Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled

Rating Everyone Genre role-playing Publisher Graffiti Entertainment External Links

Do you want to get frustrated by an unoriginal game? Than Black Sigil is just the game for you. Off the top of my head I can think of two games from the gameboy color era that the game seems similar too. The first is Final Fantasy: Tactics simply because of the worlds that you have to explore to beat the game, and the second is Pokémon because of the type of fighting that has to be done within the game.

The idea of the game is to guide your character a warrior by the name of Kairu through the various locations in the world of Black Sigil. Kairu, starts out as a warrior without any magic until he acquires a sword that allows him to use magic. Sounds pretty cliché right, and it is. There are other playable characters within the game and one of those characters is Aurora who is Kairu's sister. Each character has a pre-determine set of skills. Aurora for example only uses a whip as her weapon in battles. One of the frustrating things about this pre-determine set of skills is that the player can not change the weaponry for Kairu or anyone else in the traveling party.

Another one of the main problems I have with this game is the take turn fighting style that you experience throughout the game. This happens in fights that matter, and in fights that you just so happen to find yourself in while walking from city to city. This is similar to the Pokémon games, but unlike Pokémon, where you are given the option of fighting or running away, in Black Sigil you can not run away from the random fights you may get into while going from city to city. This makes the gameplay even slower which adds to the player’s frustration, especially when you’re traveling through 50 to 60 locations, fighting everything that just so happens to pop up is extremely annoying. Another problem that can prove to be frustrating is game saving, unlike most games where you can save at any point just in case you need to get up and take a break. Black Sigil, however, refuses to allow their players to save at any moment and instead you have to continue playing until you reach certain save points or until you’re back walking in the wilderness of the game.

The graphics of the game prove to be completely unacceptable, especially for a Nintendo DS game. The graphics are a throwback to the old gameboy color and the only reason I say that is because the game is presented in color.

Black Sigil seems to be a game for people that love fantasy role-playing games; however, if you’re new to the genre I wouldn’t suggest this game to you. You’re better off playing something slightly more engaging. Black Sigil is probably a game that should be played on a road trip, that is if you can stick with it that long without putting it down for a better RPG.