive atmosphere and with writing that elegantly flows between tones both dark and humourous.

My main critiques are that I feel the checkpoint/save system could have used a bit more fine-tuning. For a game that flourishes in its exploration you can end up losing a lot of progress from an abrupt death if you haven't remembered to use a save point recently. Following on from that, the light moments of platforming can be ocassionally tedious with one wrong step often leading to an instant death. Some enemies can also become a bit of an annoyance. But now I am really starting to get nit-picky at this point.

I was immensely impressed by the experience and was truly bewitched by this twisted fairy tale, and the characters within, all the way through. Blacktail is absolutely one of the best games to come out of 2022.