I got to be honest here. You may not have the subscriber count you deserve. You may not have the upvotes you deserve. But damn is your honesty refreshing. Thank you for your content.
I was preparing for a punch in the face as I was reading "I got to be honest here" hehe. Thank you for your comment. There's no point in not being in honest with a review. Nothing much to gain is there? Hopefully you'll continue to like them.
I already hated this system of companions not leveling out of party back in Baldurs Gate. I guess it makes sense, but you are gonna be permanently stuck with a set party after some point. Not the best mechanic to copy.
I agree. Why the hell would you make a game full of interesting companion characters, then punish me for trying to experiment with different party compositions? I like the system in Dragon Age Origins, where companions who aren't in your party will always level up to 1 level below you're main character. That meant that a acharater you kept in your party would be slightly higher level than one sitting on the sidelines, but the difference wasn't big enough to discourage you from switching your party up.
@@benl2140 beceause your choices matters and the replay value is much higher. It is ok, when you miss some content in your First playthrough. Thats not Bad game Design.
@@luxinterna3370 Fair point, and I do typically eventually settle on a pretty stable party in most RPGs. I just like to be able to try out different party compositions before making my final decision of who I want to take with me without worrying that I'm putting myself permanently behind. Edit: Also, sometines I won't care much about a companion until after I've done their companion quest and then get more interested in them. However, if I haven't been regularly taking them along, then by that point it might be too late.
Thank you for opinion. Still going to try this game anyway after finally finishing / playing more known games of RPG revival era. Still hungry for any isometric RPGs after 10+ years of almost total absence of good genre games since IWD2 release.
Pretty solid review of where Black Geyser should've been better. One note though: Companions going "far away", as in several loading screens, isn't really a thing. You can just open the world map from nearly anywhere, click the zone you want to go to, and it will just load directly. Slowly, but directly.
But you still have to go to where they are. They don't wait around (as they do in Fallout for example) and there's not a "camp" (as there is in Dragon Age for example) for them to wait it. So it still makes it a chore to go get them.
I waited patiently for this game, now I can't get myself to play it. Something is wrong with it, and I just can't pinpoint it. Edit: I LIVE for Isometric RPG's.
There are too many things wrong with it. Story is discombobulated, the combat is generic and way too easy for the most part and loading screens are way too many and way too long. I guess if you're an isometric RPG vacuum that most play them all... this is one of them... but I can't think of a medieval fantasy inspired CRPG that has come out recently that's not better than this one.
I think what the isometric rpg genre needs is to take BG1, BG2, IWD2, then combine with Daggerfall and Might n Magic 3,4,5 and have spirte animation. I would love play a BG style game but in a Daggerfall size world
seems like this game was made by programmers who didn't bother hiring writers, artists, designers etc. Technically it works, but the game is hollow, generic and bland...
Haha! rigging the "pole" sounds like something sooo non-family friendly, that not even I would do it! (A web with a proper survey system's coming... sometime)
It's suuuuper nice to get a comment in relation to this! I was beginning to think people were watching the videos "despite" the comedy and not because of it! cheers!
@@YeOldEntertainment keep doing your thing long enough and the right audience will build. Communicate with us through the video If you've got questions for the audience. Makes us feel engaged, enticed to throw out our opinionative comments (for the benefit of the algorithm) and heard whether or not our comment gets seen.
Thanks for your comment and interest, man! It's next on the agenda actually (maybe a couple of videos are coming out before that one, but it's the next "big-game-review" video for sure.
Haven't played the game myself but I could tell immediately that the game is way too generic and just uninspiring to get me interested. Trying to copy the successes of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and even Pillars of Eternity and the like while not understanding what made them so special in the first place. Black Geyser looks like a poor man's Pillars of Eternity. And the character models look so... Bad. I don't usually care too much about character models in games like this because you play from isometric perspective and all but wow. They just look so bad. Especially in the inventory screen. They remind me of low poly character models from old school Runescape.
It is a Poor man's Pillars of Eternity as you say... Now I'm actually jealous it didn't occur to me to use this phrase as the title XD. But the only place character models atrocious as you say is in the inventory screen. When they walk about, they look decent. I like the dangling animation of the fustiball when you turn and some other stuff. Some shields look pretty badass. But yes... it's mostly an uninspired game.
@@YeOldEntertainment Yeah you're right. I guess I was putting too much emphasis on the models shown in the inventory screens. Outside of that they look fine.
@@agrippa2012 Can't argue with that. The White March expansion was a way better and more memorable experience than the entire base game of Pillars of Eternity.
Thank you for the review! I had an eye on this game for quite a while, as the RPG genre is probably my favorite. I watched other reviews of the game and saw some bits of story & gameplay and honestly, I struggled to find anything to get me hooked to play other than "it's an RPG, you like RPGs - go and play it". I wish this game at least had a good story. I'd forgive boring gameplay just for that :/ Is perhaps "Tower of Time" on your list of games that you want to review in the future? I heard the developers of this game are close to releasing another RPG, "Dark Envoy" and thought of giving ToT a go, but I'm kind of having the same "getting hooked" issues about it as with Black Geyser
Thanks for leaving a comment. Well. I don't know if I am going to review Tower ot Time, because I played the game before a I started the channel, and while I was very impressed with some of the things it had to offer... I felt like it had zero replay value and was a bit longer than it should've been. I'm thinking of trying some sort of "rapid fire" review format for games like that I have already played, but liked a little bit less. If I do, Tower of Time might be a good candidate.
I was playing this with headphones on. Alot of the voice lines had TERRIBLE background static. Some actors were using a mic and had too much ambient noise, you can only hear it with headphones. I get the developer only had like 110k but that comes off as amateurish. I found the sound design some of the worst aspects, unlike your opinion. The click noise every time you click an ability got on my nerves.
I felt harsh downvoting this on Steam, considering its a small company making a kickstarter RPG: I imagine old BG fans. But yes, it is very flawed. I do hope they lift it up. The setting could be interesting. Its simply so thin and stretched to far.
Not really. The problems with this game don't have much to do with their production valuers. Also, Moonring, Colony Ship and Underrail all probably had way less budget. Moonring and Underrail were one-man projects and I have a significantly better opinion of all them (because they are good). The problems with Black Geyser are (in a nutshell): 1st Bad writing: plot convenient events, characters that know stuff but reveal what they know only when it's convenient for the story to do so, cartoonish mustache twirling villains and shallow lore. 2nd Too derivative of stuff that we have already seen: feels like a poor man's Pillars of Eternity. 3rd Little-to-no player agency or emergent gameplay. Moonring, for example, is a one man project and it's free to play.
nice reviews, appreciate your honesty. If you accept review requests, a group of games that may be worth looking into based off of the types of games you review on this channel are spiderware software rpgs. I only recently discovered their existence and I haven't tried them yet personally but they look interesting and seem to have a cult following
Elves live in the woods and are not acceptive of other races? Someone stop this wild ride!!! The fact that you can't even make your own party and play it like a bootleg Icewind Dale is the final nail in the coffin. Like the developers just insist on their prewritten companions, assuming you won't wanna can them. Blasphemy I say.
Man, I think that you were pretty harsh here. You reviewed Black Geyser as if it were a AAA franchise game with a multi-million dollar budget. This is made by a tiny development shop, and anything that adds to the classic CRPG genre in the 2020s should be encouraged in my book. You could have highlighted that more. With more interest they could have invested more into making something great.
The thing is that most of the things that are "wrong" with this game aren't technical issues that may be fixed with a patch or two, or even an entire new version. They have to do with the pillars of the game: combat, story and agency. The game fails at all three things. In the combat department, it's just way too simple in its design. One thing that results from this design is that the game is too easy, certainly, but it's not the only problem. There are no skills or spells to use in tandem to bring down enemies, let alone use skills or spells to use in cross-party-member tactics. The difficulty could be cranked up by boosting enemies and nerfing the player through updates, I suppose, but no amount of patching will fix the fact that it's just tank-n'-spanky in its design. The story is boring and almost uneventful and it's pushed forward by stuff that comes out of nowhere or by convenient information dumps courtesy of the whichever exposition machine you're talking to at the time (the old crone, Isla, your evil brother, some random drunkard in the ass end of nowhere, etc). There are three different threads in the story: your personal story, the story of the greater evil that's threatening to end it all and the story of a quarrel between the kingdom and a rebellious region. And all these are just disjointed and "forced" into progression through the means I already mentioned and thus, they all end in a ways feel completely undeserved. There's also no agency with any of the characters, be them companions or NPCs, because the script simply doesn't provide the player with anything relevant to care about. As for graphics, someone argued (in quite a disingenuous way) that they are "better" than Baldur's Gate's. These graphics, are of course, going to be more technically accomplished than those we saw in a game that's 24 years old (because the enhanced editions didn't use a different engine) but they are artistically uninspired and derivative. I suppose you could say "it's not that bad". But... what do we consider "bad" then? If you must play every isometric fantasy CRPG out there... well... this is one of those, certainly. But every other game that fits this bill that I know of, and that have played in recent years, is just way better than this one: Both Pillars of Eternity games, both Pathfinder games (which I didn't like by the way), Divinity Original Sin II, Tyranny, Solasta Crown of the Magisters, Torment Tides of Numenera, etc. Not to mention those that aren't fantasy themed or that aren't isometric (of which there are dozens). The way I see it... no amount of patching will turn this into anything other that a hard pass.
I remember running into a minor spoiler for Disco Elysium while listening to your Planescape Torments video last time. I think you may be going a bit too deep into Icewind Dale 2's story this time. Good thing I have a stop button handy this time watching your video. Maybe I am being too whiney, but I wish there would be less spoilers in your content.
ah, sorry, it didn't cross my mind that someone might have not played IWD2 yet, even considering I myself hadn't played it until last year. I'll keep that in mind next time, I promise. But man. If you haven't played IWD2 yet... ABSOLUTELY go play that one instead of Black Geyser. Plus, a few months ago it was going for 9 dollars on GOG.
@@YeOldEntertainment Come to think of it, it is a really old game. I was planning on playing it after watching your video. I should write more positive comments too, because I do love your content. Thanks for the great reviews!
For me this is a bad game. New era cprg should be as poe,dos,solasta,tyranny, pathfinder 1, baldur 3 is a great game too but honestly u die first while waiting this game to be finished
I got to be honest here. You may not have the subscriber count you deserve. You may not have the upvotes you deserve. But damn is your honesty refreshing. Thank you for your content.
I was preparing for a punch in the face as I was reading "I got to be honest here" hehe. Thank you for your comment. There's no point in not being in honest with a review. Nothing much to gain is there? Hopefully you'll continue to like them.
I already hated this system of companions not leveling out of party back in Baldurs Gate. I guess it makes sense, but you are gonna be permanently stuck with a set party after some point. Not the best mechanic to copy.
xactly
I agree. Why the hell would you make a game full of interesting companion characters, then punish me for trying to experiment with different party compositions? I like the system in Dragon Age Origins, where companions who aren't in your party will always level up to 1 level below you're main character. That meant that a acharater you kept in your party would be slightly higher level than one sitting on the sidelines, but the difference wasn't big enough to discourage you from switching your party up.
@@benl2140 Xactly
@@benl2140 beceause your choices matters and the replay value is much higher. It is ok, when you miss some content in your First playthrough. Thats not Bad game Design.
@@luxinterna3370 Fair point, and I do typically eventually settle on a pretty stable party in most RPGs. I just like to be able to try out different party compositions before making my final decision of who I want to take with me without worrying that I'm putting myself permanently behind.
Edit: Also, sometines I won't care much about a companion until after I've done their companion quest and then get more interested in them. However, if I haven't been regularly taking them along, then by that point it might be too late.
Thank you for opinion. Still going to try this game anyway after finally finishing / playing more known games of RPG revival era. Still hungry for any isometric RPGs after 10+ years of almost total absence of good genre games since IWD2 release.
That was the exact reason why I played in the first played. Medieval Fantasy CRPG?? -->automatic buy. It didn't work out well for me.
Pretty solid review of where Black Geyser should've been better.
One note though: Companions going "far away", as in several loading screens, isn't really a thing. You can just open the world map from nearly anywhere, click the zone you want to go to, and it will just load directly. Slowly, but directly.
But you still have to go to where they are. They don't wait around (as they do in Fallout for example) and there's not a "camp" (as there is in Dragon Age for example) for them to wait it. So it still makes it a chore to go get them.
I waited patiently for this game, now I can't get myself to play it. Something is wrong with it, and I just can't pinpoint it.
Edit: I LIVE for Isometric RPG's.
There are too many things wrong with it. Story is discombobulated, the combat is generic and way too easy for the most part and loading screens are way too many and way too long. I guess if you're an isometric RPG vacuum that most play them all... this is one of them... but I can't think of a medieval fantasy inspired CRPG that has come out recently that's not better than this one.
@@YeOldEntertainment The magic system also feel generic.
@@brianlav1 Yeah. It was not bad, I thought. But yes, it was generic.
Try out the oldie "The Dark Eye: Drakensang" and "Realms of Arcania: Star Trail" (the 90s version!!)
I think what the isometric rpg genre needs is to take BG1, BG2, IWD2, then combine with Daggerfall and Might n Magic 3,4,5 and have spirte animation. I would love play a BG style game but in a Daggerfall size world
so like wizardry 8 and might and magic games
I would sacrifice at least one of my children for this(not joking)
I did not think divinity original sin 2 was any good.
seems like this game was made by programmers who didn't bother hiring writers, artists, designers etc. Technically it works, but the game is hollow, generic and bland...
This is hands down the most generic fantasy CRPG I've played in the last 10 years or so.
Hey! Thanks for great quality content. Could you consider putting timestamps in the description? It would be much easier to navigate in long videos.
Thanks. You mean like for the categories?
Yes, thanks :)
I dropped the game closer to the end because the loading screens became unbearable!
You probably dropped it around the time it actually got good, but I totally understand.
This is what you get for rigging the pole against Knights of the Chalice!
Haha! rigging the "pole" sounds like something sooo non-family friendly, that not even I would do it! (A web with a proper survey system's coming... sometime)
@@YeOldEntertainment Damn Homonyms ruining my quips!
Your style of comedy is refreshing, never thought I'd find this kind of genius on here!
It's suuuuper nice to get a comment in relation to this! I was beginning to think people were watching the videos "despite" the comedy and not because of it! cheers!
@@YeOldEntertainment keep doing your thing long enough and the right audience will build. Communicate with us through the video If you've got questions for the audience. Makes us feel engaged, enticed to throw out our opinionative comments (for the benefit of the algorithm) and heard whether or not our comment gets seen.
15:12 A-ha! You are hereby banned from designing any story in a game for using the exact creative device, that you shat on earlier.
Whatcha mean? losing/conceding a battle and waking up in a cell that you need to escape/others to save you is one of my favorite tropes!
@@YeOldEntertainment No, no, no. I don't mean the questline that you proposed. I'm all about that "wouldn't it have been cooler".
Would you consider reviewing Pillars or Tyranny?
Thanks for your comment and interest, man! It's next on the agenda actually (maybe a couple of videos are coming out before that one, but it's the next "big-game-review" video for sure.
@@YeOldEntertainment That's great news! Discovered your channel quite recently and enjoy the content :) Curious what you think of these tittles
Haven't played the game myself but I could tell immediately that the game is way too generic and just uninspiring to get me interested. Trying to copy the successes of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and even Pillars of Eternity and the like while not understanding what made them so special in the first place. Black Geyser looks like a poor man's Pillars of Eternity. And the character models look so... Bad. I don't usually care too much about character models in games like this because you play from isometric perspective and all but wow. They just look so bad. Especially in the inventory screen. They remind me of low poly character models from old school Runescape.
It is a Poor man's Pillars of Eternity as you say... Now I'm actually jealous it didn't occur to me to use this phrase as the title XD. But the only place character models atrocious as you say is in the inventory screen. When they walk about, they look decent. I like the dangling animation of the fustiball when you turn and some other stuff. Some shields look pretty badass. But yes... it's mostly an uninspired game.
@@YeOldEntertainment Yeah you're right. I guess I was putting too much emphasis on the models shown in the inventory screens. Outside of that they look fine.
Pillars was already a poor man's Baldur's Gate 1-2
if this is a poor man's of a poor man's than i will most likely never bother playing it.
@@agrippa2012 Yup. That's pretty accurate too.
@@agrippa2012 Can't argue with that. The White March expansion was a way better and more memorable experience than the entire base game of Pillars of Eternity.
Thank you for the review! I had an eye on this game for quite a while, as the RPG genre is probably my favorite. I watched other reviews of the game and saw some bits of story & gameplay and honestly, I struggled to find anything to get me hooked to play other than "it's an RPG, you like RPGs - go and play it". I wish this game at least had a good story. I'd forgive boring gameplay just for that :/
Is perhaps "Tower of Time" on your list of games that you want to review in the future? I heard the developers of this game are close to releasing another RPG, "Dark Envoy" and thought of giving ToT a go, but I'm kind of having the same "getting hooked" issues about it as with Black Geyser
Thanks for leaving a comment. Well. I don't know if I am going to review Tower ot Time, because I played the game before a I started the channel, and while I was very impressed with some of the things it had to offer... I felt like it had zero replay value and was a bit longer than it should've been. I'm thinking of trying some sort of "rapid fire" review format for games like that I have already played, but liked a little bit less. If I do, Tower of Time might be a good candidate.
I was playing this with headphones on. Alot of the voice lines had TERRIBLE background static. Some actors were using a mic and had too much ambient noise, you can only hear it with headphones. I get the developer only had like 110k but that comes off as amateurish. I found the sound design some of the worst aspects, unlike your opinion. The click noise every time you click an ability got on my nerves.
I felt harsh downvoting this on Steam, considering its a small company making a kickstarter RPG: I imagine old BG fans. But yes, it is very flawed. I do hope they lift it up. The setting could be interesting. Its simply so thin and stretched to far.
Not really. The problems with this game don't have much to do with their production valuers. Also, Moonring, Colony Ship and Underrail all probably had way less budget. Moonring and Underrail were one-man projects and I have a significantly better opinion of all them (because they are good). The problems with Black Geyser are (in a nutshell):
1st Bad writing: plot convenient events, characters that know stuff but reveal what they know only when it's convenient for the story to do so, cartoonish mustache twirling villains and shallow lore.
2nd Too derivative of stuff that we have already seen: feels like a poor man's Pillars of Eternity.
3rd Little-to-no player agency or emergent gameplay.
Moonring, for example, is a one man project and it's free to play.
man first encased now this. looks like baldurs gate 3 might be the only up coming crpg worth a damn.
Well there have been some pretty interesting cprgs lately. I particularly enjoyed Solasta very much in spite of it's hilariously bad writing.
Dark Envoy looks interesting, from the makers of Tower of Time.
@@kalenics123 Well Tower of Time had some insanely good stuff and some atrocious things too. But sounds like one I'll have to check out.
man these environments look like they were copy and pasted from either baldurs gate or pillars.
Yup. Poor man's Pillars of Eternity like commenter Siperos said
Oh, i guess i'll continue playint BG and DoS...I was waiting for some rewiew just like yours. As always, your ausome! Ty
Thanks man I appreciate it! You can't go wrong with those, especially their sequels!
I hate crafting I hate crafting
Here it's pretty inoffensive. It's just place items and collect. Still a hard pass though
nice reviews, appreciate your honesty.
If you accept review requests, a group of games that may be worth looking into based off of the types of games you review on this channel are spiderware software rpgs. I only recently discovered their existence and I haven't tried them yet personally but they look interesting and seem to have a cult following
I haven't played those. They sound like my cup of tea indeed.
Elves live in the woods and are not acceptive of other races? Someone stop this wild ride!!!
The fact that you can't even make your own party and play it like a bootleg Icewind Dale is the final nail in the coffin. Like the developers just insist on their prewritten companions, assuming you won't wanna can them. Blasphemy I say.
HAHAHA! That first sentence made spit out my drink. This comment deserves more likes so here's mine!
Man, I think that you were pretty harsh here. You reviewed Black Geyser as if it were a AAA franchise game with a multi-million dollar budget. This is made by a tiny development shop, and anything that adds to the classic CRPG genre in the 2020s should be encouraged in my book. You could have highlighted that more. With more interest they could have invested more into making something great.
What's the name of the movie? 14:50
"F*ck the Prom" (It's a bad film XD)
You need to play gothic! Ist's one of if not the first action RPGs and it hast invented atmosphere and has impaccable quest design
is that bad even after so many upates? or is it review on release version?
Yeah was wondering the same - I was hoping it wouldn't be THAT bad.
The thing is that most of the things that are "wrong" with this game aren't technical issues that may be fixed with a patch or two, or even an entire new version. They have to do with the pillars of the game: combat, story and agency.
The game fails at all three things. In the combat department, it's just way too simple in its design. One thing that results from this design is that the game is too easy, certainly, but it's not the only problem. There are no skills or spells to use in tandem to bring down enemies, let alone use skills or spells to use in cross-party-member tactics. The difficulty could be cranked up by boosting enemies and nerfing the player through updates, I suppose, but no amount of patching will fix the fact that it's just tank-n'-spanky in its design.
The story is boring and almost uneventful and it's pushed forward by stuff that comes out of nowhere or by convenient information dumps courtesy of the whichever exposition machine you're talking to at the time (the old crone, Isla, your evil brother, some random drunkard in the ass end of nowhere, etc).
There are three different threads in the story: your personal story, the story of the greater evil that's threatening to end it all and the story of a quarrel between the kingdom and a rebellious region. And all these are just disjointed and "forced" into progression through the means I already mentioned and thus, they all end in a ways feel completely undeserved.
There's also no agency with any of the characters, be them companions or NPCs, because the script simply doesn't provide the player with anything relevant to care about.
As for graphics, someone argued (in quite a disingenuous way) that they are "better" than Baldur's Gate's. These graphics, are of course, going to be more technically accomplished than those we saw in a game that's 24 years old (because the enhanced editions didn't use a different engine) but they are artistically uninspired and derivative.
I suppose you could say "it's not that bad". But... what do we consider "bad" then? If you must play every isometric fantasy CRPG out there... well... this is one of those, certainly. But every other game that fits this bill that I know of, and that have played in recent years, is just way better than this one: Both Pillars of Eternity games, both Pathfinder games (which I didn't like by the way), Divinity Original Sin II, Tyranny, Solasta Crown of the Magisters, Torment Tides of Numenera, etc. Not to mention those that aren't fantasy themed or that aren't isometric (of which there are dozens). The way I see it... no amount of patching will turn this into anything other that a hard pass.
I remember running into a minor spoiler for Disco Elysium while listening to your Planescape Torments video last time. I think you may be going a bit too deep into Icewind Dale 2's story this time. Good thing I have a stop button handy this time watching your video. Maybe I am being too whiney, but I wish there would be less spoilers in your content.
ah, sorry, it didn't cross my mind that someone might have not played IWD2 yet, even considering I myself hadn't played it until last year. I'll keep that in mind next time, I promise. But man. If you haven't played IWD2 yet... ABSOLUTELY go play that one instead of Black Geyser. Plus, a few months ago it was going for 9 dollars on GOG.
@@YeOldEntertainment Come to think of it, it is a really old game. I was planning on playing it after watching your video. I should write more positive comments too, because I do love your content. Thanks for the great reviews!
I love the content but christ on a cracker that intro music is jarring...
Hey anyone, if you multiclass should I use less party members? So I get more exp for myself?
Nah, you'll be maxing everything by the time it counts.
@@YeOldEntertainment thank you =]
For me this is a bad game. New era cprg should be as poe,dos,solasta,tyranny, pathfinder 1, baldur 3 is a great game too but honestly u die first while waiting this game to be finished
this video has overlenght