Developer: Spiders
Publisher: Focus Interactive
Release Date: September 10th, 2019
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One
In GreedFall, Teer Fradee is a mysterious island ripe for colonization and as the newly appointed Legate of the Merchant Congregation, it is up to you to accompany your cousin, the newly appointed Governor of the city known as New Serene, across the ocean and establish a viable foothold for the Congregation. Meanwhile, you also hope to discover a cure for a disease that is ravaging your home known as the Malichor. However, before your journey to the strange island even has a chance to begin, you quickly learn that things are not as they seem and Teer Fradee is a dangerous place.
Spiders has crafted a pretty decent world and story with GreedFall. One thing I like about these sort of games is where I can build relationships and approach quests from multiple angles and Spiders provided that in bulk. I enjoy being a diplomatic character who makes friends instead of enemies so I managed to avoid a lot of conflict throughout my play through. There are plenty of side quests that keep you going and traveling all over the island and feeding you more of the lore as well. Another thing that’s worth mentioning is that GreedFall manages to avoid giving players fetch quests. One quest had me gathering items for a blind native but I already had the items in my inventory and nothing else like it popped back up since. That one fetch quest was also important for my character to earn the trust of the natives so that I could track down a very important figure in their clan. With that being said, there is a ton of backtracking so that you can talk to NPCs. It gets exhausting as you progress through the quests. Unfortunately though, I was halted by a game breaking bug that prevented me from meeting with a specific story character and the only work around was for me to load up an earlier save file. I however, did not have a save file that went back far enough and I couldn’t beat the game.
With that being said, not all conflict is avoidable and you’re bound to stroll into the middle of some bandits or a pack of the island’s vicious wildlife and you’ll learn early on that button mashing isn’t your best option. You’ll need to learn to parry and on occasion, rely on your various skills to overcome obstacles. Players can seamlessly pause in the middle of a fight to access their abilities and items to help give them an upper hand. I chose a technical character who used traps, poisons and bombs in battle and if I’m being honest, the technical trees bomb skill was pretty overpowered. Even more so when I unlocked the poison upgrade so not only did it devastate enemies, it also poisoned them making it easier to pick off survivors. You’re party members are also pretty useful too, often fairing well in a fight and they also offer a bonus for when they’re in your party. I almost exclusively kept Siora and Kurt in my party for their bonuses in Vigor and Crafting and that allowed me to allocate points in other areas like Science and Charisma earlier on.
Graphically, GreedFall doesn’t offer anything that’s really going to compete with most of the current generation games but that doesn’t mean it’s an ugly title to look at. Plenty of the exterior environments provide gorgeous views to look at and the city hubs feel particularly detailed and well thought out. GreedFall is lacking in most other departments however as interior environments all tend to repeat themselves whether it’s a building or a cave. Character models are also pretty weak and the lighting is occasionally out of whack. There were a few times where I was inside a cave and my character had this weird shiny coating on her face like she just splashed water on herself. In the sound department, the game performs pretty well in most areas. Some areas of the game like swords and the wildlife sound more on the generic side of things but the firearms sound wicked and the voice acting is spot on. It was actually a lot more than I expected from Spiders’ if I’m being honest.
It’s clear that Spiders has taken a huge step forward with their craft. There are various combat trees to specialize in and companion romances so players can keep their experiences fresh when they start a new game to get the different endings. Despite the weak character creator, all the backtracking and graphical issues, GreedFall is an incredibly fun RPG that will scratch an itch players developed after Bioware stopped making good games. It’s unfortunate that I experienced such a game breaking issue because I put about 30 hours into my game before running into the problem and that’s just a lot of work lost over something that shouldn’t have made it passed QA testing.
WeTheNerdy Gives GreedFall 5 broken story quests out of 10
Pros:
Fun combat
Great character building
Interesting world and lore
Quests feel well thought out
Cons:
Has potentially game breaking bugs
Graphically dated
A lot of backtracking gets exhausting
