This game has been compared to Dragon Age a lot and it is similar in that you get a party of buddies that have quests and like you better when you do them. Where DA is bratty, pop-cultured, and colourful, Greedfall is cooler, well-spoken, and serious. Which fits the setting just fine; you are the new chief diplomat of a settlement on a farway island full of mysterious animals and monsters, trying to find a cure for the deadly scourge that plagues your home country. You unravel the old lies and fight the rising new threat. The end is heartbreaking. Controls are smooth and precise. Equipment has plenty of options bordering on micro-management but still within acceptable limits; with the right stuff, your companions are real overachievers that do half the combat work for you and have some remarks along the way. Graphics are good, designs are pretty cool. You don't get to fight kaiju-sized bosses, just as everyhting is down to Earth in Greedfall, but bosses are still challenging. All extra skills and abilities have their uses, making it hard to decide where to put the points that aren't enough to buy everything. My biggest regret is not getting all the foxes because of a bug (which is the only one I found). Bottom line: a cool RPG that is over before it gets boring, an original setting, a clever character, and tricornes. Five of five stars from me.
Contains TRIGGERS and major SPOILERS! For the emotionally sensitive like me out there: I stopped playing the game in quest 3 when the task demanded to find a pornographic painting that you have to look at often and the quest evolved into the case of a rape of a pregnant young refugee. While you may put the purpetraitor into jail, one option actually is to hand all evidence over to him so he goes unpunished (!) but uses his influence to improve matters for all refugees. While the characters express their disgust in no unclear words, I found making the decision unbearable - I play games for entertainment, and this is not it. Besides clocking out early, I guess the game is decent enough, quite wordy, lots of running around. Combat is tedious with a dozen guys coming at you in waves - better controls would have made it more fun. The cases are never solved in a morally definitive way so you can never be sure you do the right thing. Graphics are good, controls okay, has a few bugs that needed technically advanced solutions.
Contains SPOILERs and possible TRIGGERs! I read this game was meant to be for non-gamers (what? why?), and without gratuitous bloodshed. True that many shooters have that, but this game's character traumatizes test participants, mind-controls her friends, and has the wonderful option of killing her own mother by telekinetically stopping her heart. Good times. Non-gamers will have spent their time on movies and series instead, and will find the plot so old, chewed through, and unoriginal, I wouldn't recommend it to any one of them. Nothing is new. Not the characters, not the powers, or the supernatural ideas. The protagonist is a woman (plus, normally) who is two heads shorter than any of the guys and has to be constantly saved while crying, A LOT; despite acing CIA training, she huffs and puffs going up a ladder. Also, seen in her underwear and showering a lot, is almost raped as a teenager, tries to commit suicide on several occasions, and the games forces a relationship with the cold guy who traps her into beocming a murderer and is of course much older. The other women in the plot are devices - the mom she longs for, the pregnant friend who gives birth and you get to help, aaaand that was it - with the only silver lining being the old Navajo lady who helps you with a spirit ritual. Then dies. I have never been confronted with controls this awful. They make you guess where to move the controller/mouse while holding: down to open this door, side for the next door, down again. Becasue of no saves, if you fail at any task you wanted to be good at, you have to play the entire chapter again. The super power is arbitrarily limited in range and ability, you can only control either the PC or the power BUT the game still offers a multiplayer option so two people can suffer through the gruelling controls. The only good thing I can say is that the delivery out of chronological order is interesting (in this case made it bearable) even if unlogical, and that the graphics are indeed pretty good.
A point-and-click puzzle with diverse puzzles, most of which make sense, and a delightful, simplistic art style. It's relatively short, humorous, kid-friendly, and doesn't require masterful skills like advanced math, but occasionally demands memory effort. Most of the time there is more than one puzzle to follow up on, the difficulty curve as the game progresses is good. The story is humorously narrated by the ego-perspective player character, Agent A, as they are trapped by the devilish Ruby in her 60ies style house, which hits every spy cliché there is, according for many of the puzzles that may not be physically sound but that we've seen in films. If you've played The Room, the controls are familiar, including motion sickness opportunities when one has to go back several steps, which happens more often later in the game. Most puzzles make sense - no hamsters in microwave ovens - even if some require trust that "this must be what the game means". I encountered no bugs, lags, or other problems on my not-too-recent PC. The only time I was confused was when the screen hid a thing I thought I should be able to manipulate. I'm giving Agent A - A Puzzle in Diguise five stars. If there's a sequel, I will certainly play it.
