Black Jacket Review (Xbox Series X/S & PC)

In any ordinary case I’d say that blackjack is a simple, refined game that anyone can learn on the fly. But in the case of Black Jacket or, more specifically, the fiery quarters of hell, it isn’t quite so simple. Or at least, it isn’t a game of chance, but a skillful affair that tasks you with utilizing deceit, dumb luck, and a smidgen of unlawful activity to earn a favor from the ferryman. The concept may remain the same, and the general act of collecting enough cards to knuckle in on a target numerical value is, to some extent, the same. Yet, there is an additional layer to Black Jacket that makes an otherwise routine experience less of a quick fix for the casual gambler and more of a matter between life and death. And no, it isn’t fair.

Blackjack, at its core, is an easy card game to pick up and play, that much is true. But, if Black Jacket does anything at all, it aims to throw a proverbial wrench in a universally recognizable wheel to make an otherwise fundamentally bone-headed game of luck a wildcard escapade with more curveballs than all four suits combined. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still the same old blackjack, but with a purgatory of molten cards and a death knell for your waning soul to knock at for whenever the odds begin to fall against you.

Think of Black Jacket as your final hope. Death, who looms at the foot of your bed, wants you to perish in the depths of hell. But, you have an opportunity to bribe the ferryman and reclaim your soul. It just so happens that blackjack, of all things, is the only way for you to pay the piper and absolve your debts. On paper, it sounds like a walk in the park. However, at the table, it isn’t quite as accommodating. Blackjack might be a straightforward solution for a long-term problem, but if there’s one thing that you should know about hell, it’s that every pastime has a hidden clause, and that blackjack, oddly, has more twists and turns than the winding cortex of Wonderland’s rabbit hole.

Behind each hand and suit of a blackjack game is a consequence—a chance to fabricate the rules and turn the tide in your favor. As each card finds a place on the table, a new window of opportunity opens up for you. Values can be doubled or squashed; decks can be divided or exposed; and poor cards can be swapped out for suits with far greater potential. Though, it isn’t only you who can bend the rules and rock the fiery apple cart; foes—the folk who are present to share their stories alongside your own—also have the power to change the way the cards fall. The question is, who has more to lose, and who is more likely to find the currency needed to survive the ferryman’s wrath?

The good news is that Black Jacket isn’t a difficult game to learn. In fact, you can just about muster up the information you need to eliminate your enemies in as little as a few rounds. That being said, with the card combinations and the tide-altering synergies being a huge part of the experience, there are several uphill battles to overcome here, most of which can only be fought through trial and error. Luck, of course, still plays a major role in the fight. However, there are other issues that contribute to the unpredictability of the game, which of course includes the clever, albeit somewhat turbulent nature of the card system itself.

It begins with a handful of coins, a quick shuffle of the deck, and a breadcrumb trail for you to follow. As you play rounds with lost souls in the underworld, you earn more coins, and with them, additional cards and bonuses via a store en route to a notorious boss. But, here’s the catch: every boss has its own trick up its sleeve, some of which can dismantle your deck, some of which can force your value to decline or go beyond the target. The point is, everyone cheats in hell. It’s merely the case of figuring out how to play the upper hand. If you fail, then you return to the first cluster on the board, at which point you have the opportunity to experiment with new cards, new suits, and various modifiers. The clock resets, and you venture back into the underbelly of a blackjack-dominated world.

It goes without saying at this point, but Black Jacket isn’t a fair game; on the contrary, it’s an absolute pain in the neck. Though, being a rogue-like deck-building game that bases its existence on cheating, deceitful tactics, and snail-like progression, it does make sense, annoyingly. If anything, it’s one of those games that you need to commit yourself to in order to truly enjoy in the long run. In the first hour, you’ll try, and you’ll fail. But after collecting enough cards and fooling with various suits and modifiers, it does become a lot easier to juggle. You learn the basics, and you unveil the cards that are tucked into your opponent’s sleeve.

If not for the brief conversations and the thin layer of intrigue that hangs over each encounter with the lost souls, Black Jacket would be a rather repetitive affair. But, thanks to its inclusion of a vague storyline and a host of characters, it is a game that rewards you for persisting with the same process. It’s frustrating, true — but it’s also worth the hassle, believe it or not. It’s just a shame that the ferryman has a ludicrously high price for his services. That’s hell for you, I guess.

Verdict

Black Jacket sets the deck alight with a fast-paced ode to deceptive action and dumb luck, hellish curveballs and the occasional a-ha moment that makes the pain and torment all the more satisfying to tolerate. It’s still blackjack, but it’s blackjack with an undertone of seemingly unfair gameplay and consequential card-based side effects. If that sounds like your idea of a good time, then you might just enjoy sitting alongside the ferryman to endure a stint in this unforgiving purgatory. If you hate liars, cheats, and wildcard-pulling minions, however, then you might want to stick a band aid on your wound and give the afterlife a wide berth.