Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness

[h1] Unfortunately, technical issues stopped me from continuing this game: [/h1] Sometimes the game plays like some sort of bullet time is activated. Although I have fast movement activated, lowered my settings, and have FPS between 70 and 175, this sort of bullet time appears more often as soon as I have finished more side quests and main quests (I reached chapter 4). Because of this technical issue, the game is unplayable for me. Fighting, exploring, etc., just takes so much time with this weird bug. It's a shame since I really enjoy this indie CRPG. =( I hope the next game by the devs won't have this weird bug. P. S.: I played "Pillars of Eternity 1+2" and "Tyranny" without this bug. Just fyi, since those games also run on the Unity engine just like "Black Geyser" does.

A decent game if you like BG1 and PoE1 I didn't expect to enjoy the game this much. I wish there was more fighting and epic boss battles.

Sentymentalny powrót do pierwszych BaldurGate.

I like this game. It looks like Baldur's Gate and plays in a very similar way, which is great for me because we don't get many RPGs like this anymore. Yes, the game has some flaws. Some systems aren't well balanced, the new mechanics feel quite basic, and the graphics do their job but aren't particularly impressive. However, the overall experience is enjoyable. It's not just nostalgia, I genuinely enjoyed playing Black Geyser, completing quests, and going through the DLC because the core gameplay loop is fun. The main issue, and probably my biggest complaint, is the optimization. Loading screens are far too long, and after every two or three hours of gameplay, you have to restart the game. For a game that doesn't have especially demanding graphics, that feels very strange. The interface also isn't great. It clearly takes inspiration from the Infinity Engine games, but the huge amount of loot makes inventory management tedious. Everything else - the story, quests, and gameplay is good. It's not a masterpiece, but it's a solid RPG that should appeal to anyone who enjoys the classic Infinity Engine games and old-school party-based RPGs. I can definitely recommend this game. I had a great time with it, and I'm looking forward to seeing what the developers create next.

Eu me surpreendi muito. O jogo embora não tenha visuais impressionantes tem um jeitinho de ser criativo com algumas mecânicas e a forma que explora a ganância. O texto e a forma como isso é feito fica bem óbvio (absurdamente bom ou vilão de desenho), mas é divertido ainda assim. Também gostei de ver outras raças e as artes demonstrando cada uma delas com suas classes. É médio, mas é bem divertido!

Это плохо. Третьесортно. Игра пытается походить на классические ролевые, но не получается даже немного. Большую часть времени меня одолевали скука и уныние: сюжет, квесты, спутники, лор — ничего из этого не примечательно. "Принеси-подай-уйди-не мешай" и всё. Большего вы не дождётесь, ведь художественной ценности в текстах минимум, ты ни над чем не способен задуматься. Не у всех спутников есть личные квесты, а те спутники, кто их имеет, всё равно остаются неживыми болванками. Даже сам основной сюжет без заключения так как строится на клиффхэнгере (безынтересном). Я обманулся красивым описанием игры, 70 процентами положительных отзывов, но после нескольких часов геймплея понял насколько всё плохо. Пройти игру до конца и попытаться найти в ней что-то хорошее меня заставили уплаченные деньги, но даже сейчас я всё ещё сожалею о своих тратах, в том числе проведённого времени. Обходите это недоразумение стороной. Это не та изометрическая партийная фэнтезийная ролевая игра, которую вы ищете. Можете попробовать ну если прям уж совсем на безрыбье и только по скидке.

I'll be honest - I was not exactly expecting Pillars of Eternity, but this game does not even come close. The interfaces are clunky, the transparency in combat is not there, the plot is boring and the mechanics are just very obscure. This feels like Baldur's Gate 1 on its original release 25 years ago more than anything else, sadly. Non-existent QoL, clunky movement, boring abilities, boring class design, boring itemisation, it is simply just a bad game. Extremely disappointing.

I really wanted to like Black Geyser. It has many of the ingredients I enjoy in classic CRPGs: real-time-with-pause combat, character building, companions, lots of quests, political choices and a world clearly inspired by games like Baldur's Gate. Unfortunately, the longer I played, the more the game's design problems started to outweigh its strengths. The loading times are probably my biggest technical complaint. The game constantly divides its world into small areas, interiors, streets and separate locations, and almost every transition means another loading screen. Even on modern hardware, these transitions are far too slow for a game that expects you to move back and forth between locations all the time. Enter house, loading screen. Leave house, loading screen. Travel somewhere else, loading screen. Enter another building, loading screen. After many hours this becomes genuinely exhausting. And AND those loading times increase in longer sessions! Combat also has some strange design decisions. A perfect example is Fireball. You would expect a classic CRPG mage to scout or position himself and open a fight by dropping an AoE spell on a group of enemies. Instead, the spell range and enemy aggro distance work against each other. By the time your wizard is close enough to cast, the enemies are already running toward him and spreading out. There is no convenient party stealth system either, so something that should be tactically satisfying often just becomes awkward. Character development is similarly restrictive. Multiclassing must be decided during character creation. You cannot naturally develop your character into another class later in the adventure. If you discover after 20 or 30 hours that another class would fit your build, too bad. Then there are systems that look much deeper than they actually are. Brewing and combining powders sounds interesting, but most of the results I produced were simply not useful enough to justify the inventory management and effort. Eventually I stopped caring about the system almost completely. The Stronghold system was another disappointment. My main character is a Templar, so the game effectively decides which stronghold I am allowed to have based on my class. There is no meaningful choice between the different strongholds. My Warrior stronghold eventually rewarded me with additional weapon proficiency points, except my character's sword proficiency was already maxed out. So the supposedly major class reward was of very little value to the character it was designed for. NPCs start appearing in the stronghold, such as a cook, but the game does a poor job of communicating what these people actually do, when their functions become available, or how the stronghold is supposed to develop. It gives the impression of a management system without actually providing much management. This lack of clarity also affects quests and major story decisions. Important political negotiations can depend on attribute checks that your main character simply does not have, even when you are travelling with intelligent companions who should logically be able to contribute. Other choices give very little indication of their actual consequences. At one point I had to choose between claiming a council seat for myself or giving it to another faction, yet the game gives you very little information about what either choice actually means mechanically or narratively. That is one of my biggest frustrations with Black Geyser: it constantly presents systems and choices that appear deeper than they really are, while simultaneously hiding information that would actually help you make informed decisions. There are things I liked. Some quests are creative, the game has a respectable amount of content, and I appreciate that someone actually tried to make another old-school party-based CRPG instead of an action RPG with a dialogue wheel. But too many parts feel unfinished, poorly communicated or simply inconvenient. The excessive loading screens, restrictive character building, awkward combat mechanics, underwhelming crafting, disappointing stronghold system and opaque quest consequences gradually wore down my enjoyment. Black Geyser often feels less like a bad game and more like a potentially very good CRPG buried underneath a large collection of frustrating design decisions. I finished it wanting to like it more than I actually did. Not recommended.

Pretty good CRPG, the story and settings were interesting. While I feel like it's hard to make a bad build (maybe by keeping every stat average during character creation?), summoning magic in this game really feels like an easy mode. While I've not played the "evil" playthrough, playing the goody-two-shoes and offering help without expecting rewards & outright refusing them never penalised me in the slightest, as there is so much stuff to loot and sell back. I might give the game a try again playing the greedy character and see how it changes things. Another thing I wish was a bit better was the interactions with companions. I dunno if it's just me, but I sometimes discovered that companions wanted to talk to me "too late", and that would lock me out of their romances (but not their quests). Still, I quite liked the companions I played with and their quests, so I'm hoping their next game will be an improvement of that game. As it stands, an easy recommend for me.