Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness

Black Geyser has great inspirations : Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale. And you really feel they wanted to make their own, humble version of BG. At first glance, the usual fanfare is here to back it up : an open world, a main quest as a red string to follow but the meat of the game is in the sidequests, party-based combat (even if you can try to go solo), several classes and lots of opportunity to take the ever present sweet, sweet loot. Combat, while not challenging, is decent with serviceable stats and skills system. So, where does it go wrong ? This is not really a story-rich game : the lore about the world is scarce, the main quest see you as a nobody propelled to the rank of savior of the kingdom because there's apparently no one more competent to do it. The civil war theme is poorly executed and you end up with an uninspired prophecy intrigue. Story is sometimes convoluted, at one point you will have to travel through time for the silliest reason. Memorable characters ? Plainly, no. They only seldom intervene in dialog, there's almost no party banter and their dialog tree is quickly depleted- as for their personal quest, nothing exciting. They don't feel really involved with the world or the story. But the main issue is the greed system. It won't be after two-thirds of the game that stealing and taking items raise the world greed gauge, so you will have way more gold than needed at this point and no problem to buy what you want : there are very few interesting equipment in the merchants' stalls. So you can act a like a saint when you finish a quest : you won't be impacted much, as greed mainly raise the prices (inconsequential) anyways. The game pretends it leads the world closer to utter ruin but those are words : you can travel across the kingdom and now real manifestation of this will show. This is a big letdown because player's greed in RPG is well-known, it would have been meta and interesting to tackle it... My advice : boot BG or buy BGIII.

Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness is so far an interesting CRPG that is certainly inspired by the classics like Baldur's Gate, but immediately, at least from the conversation UI, gave me heavy Pillars of Eternity vibes, which is a plus for me. The story so far, at least for me, is engaging, although I'm only a little over an hour in. The combat is real time with pause, which isn't my preference, but it's enjoyable. I've only experienced one major bug so far, which was if I died in the first combat encounter and had to reload my save to before then, the game wouldn't proceed. One thing I would like to improve is to have more information about what things do in the game with tooltips. Other than that, I'm enjoying the game, and it's at a good price right now.

Generally speaking, I enjoyed the game, but I don't think it was perfect. I will break it down. The Good: Combat is generally pretty fun Character customization is pretty good A lot of cool spells and summons The story is pretty good once it gets going, with a few nice twists A couple of memorable characters, especially Velianrick and Isla. A lot of opportunities to avoid violent solutions, which is nice. The Mediocre: Combat gets pretty easy after a while. I played through almost the entire game on veteran with just my PC and Bijalla. Spells are a little overabundant, which reduces some of the tactical need for preserving spells. Not enough different skills. Templars, Fighters, Barbarians etc all have the same class abilities. Crafting is cool, but experimentation can be pretty frustrating. A lot of fetch quests, some of which can be tedious. The Bad: The load times. My goodness! I know a lot has been said of this, but they're really bad! Most of the characters are half-baked. Bjalla gets a decent arc - and I guess Jade too, - but Hamlin and Helgenhar's quests don't go anywhere. More to the point, the party members feel a little thin, we don't end the game knowing much about them. It's much closer to Icewind Dale or BG1, rather than Planescape or BG2, which truly had great party members. The epilogue is rather...underwhelming. Only a couple things you do affect it, and there's no story closure for the PC or his companions, which feels unfinished. Ultimately, I enjoyed my experience, and I did put about 70 hours of gameplay (three characters, only one finished), so I'm glad I stuck it out to the end and I'm happy to have supported it. I just wish it had more fleshed out characters, and a better epilogue.

Many of the early reviews complained about long loading times - this problem has been solved now. Loading a map takes only 10-20 seconds with an SSD drive. Black Geyser is not perfect, but it nails the atmosphere and charm of Baldur's Gate like no other game in the last 15 years. Something that neither Pillars of Eternity nor Baldur's Gate III really accomplished. The beginning of the game is kind of slow. It gets really good once you leave the first city and go exploring.

After more than 70 hours, I can wholeheartedly recommend this game to the fans of the genre, especially after the most recent patch which entirely fixed loading times for me! The first few hours introduce you to the story. In terms of action, they few hours are somewhat less epic (but still well-worth), but the rest of the game is extremely addictive in terms of tactical combat and plot complexity well. Side quests are interesting from the beginning (the Tree Dryad is a masterpiece), expect a couple fedex quests as well in the beginning though. The greed mechanism is very interesting - depending on your choices, you will get unique results (even a magical item from the evil goddess) in the later parts of the game consequences of greed take time to get substantial in the plot). In the meantime, you roam in forests and desolate plains à la Baldur's Gate. Items are well thought out, as well as spells, though I'd prefer a wider selection of spells. PROS: - A new, refreshing take on a classic story - Hand-made environment art - Beautiful item illustrations and NPC portraits - Branching main plot in later chapters - Tons of branching outcomes in side quests - Most situations can be solved peacefully - Devs are super helpful and fix new bugs often within a day - Devs are active on GOG forums as well - Great (often grim) items - The riddles that exist are engaging CONS: - (FIXED in latest patch) Longer map loading times! - A bit combat-heavy in the last chapter - Too few riddles - I'd prefer some more mini-caves in wilderness areas (à la Baldur's Gate) - Currently too few interactions within your party (devs promised to address this, so if this is important for you, wait for the game update) - Too few spells (devs plan to address this as well according to their DISCORD) CONCLUSION: Overall, this title is well-worth its current price and after the promised updates, those who enjoy the genre will have a new Gem in their collection. I'd give this a 4.6 out of 5.