KickStarter Black Geyser: Couriers of Darkness - Tales of the Moon Cult expansion on the way

[La vie sexuelle]

They finally finished the game or it's still suspended in endless patching loop?

Sounds like it's as close to being done as it's going to get. Sad, because all reports indicate it's still piss easy. Wanted to support these guys, but if they can't even provide a decent challenge then they're not worth my money.

I'm supported them on sales year ago and the price was really low, so I don't feel I lost too much, but still I want to play in finished product.

 

[GreenMagicSpell]

some people found it too hard if I am remembering correct

 

[lycanwarrior]

some people found it too hard if I am remembering correct

Some of the fights were tough. The one near the end of the game (forgot the villain's name) I lowered to easy in order to get past it.

 

[Lord_Potato]

some people found it too hard if I am remembering correct

Some of the fights were tough. The one near the end of the game (forgot the villain's name) I lowered to easy in order to get past it.

The fight with the evil Morte was challening alright. The final boss was a total wimp though.

 

[Jinn]

So what are we talking here? One, maybe two hard fights in the game?

 

[Leinhart]

So yeah the game may be easy but it´s the story worth it ?

 

[GreenMagicSpell]

Many people enjoy the story (it's kinda a royal court drama

Spoiler

with rivalizing gods

, with the unique Greed flavor on it), others find it cliche for some reason. I'm belong to the first group, I like it, but my ex was a developer so I'm not entirely neutral.

There are many more then 2 hard fights in it. The second half of the game is fight heavy, so a tad bit unbalanced because the first part does not have too many challenging encounters.

 

[Jinn]

the first part does not have too many challenging encounters.

Ideally there would be challenging encounters throughout the entirety of the campaign, but the first half is arguably where the bulk of the challenging encounters should be. Low-level challenge is kind of a hallmark of the game their trying to emulate after all, and just a fun part of CRPGs in general.

Trust me, I've always wanted to support and play this game from the very beginning. And I'm sad that the developers are having a difficult time. But when they set the goal to do a balancing pass for their major update well after the initial release and still didn't manage to create a challenging experience across the board, that's fairly disheartening.

I'll probably play it someday anyway when I feel like having a relaxed RPG romp, but too little too late.

 

[Cvilidreta]

in this game you don’t need to follow the main path either but you can freely explore the wilderness maps and face enemies like spiders, wolves, ghouls etc. which on highest difficulty can trouble you if you face them alone or with the only companion you can recruit before following the main story. It’s not really any different than in BG1 where you can make it easy on yourself and follow the story path, recruit imoen, monteron, xzar, jaheira and khalid and then follow the main path to nashkel with full party with your only worries being the respawning enemies. And IWD gives you an entire party you can create pushing away the poor goblins and ogers. Heck, even the yetis and shadows are pushaways… And for every tough encounter like the priests in Dragon’s eye cast haste and roll over them. Again, it depends on how you take on the enemies.. sure, I could spawn summons and rest after every encounter and then tell other people how pisseasy this game is… I bet that anyone who takes on the druid outside of the crone’s hut at the start of the game will have a difficult time to beat him.

Anyway, the developer has mentioned that if they make a successfull dlc kickstarter they will look into AI as well. Though, the AI isn’t actually bad, it’s just that more enemies need ranged attacks/weapons so that more of them can hurt you should you decide e.g. to kite. And then they just need to limit the number of summons and make spells like healing mist less effective while also make resting more annoying.

 

[Lady Error]

I started to enjoy it more after level 4-5 once I got out of the "big" city and started to explore outdoor maps Baldur's Gate style.

Was quite surprised at the twist regarding the Elven Dryad quest.

Spoiler

If you help the elves, a whole village gets wiped out. But you get pretty good magical earrings as reward.

For some reason, my ranger does the most damage, so I kicked out my Cleric and made the NPC thief into a second bow specialist.

Questions:
- Is there a way to deactivate the character swapping on the bottom? Half of the time when I click on a character, it changes place with another one.
- Is there an option to make the screen scroll automatically as you move?

 

[Cvilidreta]

I started to enjoy it more after level 4-5 once I got out of the "big" city and started to explore outdoor maps Baldur's Gate style.

Was quite surprised at the twist regarding the Elven Dryad quest.

Spoiler

If you help the elves, a whole village gets wiped out. But you get pretty good magical earrings as reward.

For some reason, my ranger does the most damage, so I kicked out my Cleric and made the NPC thief into a second bow specialist.

Questions:
- Is there a way to deactivate the character swapping on the bottom? Half of the time when I click on a character, it changes place with another one.
- Is there an option to make the screen scroll automatically as you move?

unfortunately no to both of your questions i'm afraid. The character portraits swapping places when quickly clicking on them and moving cursor did happen to me as well few times...
good decision taking the ranger, i played with this class in my last playthrough, had a good medium armour called "sciactus" or something like that which would throw lightning on enemy when my char was hit. And the additonal spellcasting from level 4 onwards was quite helpful, just took me some time to figure out changing between abilities and spells in the ui.
In regards to Isilbright, yeah, i liked the Greybark district most but didn't quite like the market street district and i found the second city more interesting... liked the exploration around isilbright in chapter 2 better as well. Not sure about the quest you mentioned but I believe it is about the dryad in moonstone clearing, the earrings you get is the best item in the game but you can get it also by finding a cure sap in talgorn glen to give to the dryad instead of planting the seed

 

[Lady Error]

So I guess the fight against the king is unwinnable, even if you kill the king? I insulted his smug face and killed like 10 royal guards so far, but they keep coming....

 

[puur prutswerk]

So I guess the fight against the king is unwinnable, even if you kill the king? I insulted his smug face and killed like 10 royal guards so far, but they keep coming....

Of course, it's the fucking King.

Resistance is futile, yadda yadda yadda, it's good to be the King.

The sooner you realize this, the better.

 

[Cvilidreta]

So I guess the fight against the king is unwinnable, even if you kill the king? I insulted his smug face and killed like 10 royal guards so far, but they keep coming....

you cannot kill him at this point but only later in the game; he's under the influence of greed and beyond his senses. I found him funny, he sure hurt some goldilock ego of other players though. HOHOHO!

 

[Lady Error]

I have to say, the beginning of this game wasn't that great, but I am again and again pleasantly surprised by it. The latest being the time travel quest.

 

[Jinn]

I have to say, the beginning of this game wasn't that great, but I am again and again pleasantly surprised by it. The latest being the time travel quest.

How have the encounters been?

 

[Lady Error]

How have the encounters been?

There is a good variety, but even on hardest difficulty there are not many challenging encounters. This and the loading times are probably the biggest negatives, though it is still a good game overall.

 

[cyborgboy95]

Good News Soon?

 

[Lady Error]

Since I updated to the latest version, the loading times aren't an issue anymore - if you have an SSD.

 

[Lady Error]

Black Geyser now has a Codex review:
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/rpg-codex-review-black-geyser.147838/

 

[Shaki]

When does it become good? I'm barely like an hour in, just got to the Isilsomething city, but I'm having hard time forcing myself to push forward, the game gives me a weird vibe as if it was made by an AI or something, everything just feels kinda souless and bland.

 

[Lady Error]

Get out of the city, that's when I started to like it.

 

[GreenMagicSpell]

I guess devs ran out of budget so they couldn't properly populate some cities with in -depth stuff

 

[Roguey]

Black Geyser being like

 

[Cvilidreta]

I guess devs ran out of budget so they couldn't properly populate some cities with in -depth stuff

i think they did populate cities ok, the issue imo is that npcs - especially in the first city - say the same stuff when approached, e.g. when you're in southern shore inn, you still get the dialogue options to ask about the location of the same inn which is a little bit odd. This might be the reason why it appears as if it's done by AI by some players and is a little bit off-putting. But they did populate even the garden of delights pretty well considering this area was a kickstarter goal that has never been reached. Actually, some areas appear overpopulated like talgorn glen or moonstone clearing mainly due to the addition of the black liquor quest which was added after EA.

It seems they will make an announcement by the end of the month, am hoping they'll carry on and will have a succesfull kickstarter. Even though i'd much rather have the infinity engine for the rts style i prefer, they did a decent job with unity as well in that regard.

On a final note, big props Lady Error for putting the effort of writing an honest and accurate review of the game. Good observation on the missing enemies' status effect indication which should definately be added like in BG2 where overhead visuals on npcs indicated if they were disabled.

EDIT: just to add that there's actually animations on characters who are e.g. pacified or entangled ...