Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness

I've played all crpgs since Planescape: Torment. It's my favourite genre by far and am sad to say that, despite the clear intentions of the devs to create something reminiscent of the BG1 and BG2 era, this game falls short on basically all fronts in that regard, but let's go with order. As a further disclaimer, I play all of these at the maximum difficulty for personal enjoyment. -Design Problems The game actively punishes you for even thinking about playing an evil character. It's not one of those games where if you go evil you get another equally rewarding and unique path, like Kotor 2, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Rogue Trader and so on. No, here you just get a self inflicted hard mode and the only "benefit" is a bit more money that is fundamentally useless as you really don't need it to buy everything you want. Heck even BG1 and BG2 had plenty of quests one could resolve the good or the evil way, in a quite distinctive and rewarding manner. The whole greed mechanic is a decent idea on paper, but if you cannot have an evil run, then it just turns into "the good way to play" and "the wrong way to play" or rather, the stupid way to play, as you don't get to be evil, just a greedy moron. This ends up making certain classes, like the Necromancer, feel quite jarring to play as the game encourages you and rewards you for playing a selfless and generous hero. -Combat Combat is incredibly unrewarding. The whole real time with pause aspect has no real bearing in the overall quality of it, the problem is that, at a fundamental level, the mechanics and classes are all incredibly wishy washy and generic. Even levelling feels incredibly unrewarding because of it, as you allocate a few points here and there, select on a skill or a couple of spells and that's basically it. The inherent simplicity of the combat makes it so that, by extent, every class doesn't play very well into their fantasy, as you don't get to feel much of it. Sure with a necromancer you have plenty of undead to summon, for isntance, but it's mostly skeletons with different weapons, some ghouls, some wights and it's basically more of the same. Combat classes are worse because most of the time it's just "right click" the enemy and that's that. It's probably the worst type of combat of all crpgs; even Swordhaven and Encased do it better, and those are at the bottom of the barrel already. -Controls It all feels quite clunky, from the limited UI, to the movement registering with a little delay or sometimes not at all when you click on the map. Furthermore sometimes you end up clicking on a piece of terrain that isn't mapped as walkable so you have to hover onto an area that is for your characters to move. Pillars of Eternity released in 2015 and it has insanely better simply movement and general pathing than this. This is the first crpg I've played where movement feels frustrating and unresponsive. This goes for the UI as well, as sometimes it doesn't really register when you want to select a different spell level list in combat. It works with two click usually, but it's again, another little annoyance that, combined with all the rest, forms a mountain of frustration. Targeting suffers from the same issue, as sometimes clicking the right character or enemy is not clear, especially when enemies are on top of each other. -Companions Companions are generic, they have poor interactivity and don't have personality at all, minus maybe Bjalla in the early stages of the game. The game throws at you a tank, a priest and a rogue in the first hour of gameplay and doesn't do much to give them personality outside of super trite stereotypes: the honourable dwarf tank, the poised and academic elven mage and the shady rogue. One single character in Tyranny (2016) has more personality of all of the companions in Black Geyser combined. -Quest Design Outside of a handful of main quests here and there, the quest design is dull and disappointing. There's a veritable boatload of fetch quests or quests where, after arriving in a new area, you have to kill one or multiple groups of enemies. At times you have to travel one map away to kill a single or a group of enemies, or to fetch one or multiple things, and that's that. There are a few exceptions, sure, where there has been a bit more thinking, like Trials and Tribulations in chapter 3, which was a nice quest, but for most of the game you'll be going over the same type of slog. -Loading Times Absolutely atrocious loading times even with a very high end PC, the worst of any game I've ever played. They sour the entire experience even more. -Difficulty Even at max difficulty the game is insanely easy, the easiest of all I played, by a large margin. The Good So is there anything good about the game at all? Sure, there are some good aspects. The voice acting is a nice touch that brings the world alive and it's generally decent to good, except a few instances here and there, like Hamlin, your rogue companion, but aside form him, the companions in general are voice acted very well, with plenty of other NPCs, such as the King, Lord Frelsi, etc. The map/area design is generally good. The main quest itself is decent enough and has a few interesting highlights here and there. The setting is not terrible, although the game could've made a better effort in explaining certain things. Conclusion This game is clearly a concerted effort in trying to make something reminiscent of the old crpgs that Black Isle pumped out in its glory days, with a few more layers on top, but it all came out clunky, samey and dull. Furthermore the game asks for 29,99 euros/dollars at full price, which is frankly insane for what you get. Go play Shadowrun, Tyranny, Pillars, Pathfinder. Even Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous is like 18 euros right now and it's one of the best crpgs ever made, with hundreds to more than a thousand hours of gameplay with its replayability. If you have nothing to play at all and are waiting for Dark Heresy to come out, then I guess buy it at a discount, but not even at the current 12 euros/dollars it's worth it in my opinion. I truly wish the devs the best for their second game, Avaria: iron Rule. Maybe this game was a good "training experience" of sorts and they will be able to rectify several things, or at the very least leveling, combat and progression, to make it a bit more complex, interactive and rewarding. EDIT: Formatting

Played the game to completion on Veteran difficulty. I think there's three main problem with the game, but otherwise it's fine. The first is RTWP. It's not a good system. If you like real time with pause, then this is a mediocre example of it. If you don't like RTWP, then this is emblematic of all the worst parts of it. Second issue is that the game is poorly optimized - long loading screens meet with frequently needing to change screens, occasional glitching and freezing, etc. For a CRPG that benefits from quicksaving and loading, the long load times are killer. Third major issue is inventory management - given how the game encourages you to turn down rewards from NPCs on the generous path, you're incentivized to look every body you can. Especially in later areas, this immediately fills up your inventory, as each of your five party members has both limited inventory SPACE and limited inventory WEIGHT. Luckily, there's bottomless bags of holding, but you're looking at long and painstaking processes of putting everything in one by one and then taking them out and selling them when you get to a merchant. Beyond all that... there's not really too much the game has going for it. The mechanics are fine, but there's not really that much to any of them that makes them INTERESTING. The story and lore are... fine, I guess, but not really worth recommending to anyone. Maybe the greedy path is more interesting? Honestly, though, I think this is just a mid CRPG. If that's what you're looking for then go for it. Otherwise I don't think its worth your time, unfortunately.

Essentially, it is a clone of PIllars of Eternity, trying to do exactly what Pillars did, which is translate the joy of playing an Infinity Engine RPG to the current decade. However, it suffers quite a bit as a result of this, because the developers seem to have been too slavish in trying to replicate the Infinity Engine experience, ending up with something that is not nostalgic but instead childlike. Aesthetically everything is as it should be, but they do not seem to understand what actually made these games fun.

4/5 isometric group fantasy RPG. Decent game, standard fare. Some good sketches and graphics. Imperfect UI. Lots of "stuff", but no 'mark for sale' or 'junk' or other way to manage the absurd number of items one collects. Main quest. Side quests, just what you'd expect from the genre. Pleasant, solid. A few bugs, but overall pretty solid. Remember to save after fights and restart the game every 12 hours or so. Glitches build up, but no worse than 98% of games. Character creation was nice, but wasn't clear when first starting that you'd have a five member team pretty quickly. The team can rotate, but the rotation is painful. The area loads are a bit slow, so going back to find one's removed party members is annoying, but doable. The current (march 2026) info online about quests is surprisingly sparse, so when you hit a dead end in a side quest, you'll have to figure it out. The main thing to know about the game is that items and encounters come into being by initiating a quest point, so even if you've been somewhere before, if you have a quest you can't figure out, go back over the same places a couple more times.. and the item or person or encounter appears. Decent game, good job!

A lovely little surprise of a title, feels very much like an Interplay / Black Isle - inspired PCRPG you would find on a 90s gaming magazine CD. The story is actually great! It's by no means a flawless experience, but it has enough charm to make up for its occasional archaic mechanics and technical annoyances. I'm deducting 2 points for throwing a dozen cats on every map and not letting you pet or adopt a single one of them

Полный клон Baldus Gate, вот только первой части, а не второй или третьей. По странному стечению обстоятельств, первая BG моя любимая игра. По еще более странному стечению обстятельств, других клонов первой BG я не встречал, если не считать (отчасти) первых Пилларсов (которые ближе к Icewind Dale). Тут не только геймплей и интерфейс и даже графон как в первой BG, тут даже атмосфера такая же, дух фентези конца девяностых. И нет, это не просто такая карго-игра для китча, а прям полноценная, хорошая ретро-партийная РПГ. Короче, дедушки старше 35+ - залетаем. Выйди она в 1999 - стала бы легендой, конечно. Но мне и так все нравится, надеюсь, авторы не решат сделать че-нибудь НОВЕНЬКОЕ как обсидианы, да даже овлекэт куда-то понесло, а будут с упорством клепать точно такие же игры как в 1999 году. Ребята, если вы это читаете - не меняйте ничего, просто сделайте еще одну ретро-партийную РПГ, прогресс переоценен.

Sorry but until you sort out the very long loading times between areas then this gets a thumbs down even though the basic game is good, it is currently not playable. You can not blame unity engine for this. IMO you should not be making a new game till you resolve this issue.

Только для любителей первого Baldur's Gate

A indie company made something unique. It's not perfect, but it's still a great play. If you like the genre, it's a good entry. The side quests could be a little more fleshed out and the companions a little more interactive. However, not using the same old formulas makes it much more enjoyable.

A solid, fun game. It does not do anything groundbreaking, but I felt that the core experience was good, if a little underdeveloped in some areas (for example: some companion quests feel unfinished). Overall, I would recommend it on a good sale.