GreedFall: The Dying World

Greedfall: The Dying World is a fantasy themed RPG where player character Vriden Gerr is a native of the island of Teer Fradee. After being kidnapped by foreign invaders and taken back to their city on the mainland, you must escape, recruit allies, and find a way to return home, while protecting your people from a sinister threat. [h1]Gameplay (medium quality)[/h1] • Combat uses a familiar real time with pause system. This was a controversial design choice because the original game had a more action focused real time system. Some players didn’t like that the combat system was changed, however this isn’t a problem for me because I’ve played RPGs with all gameplay styles. • The player controls a party of four characters, including Vriden Gerr and three of the seven recruitable companions. At any time during combat you can pause the action to order a character to attack a specific enemy, use an area of effect attack, heal an ally, or activate various other abilities. I like that we can queue up several orders for each character during the same pause window. And if you want to simplify the combat, you can enable companion AI at any time, allowing them to manage their own abilities. • You can customise most of your companions’ equipment. Each companion uses a specific weapon type, so for example if they use bows, you can give them any bow, but you can’t give them a sword. You can fully customise each individual piece of their armour though. • Unfortunately there’s not much enemy variety, so the further I progressed through the story, the combat started to feel slightly repetitive. You’ll mostly fight against Human soldiers or bandits, a few types of wildlife including dogs, birds, monkeys, and lizards, and some large creature bosses. It doesn’t help that most quests are divided between three major locations, so you’ll fight the same enemies in the same locations multiple times. • Combat also felt very easy on the medium/”adventure” difficulty. I only died a few times, and as I acquired more skills and equipped better gear, I started to feel very overpowered. Its possible that the higher difficulty level could allow Greedfall’s combat to feel more tactical and exciting. • You can avoid combat in some locations by sneaking past guards, or finding hidden routes by repairing ladders or using explosives to blow up weak walls. Stealth mechanics are quite simple, you just need to crouch and move past enemies while they’re looking the other way. In theory you can also equip disguises, but I only found a single disguise and to equip it I needed to almost maximise my stealth ability, so I never bothered trying this. • There are a few other non-combat abilities which are useful during quests. Diplomacy can be used during conversations to convince NPCs to support your cause, mechanics can be used to lockpick doors or chests, and survival allows you to find hidden clues. Skill checks have a percentage chance to succeed depending on your ability level, however failing a skill check won’t prevent you from completing a quest because there are usually multiple ways to progress. If you can’t pick a lock, you might be able to find a key. If you can’t convince an NPC with diplomacy, you might be able to find some documents to support your argument. • There’s a fairly detailed character creator which has various sliders and options to change the shape and colour of Vriden Gerr’s face and hair. However, not being able to change anything after starting the actual game is a big flaw. While Greedfall clearly warns the player about this before you finalise your character, its still a problem. Whenever I play an RPG with a character creator, I find that when I start seeing my character in cutscenes, from different camera angles and different lighting conditions, using different facial expressions, I’ll usually see something that isn’t quite right. The player should have the ability to make a slight tweak later. After playing Greedfall for an hour, I actually abandoned my first character and started a new game so that I could get my character looking correct at the second attempt. [h1]Story (medium quality)[/h1] • Story is quite good and well written, as Vriden Gerr attempts to return home and protect their people from the invaders. I liked most of the companions. However, the main villain gets hardly any screen time, so while it was clear what his plan was and why we needed to stop him, I never cared about him on a personal level. • In addition to the main quest, most companions have their own personal quest where you’ll need to help them resolve problems relating to their past or their family. • Voice acting is mostly good, especially for the companions. The main villain is voiced by Neil Newbon (Baldur’s Gate 3), which is another reason why his lack of screen time was disappointing. • Sometimes cutscene camera angles don’t properly focus on the character who is speaking. • As this is a prequel, you don’t need to play the original Greedfall to understand the story of The Dying World. There are a few references to the plague which is the focus of the original game’s main story, but otherwise TDW is a completely separate adventure. However, if you enjoy TDW and want to see more of the world and its factions, I would recommend playing the original game after completing TDW. [h1]Technical (low quality)[/h1] • It took me 44 hours to complete the story and all quests in my journal. • Environmental graphics and character models are mostly fine, although clearly limited by production budget. • I didn’t have any problems with framerate or stuttering, however I noticed several bugs. • There are various graphical bugs. In particular, I noticed my companions’ clothes kind of vibrating during cutscenes on a number of occasions. I also saw a few examples of long hair clipping through armour. • Unfortunately, one companion (Till) doesn’t have any personal quest, which means I never had a reason to put him in my party. And another (Safia) seemed to be bugged because she never gave me the final part of her quest, so I couldn’t get her achievement. • The final part of the main quest felt incomplete or bugged. [spoiler]You’re told to split the party into two groups with the implication being that each group would be responsible for performing a different part of the plan. However, I was never given the opportunity to control the second group. After defeating the final boss, I got a cutscene showing one of my companions from the second group had died off screen. After reading other player comments it seems this is because I didn’t speak to some NPCs, but the quest log never asked me to do this.[/spoiler] • Also, after the final cutscene, I didn’t get any slides relating to what happened to my companions after the end of story. (I also didn’t see any credits but I’m less bothered about that). • The game crashed 3 times (2 while loading a new area, 1 while just running around). Thankfully the autosaves are frequent so I didn’t lose any progress. • Controls are fully rebindable and work well on mouse and keyboard. • Music is quite good. [h1]Recommendation[/h1] Greedfall: The Dying World is worth playing for RPG fans, but I would advise waiting for a big sale. Despite the low review scores, this isn’t a bad game, it just feels low budget and janky. Combat system is fine overall but can feel repetitive. Story is good and has some interesting characters. But there are multiple bugs which will never be fixed. I played several of Spiders’ previous games (Mars: War Logs, Bound By Flame, Technomancer, the original Greedfall), and I always thought they had the potential to make a really good RPG if they ever got a bigger budget. Sadly with the studio being closed this year, that will never happen. But I respect that they at least tried, because we need more games like this (single player, story driven, fantasy themed RPG, no microtransactions).

[h1]Buy on Sale | Focus on the Story[/h1] If you played the first game (and liked it), only then should you consider buying this...during a sale. It’s a prequel set a few years before the original. [list] [*] [b]The Story[/b] is easily the best part, with the companion arcs making up the crux of it. [*] [b]The side-quests[/b] have varied endings depending on your choices but the main questline is mostly linear. [*] [b]The Exploration[/b] aspect is decent. Bunch of hidden areas with special gear scattered throughout, and there’s very little backtracking. [*] [b]The Combat[/b] is a mess. Enemies become sponges in the latter half of the game, and some classes are unbalanced. [*] [b]The Skill Trees[/b] aren’t well-thought out. Towards the end of the game, you’re left with plenty of spare points without useful available skills to invest it. [*] [b]The Visuals[/b] are decent, but the LOD pop-in can be quite jarring even at the highest settings. [/list] [i]Greedfall: The Dying World was the last game by “Spiders.” The studio was closed after 18 years of operation following financial troubles.[/i]

I loved the first game, however this is a night and day difference in gameplay, not in a good way, and the games really aren't comparable.

30% + Great graphics in both characters and the world + In-depth character creator + Traversal is improved from GreedFall 1 - The colonialism story is extremely bland and watered down - Quests are uninteresting, oddly paced and often menial - Combat is strange, a weird in-between of turn-based and real-time that doesn't work - Characters are forgettable - Animations are not to standard with modern-day RPGs

Can I recommend it? Maybe if you liked the first title, but don't expect much on anything other than the story. I’m a fan of the first Greedfall, and that’s the sole reason why I bought this game. I mean, Spiders made a whole new language for the natives, to not just sprinkle it into the "common" speech, but to have full conversations in it. Just how impressive is that! The game had its quirks too, but it also had personality. The Dying World is.. difficult to digest. We start on Teer Fradee, it’s colourful and beautiful with its glowing vines and cozily decorated huts, I was immersed. But then you experience UI and combat system, and both are just ABYSMAL. The UI is so unintuitive and simply weird, I spend more time trying to lvl up/equip characters than playing the actual game. I did play games with dice roll mechanics and tactical pause before - this one is just not fun. Then the game freezes when you tab out. The game makes an npc vanish under the floor because you reload a save, forcing you to proceed without speaking to them. It’s hard not to notice how much content was cut, and how much better this game could potentially be. I will continue playing for the plot and its tying into the og story, but man this is tedious.

It really feels like a lot of effort went into this game, but several things ruined the experience for me. The combat is repetitive and boring, so I didn't enjoy it. I also ran into a lot of bugs, and some quests even seemed bugged, which was incredibly frustrating since I like completing every quest. Marking quests as failed when there's no other possible outcome just wastes the player's time. Another annoying thing is not being able to hide the ugly helmets and hats that completely cover your character. I played for 17 hours and I'm still near the beginning of the game. I usually don't quit games, but all these small frustrations made me stop playing.

I can't make heads or tails of this game. I played its predecessor several times start to finish, but this is weirdly different. The fighting is really strange, now fully controlled via quickbar items like an MMO. No dodging, no direct control. The skill trees are bonkas. It's not fun and you can set yourself as being immortal, making the experience worse. The map design is great and sometimes straight up gorgeous but doesn't fit the mechanics the game actually gives you. Particularly if you managed to make it out of the insanely long prologue area, you are greeted with an amazing map only to realize you still can't jump, get stuck at every corner, and mostly try to figure out how to get to a place by walking. I feel like the maps are made for a modern action rpg with jumping, climbing, balancing, but the character team didn't go along with that idea. The acting seems okay. There is decidedly too much non-english dialogs. It's refreshing at first but gets old real fast. If you disable subtitles, you are boned when talking to fellow natives outside the starter area. I cannot, in good conscience, recommend this as is (or ever will be).

Впечатления... смешанные. В самом начале морик словил сперва фэйспалм от местной жительницы, объясняющей местному жителю, почему местные жители охотятся, и что они охотятся экологично, не бьют всех подряд (потом попавшие в капканы соплеменники говорят ГГ буквально то же самое), потом фэйспалм от злодея, который подробно рассказывает своему злодейскому подручному, как они злодейски совершили преступление, хотя ГГ буквально только что прочёл его дневник, где он подробно пишет, как он злодейски совершил преступление. Вообще порой чувство, что игрока за идиота держат. То и дело объясняют очевидное или растолковывают всё по два раза, чтобы игрок точно понял. бедами соплеменников ГГ проникнуться сложновато, так как мы их едва узнаём, а большая часть связанных с ними квестов не имеет продолжения. Встречаем персонажа, помогаем или даём ему совет, а потом он пропадает насовсем и мы никогда не узнаем, что с ним стало и вообще жив ли он. Не могу понять, нравится мне или нет то, что в личных квестах спутники могут не принять решение протагониста и всё равно поступить по-своему. С точки зрения прописывания персонажей это скорее плюс. С точки зрения игровой механики - минус. А вот кому хочется руки вырвать - так это тому, кто придумал, что если берёшь личный квест сопартийца, то сопартиец намертво лочится в пати, а другие личные квесты нельзя взять, пока этот не доделаешь. Какого хрена я должна мотаться туда-сюда по нескольким городам с каждым квестом вместо того, чтобы взять все скопом, а потом спокойно делать сперва все нужные этапы в одном городе, потом в другом и так далее? "- Здравствуй, скользкий тип, мы тут ищем одну работорговку, чтобы ей пару вопросов задать. - Здравствуйте, отряд вооружённых до зубов людей, я тоже её ищу, чтобы... поговорить. Но у неё охрана больно суровая, не подойдёшь. Объединим силы? ... - Муа-ха-ха, а теперь я убью работорговку, не дав вам задать ей вопросы, потому что такой вот я скользкий тип! И, раз уж союзники мне больше не нужны, нападу на них. Ну и что, что они только что на моих глазах десяток профессиональных охранников положили, не вспотев. Кто писал этот сценарий, чем он думал?" Видимо тем же, что и тот, кто дизайнил некоторые локации. Пришёл, значит, ГГ допросить пойманную шпионку... а шпионку кто-то убил! Даже не знаю, как он умудрился проникнуть в тщательно охраняемую тюрьму... в которой НЕТ ОДНОЙ СТЕНЫ! Точнее, в одной из стен проход, даже без двери, но мне всё равно старый анекдот про Зоркого Глаза в тюрьме вспомнился. Всевозможные "баптистовые платки" и "почтённых гончих" я сперва пыталась фоткать, но потом забросила - слишком уж много такого кривого перевода. Хотя один выдающийся перл всё же сохранила: "капитанка-суперинтендант". Боженьки-кошеньки, за что?! Князь де Веспе: одна из двух моих любовниц, кажется, сливает секретные сведения на сторону. Будь другом, определи, какая именно. Любовница номер раз *явно что-то скрывает* Любовница номер два *в игре отсутствует* Я: ка-акой интересный детективный сюжет! То есть я понимаю, что это просто недоделанность, но выглядит ужасно нелепо. Привычка подосланных убийц вместо того, чтобы убить ГГ и компанию, просто усыплять его и бросать в катакомбах (вы думаете они только один раз это провернут? Ха-ха!) вызывает тоскливое недоумение. Я дисциплинированно тыкала во все сердечки, сделала все личные квесты и таскала его с собой везде, но Людвиг так и не заромансился. Понятия не имею, что я сделала не так. В конце игра внезапно убила Фаусту, у которой тоже были сделаны все личные квесты, и мне так и не удалось нагуглить, что это за фигня была, можно ли было это предотвратить и от чего вообще зависит выживание спутников. Попалась версия, что для этого не только должен быть сделан личный квест, но и подняты отношения с его фракцией. Новаторски, конечно, но сюжетно необоснуемо. По итогу - самая разочаровывающая игра от "Паучков" (да упокоятся они с миром). Недоделанная, линейная, с плоскими, как тарелка антагонистами (интересно, позвать на озвучку Курназа актёра, который озвучивал Астариона - это была последняя попытка сделать его хоть сколько-то интереснее?) и кучей технических косяков. Увы, как бы я не любила игры от этой студии, следует признать - их "лебединая песня" не удалась.