GreedFall

I knew I was right to wait for it on GOG. This game is fantastic: meaningful dialogue, real questlines, a role playing feast.

Play this game on easy and you are in for a unique, complex, beautiful roleplaying experience! Spiders excels at this kind of full immersion worlds I crave where 'roleplaying' is more than just boosting your ability to deal damage. There's plenty of that here but there's also negotiation, trying (and often failing) to reconcile different perspectives, following up clues and interrogating characters to learn more about the way this fantasy universe works. The combat is admirable in its ambition with a system for balance to separate it from previous games but it is a little clunky. It's flashy anyway so you can as I say set the difficult to easy, breeze through the fights, and focus on what clearly got the lion's share of attention her: top notch voice acting and well written dialogue, gorgeous locations, lots of exploration, and a real attempt at a living world of people going about their lives all around you. Don't forgo a rare turn-of-the-century RPG just because the combat is a bit stiff.

So, let's get this out of the way at the outset. This isn't Skyrim or Witcher 3. It's an indy effort from a small studio. It does have a bit of jank. Well, more than a bit. But it is GOOD! I was not a fan (read I hated) of Spider's first two RPGs, Mars: War Logs and Technomancer. They were, in my view, terrible but necessary steps for an indy studio learning the RPG ropes. Greedfall is a solid experience and lightyears beyond Spider's previous efforts. The story, dialog and voice acting are excellent! The combat system is light on content and variety but well executed. I'd say these are the guys to watch on the RPG front. Looking back on it, who would have guessed that the devs of Witcher 2 were capable of the leap to Witcher 3. I'm guessing and hoping that Spiders is the next CDPR.

Four stars not for the quality of the game (it definitely isn’t a milestone in RPG genre) but for being probably the best example of value to money buy you can make. Setting the game in late renaissance like period already was a breath of fresh air gamers definitely needed and adding a colonial based story was a bullseye mix. Whole background of both the island you are sent as a Legate and your homeland are truly a fascinating pieces of lore that you want to explore and uncover. Gameplay combat mechanics and levelling are implemented correctly but in a standard to generic RPG way, there is nothing irritating but also nothing that would make you want to spend any more time fighting of exploring than it is necessary. Gaining levels is just clicking on skills you need – few lines to choose from few icons to click. What drags the game down is the feel of it being a budget (a AA) game almost on every step. World is interesting and nicely made BUT after a time you start to realize that locations are repeating with only the textures changed. Open world is just about a dozen maps of various sizes, sometimes artificially blocked so you would not venture somewhere where you shouldn’t, and made in a way taking shortest route between mission objectives was impossible. Your companions have only about three personal quests each and this is basically the only time you can learn more about them and witness some of their personality. Side quests are just a branch of the main quest that is optional, but not doing it has obvious negative outcome. And If I ever again hear “ I am De Sade, legate of the Congregation…” I will literally break my keyboard with my head. I would not be a hugely wrong in guessing that our character starts 60 to 70% of conversations with this line… All in all it is decent game with potential of giving you few hours of really nice time only if you are not expecting anything ground breaking especially if you’ll happen to get it on some sale

The game has it's moment, it can be fun when you're exploring and finding different monsters throughout the continent, but that's about it. The world is empty and bland, the cities are empty shells with looping ambient sounds. The voice acting is not bad but it's not good, the voice actors seems to be recycled across characters in a not-so-subtle way. The combat is fluid but very basic, you do the same attacks over and over until they die. The story is the strongest selling point of this game, but the blandness of the world, the endless running back and forth between places, the voice acting and the lesser combat, all makes it not worth sticking around for. This game has potential, but keeps tripping over its own feet.