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…

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.

Very fun game to play, especially if you enjoyed its obvious inspirations (BG1/2, Icewind Dale). It's not the D&D ruleset but familiar enough, and some nice additions to mechanics. Definitely get the DLC for (late game) high-level rewards and arguably the most challenging fight of the game. Good writing; fun plot & lore that went far beyond a stereotypical "good v. evil" (in fact, there are a few different evil gods in conflict w/ 1 another, which is refreshingly rare and added some great twists to the game); lots of builds for your main PC, who can take up to 4 companions & thus have fun w/ whatever build you want, really. I played a 2nd game for a few reasons. One, to try a different build (went w/ a multiclass PC--more on that in a minute) and to take advantage of the knowledge gained in the 1st game (I took extensive notes). But also to experience the game quite differently. Not just different companions, but while the 1st game was a "good" playthrough, this time I wanted to see what happened w/ a "greedy, immoral" playthrough. Turns out, you have some very different experiences, both good & bad. The game is relatively forgiving w/ the xp penalty you get for a dual-cla…

Its a fine indie CRPG. It has problems like a lot of the side quests are MMO fetch quests and the inventory management is awful and the load times are weirldy long, but there are many worse ways to spend 30 hours.

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 love letter to old school crpgs. Great indie offering