Greedfall: The Dying World
Developer: Spiders
Publisher: Nacon
Platforms: PC, Playstation 5, Xbox Series X (Reviewed)
Release Date: Available Now
Price: $59.99 USD – Available Here
Overview
The original Greedfall came as something of a surprise when it was released in 2019. This was thanks to its darker themed and highly detailed worldbuilding. What may have been a somewhat standard RPG was elevated by its political balancing, companions, and unique vision. Now, things got a bit mixed up with the original developers Spiders being bought out by Nacon shortly after the release of the first game, shifting publishing and ownership entirely from Focus Home Interactive to Nacon’s own publishing branch.
With Spiders still at the wheel but Nacon looking over their shoulder, GreedFall 2: The Dying World was initially released in early-access on PC about a year and a half ago as a prologue to the original title aiming to eventually deliver a full experience upon console release. Now with a sudden release and the “2” dropped from the title altogether, has Greedfall: The Dying World managed to survive its emergence from early-access?
Story
Set three years prior to the events of the original game, this time around players are placed in the boots of Vriden Gerr, or someone simply called “Rootless” in the native tongue as this time the script has been flipped entirely from the original. Rather than playing as a colonizer looking to investigate a new land, players now begin on Teer Fradee as a native on the cusp of undertaking their rite of passage to become a sage and receive the blessing of the earth. The tasks assigned to the player and their initial companions are to discover two issues that are plaguing the village, the disappearing game from the forest and the mysterious illness spreading amongst the villagers.
Of course, with Teer Fradee just barely being discovered as a brand new island rich with resources, various members of the Bridge Alliance have already moved in to take advantage of the untouched resources and, as many would expect, the appearance of these outsiders is exactly what is plaguing the village and through a variety of different methods players can sort these out. Be it through trickery, bribery, some cunning detective work, or straight up murder. Either way, once Vriden Gerr finds themselves a freshly anointed sage alongside their companion they are quickly captured by a brutal faction of unknown origin and whisked away as prisoners aboard a vessel, treated with inhumane conditions that lead to the death of an ally along the way but compassion from a potentially new ally.
No sooner will the player find themselves thrown into a mysterious dungeon with their fate unknown are they sprung from that very jail by this friendly face, a rebellious noble, and even a mysterious girl who was also locked up to give the players a rather sizable starting party as they find themselves with the shoe on the other foot. Vriden Gerr is now a stranger in a strange land where many people see her people as mysterious or fantastical through rumors while others see them as nothing more than slaves and test subjects. With a desperate need to return home and prevent further damage to the island, it will be up to the player and their allies to navigate the political factions to gain access to a way home and bring justice against those that are kidnapping the people of Teer Fradee in the first place.
Greedfall: The Dying World tells an interesting but incredibly unbalanced storyline that flips the script a bit on the original game by placing players in the shoes of a native of the land now brought to the old country against their will. The interesting elements are quite strong as we see how the player’s character, through the help of their companions, must navigate a world and political realm they do not know all while trying to save their home island and people from being exploited. Unfortunately while the writing here happens to be quite strong, it is also incredibly poorly paced. While the amount of exploration and side activities will vary how long some segments take, the prologue takes far too long to kick things off and even then the immediate aftermath still places players under strict restrictions for far too long before the game world actually opens up and offers a variety of main quests filled with some political maneuvering and intriguing discoveries that players can take on as they see fit. Though even then there is plenty of padding and untapped potential throughout.
It is a bit unfortunate though that expansive exploration can actually be punished in Greedfall: The Dying World. You see, while many RPGs often place items in various environments that players can find early, rewarding players for finding the item they might need beforehand for a side-quest or even a main quest, this title almost always does the opposite. This can lead to situations where players will investigate a warehouse or series of buildings only to find a few locked doors that can be lockpicked, walls that can be blown apart, or even broken ladders/bridges that can be repaired to access them only to be left wanting. Then later on the player will find some type of note on a corpse, accept a side-quest from a random villager, or even take on a main questline that will not only bring players right back to that location but also make the item magically appear. That is of course if the quests don’t bug out entirely.
Throughout my roughly forty hours of scouring through everything that we could try and do in Greedfall: The Dying World, numerous questlines nearly brought us to a grinding halt due to bugs, progress breaking issues, and side-quests that had to be abandoned entirely due to vanishing NPCs. As players play through the game their companions, which we will discuss momentarily as they are one of the brightest parts of the game’s writing, will have personal quests that will lock them to the player’s party and prevent other companion quests from happening. The issue here is, some of these quests can involve items that glitch out entirely and are completely inaccessible.
In one such instance a character that was meant to research an item discovered from a corpse would not acknowledge it at all and the item vanished if said character wasn’t also in the party. Thankfully, through meticulous saving it was possible to adjust party members and re-do that part of the quest and properly finish the quest that would have been broken and locked the player out of any further companion quests. In another case, and far more damning, was a main storyline mission that involved escorting a character to a specific location only for the NPC players were meant to meet spawning underground and being entirely inaccessible despite numerous reloads and restarts of the title. The only saving grace was being able to escort the character to a separate location from what was discussed, since anything else resulted in a game over. This issue happened a few times revolving around characters either going completely off-script and talking about events that had either not happened yet, or actions that were not taken, leading to some rather confusing scenes.
While there is a lot of doom involving slowly developing plot points and glitches, that isn’t to say that there isn’t plenty of intriguing writing and characters as well. As mentioned before, the companions that join the player on their quest are wonderfully written and almost all of them have a wide-array of quests available that unlock as players grow closer to them and advance the storyline. Some of them are better written than others, with Ludwig and with Alvida, Ludwig, and Fausta being the best written and Nilan being the troublesome hot-headed brother-like ally. Other characters are similarly well-handled with the exception of Till who feels like he was included a last minute addition rather than anything else, especially since he has no noteworthy character developments beyond the obvious we won’t spoil here. One thing that is a bit of a nice touch is that many of the player’s companions will chime into conversations with NPCs and even take advantage of their positions of power in certain factions to help players sway things one way or another. This not only encourages players to think of who they wish to see certain story beats but also encourages a bit of replay value to see how different characters will respond to things.
Gameplay
One of the most notable things that players will find different in GreedFall: The Dying World is rather than following the same type of combat as the first game, it has been completely re-worked into a system that will likely be hit or miss for fans. Rather than being an action-based combat system the title is now more akin to an old-school RPG with real-time mechanics and pause controls to dictate the player’s entire team in combat. As players enter combat they can fight actively on their own, controlling their character and using diamond-skill charges that replenish through auto-attacking, to execute healing, attacking, buffing, and debuffing skills. Or they can take a far more meticulous approach, pausing combat and swapping between allies in the party and dictating what skills they’ll use, which enemy they will target, and more.
The game does recommend that players make active use of their party and it is recommended to do so if players want to make the most out of the game’s combat system, since if they don’t they’ll likely grow quite tired of the combat that feels like it quickly becomes repetitious or dangerous depending on the situation. Ally AI has a tendency to run into danger and potentially find a single fighter targeted by every enemy on the field, or lag behind the player so far that the only one being targeted is the player which can be rather dangerous too, though even if the main character falls in combat the battle will continue. Even if there is only one fighter left standing at the end of a battle, the rest will recover enough and can be healed back up.
The repetition comes from two factors. One, the amount of enemy types is incredibly small and even then are incredibly basic on the status afflictions or ways players need to focus on them. Nearly eighty percent of combat is against other humans using similar attack types to the player’s party while the others range from hounds and giant mutated crab-like creatures, flying bat-like creatures that often continue to fly after death, and a few other monsters. A small scattering of bosses mix things up now and then but they are few and far between. The second issue is the fact that the skill trees are incredibly basic. While it is possible for the player character to eventually unlock every type of skill-tree available and even use two different types of weapons should they wish, there never feels like an actual reason to swap between these weapons nor any reason to focus on mixing up their build.
It is incredibly easy to use a “memory stone” to revert the player’s assigned abilities and stats but when it comes to combat it rarely feels like players need to mix things up unless they really don’t like the way their chosen weapon ends up playing. It is also rather unfortunate that, at least on consoles as far as I can see, there is no way to change what skills are assigned to the quick-use bar. This means that while players may be able to pull out their earlier attacks on the fly, anything unlocked past a certain point has to be dug out of the combat menu and since some of these are the strongest attacks players have at their arsenal including AoE attacks, it is annoying there is no better way. Similarly, trying to use potions or “toss” potions at allies must also take multi-step menu systems and while this can all be done while combat is paused and queued up, it is troublesome to work with and the lack of hotkey adjusting is disappointing.
Then again, for those who simply want to coast by or make things even harder on themselves, the developers have added a few extra options to the title to allow players to customize their experience. A slider adjusting how much damage the player and their party dishes out is available as well as the damage dealt by enemies and there is even an option to make players invincible to everything minus environmental attacks, making things a breeze for those who simply don’t care to dig into the combat. This is a rather… unique inclusion that offers the game’s story to open up to anyone but a rather extreme option.
Speaking of the game’s story, it is nice to note that there are still numerous ways to accomplish various tasks and missions throughout the game, though sometimes the title will confuse what the player actually did. Some locations that require a key to access can have their lock-picked by a mechanic stat, which can be increased by gaining levels, wearing an appropriate cape, and even having a specific companion in the party, people that must be tracked down using a survival skill that will point the way or leave players guessing if they fail, and even craftsmanship to repair broken ladders or bridges if they don’t feel like using or are out of “simple tools” to bypass an obstacle. Similarly, the player can use diplomacy to talk their way out of a situation or turn it in their favor, or even bribe someone to look the other way with the abundance of gold players will end up with. The numerous ways to accomplish most missions is quite an enjoyable system and one that shines throughout many quests, especially when some options glitch out as mentioned before.
It is also worth noting that, at least for those who are eager or looking to unlock achievements, the achievements on the Xbox Series X version of the game are incredibly glitched at the time of this writing. Story-tied achievements remain locked long after players have completed the task, other achievements unlock at random while in completely separate locations, and another required restarting the game and replaying a scene for it to unlock.
Audio & Visuals
GreedFall: The Dying World is something of a mixed bag when it comes to graphics, but not because they look bad. In fact, the various locations that players explore are nicely detailed and the characters similarly are recognizable with a lot of attention to detail on their faces and clothing. This is especially true when it comes to the companions and the amount of detail on the countless pieces of armor that players gather that have different looks and can be upgraded to be even stronger with visual improvements. The mixed part is the fact that a lot of the game suffers from extreme texture pop-in quite often, even when running on performance mode. This would see character models appear in poor quality mid-conversation, floating heads, the player character juttering in place while talking, and even entire enemies popping in. Running too quickly through a location can make enemies load in too slowly to the point that players will find themselves ending up in a fight they literally never saw coming since the bandits spawned in halfway through the field. This doesn’t include the certain ambush style enemies either.
One of the nice personal touches of the original Greedfall was the fact that they created an entire language for the native people of Teer Fradee and that remains true here. The only problem is, the first few hours of the game is almost entirely spoken in this language making subtitles the only option and a bit of a hard starting point for some, especially since it basically is done away with for a large portion of the game past the prologue. Thankfully the voice acting itself is incredibly strong with some great voice work from the cast and some nice accent work, especially from the female main character’s voice actress. As for the background music the game features a solid soundtrack with some fitting background music and a hauntingly beautiful main menu track.
Overall
Greedfall: The Dying World had a lot of weight on its shoulders, trying to be the prologue to an already interesting game that took and put a unique spin on things and unfortunately it has crumbled a bit under that pressure. While the moment to moment storytelling, world-building, and most of the companions are great, uneven pacing drag down the overarching narrative. Combine this with combat that, while fresh and new for the series, grows repetitive quite quickly as well as the constant glitches make every unrotated save a risk, Greedfall: The Dying World feels like a title rushed out too soon and desperately needing some extra patches.
Capsule Computers review guidelines can be found here.
