I've played every game from Spiders since trying a demo of a quirky role playing game on PS3 Faery Legends of Avalon. I feel like I could start every review for every game they've ever made as "Great but rough around the edges" And this applies equally to Greedfall though in many ways it's easily their best title and seeing their tiny team make old fashioned Bioware type RPGs with a team of only 30-50 people and a budget made of buttons and old chewing gum wrappers pulled out the depths of an old pair of trousers never fails to impress me to be honest.

Greedfall is set in a fantasy world inspired by 17th and 18th century history in both art style as well as story premise about three different large countries each colonizing areas of a large island which already has a native population more in tune with nature than it's newcomers. You play a character called De Sadet, a diplomat and official legate of one faction known as the Merchant Congregation. Some of the story beats and characters are pretty interesting with different factions and lore for the island. However there is a big elephant in the room that this is quite a sensitive idea to be taking, as a British citizen I am especially aware of this and I'm not sure Spiders quite have the nuance to pull off what they were going for here. One group is basically the Spanish Inquisition and the other feel like an Persian Empire based on science. Both of which often are pure evil in their actions to the natives and I found many of the quest outcomes just a little unsatisfying as the game makes you play the shades of grey diplomat. Though your choices can shape out comes it's often not enough from what I experienced though it didn't stop me enjoying it, it was a feeling I couldn't shape for the 50 hours I put into it. It made me feel uncomfortable at times but maybe that's what they were going for?

The combat is Spiders best yet. You can build your character how you want choosing a range of skills from melee, magic or technical. I went full in on technical at first and was just blasting muskets, pistoles, laying traps, throwing bombs and enjoying it a lot. I changed halfway through re-specking for a dash of magic half way though for a quick dodge but then I found it just became one note of firing overpowered guns and wiping enemies out with my 900 plus bullets. The same issue occurred with equipment where I equipped and upgraded a unique set I liked the look of and never found anything better for the next 20 hours playing so I just had gold and crafting supplies coming out of my ears. All in all it's a little unbalanced, doesn't have huge variety but is fun enough when you are fighting.

When you're not fighting then you are exploring the world Spiders created. Cities and wilderness beyond. The cities look fantastic, full of life, buildings still being built and the art design is really a perfect representation of the era they are aiming for with npcs walking around in long dresses or tricorn hats etc. The wilderness outside the cities are similar in scope with very autumnal colours of leaves and trees as you explore I appreciated. The game is easily Spiders most technically impressive to boot. I played on PS5 and set it to performance mode and it sticks a pretty consistent 60fps most of the time. There are occasional judders and a bit of screen tearing at the bottom of the screen but to say this is a step up from their previous game would be an understatement.

Some of Spiders budget restrictions do show through though. Each house you can enter is identical, every palace layout is the same despite the factions being so different, each barracks is exactly the same etc. If gets a bit annoying considering the effort that has gone into the external view of the city. There are other design choices that also don't really work. While I enjoy exploring, running back and forth is just soul destroying as you can only fast travel from certain places and even just going back to report a side quest gets old really fast. On the flipside I really enjoyed all of your parties personal side quests. They were decently varied and helped flesh out each character and the faction they represented.

Reading back through this makes it seem like I'm negative about this game but I actually did really enjoy my time with it. Spiders have improved a lot as a developer and I appreciate they make really unique settings for their games that so few developers do. I mean their next title SteelRising is about a French Revolution styled soulslike fantasy world with clockwork soldiers. How nuts is that?

+ Great art design.
+ Spiders most technically impressive title to date.
+ Some cool side quests for the part characters.
+ Really cool premise...

-...Not always handled well.
- Combat gets a bit dull as it's unbalanced at the end and lacks depth.
- Some frame rate judders here and there.
- The lack of a fast travel from anywhere just makes moving around sometimes a chore.

I've played every Spiders game up to this point. They're a developer I've been rooting for. Their previous titles have been held back by things like the budget, scale, and design flaws. Yet, I've enjoyed every one of them for their imaginative worlds, adherence to that classic style of RPG studios like BioWare have moved away from, and the clear passion with which they were made. With each successive release having been an improvement on the last it was only a matter of time until everything came together for Spiders and they delivered their first truly outstanding adventure. Thanks to GreedFall that day has finally arrived.

The plot sees you travelling to the mysterious land of Teer Fradee in search of a cure for the plague that's sweeping across your home country. Along the way you'll have to manage your relationships with the various factions inhabiting the island and make decisions that will shape the fate of multiple continents at once. The setting is a one of a kind fantasy reimagining of the colonial era backed by rich, highly detailed lore. This is the best writing the developer has had so far. The dialog flows more naturally than in any of their other games, the companions are more fleshed out than ever before, and most of the side quests are so deep and significant feeling that it's hard to believe they aren't directly tied to the main thread. Things do get a little murky near the end where the need to establish a big villain for a final confrontation leads to a bizarre character turn that's clumsily executed. It's a disappointing conclusion, but not so much that I didn't still enjoy the tale or the role I got to play in shaping it.

The world you'll be exploring is broken up into a handful of different areas. However, each zone is so large that at times it almost sells the feeling of being open-world. The decision to move away from the maze like corridors that comprised all of Spiders' previous efforts was a good one, as traversing these wide, sprawling plains that are covered in secrets is a far more enjoyable experience. Which is good as there is a lot of backtracking and the fast travel system is somewhat restrictive. It's also worth noting that interior locations are easy to get lost in due to how they're often a mess of identical looking hallways.

The area where Spiders has struggled the most over the years has undoubtedly been combat. They've always done a phenomenal job at making their systems flexible and capable of being tailored to your will with robust skill trees that are filled with options. The problem has been that battles have either been clunky due to poor controls and camera issues or downright unbalanced. Sometimes both. That isn't the case with GreedFall though. Fighting is incredibly fluid and it manages to be challenging, yet fair. Strategic play is often required to survive so the game's combination of real time action with a tactical pause is incredibly satisfying and fun.

The only area where I feel GreedFall doesn't improve on its predecessors is the presentation. The voice acting and music are high quality across the board, but the graphics are dated. Expect stiff animations during dialog, poor lip syncing, and plastic looking character models. The environments and monsters look fine and are well-detailed, but there's no mistaking this for a triple-A title. Still, if the budget was going to show through anywhere I'm glad it was here as I've always been a proponent of gameplay over visuals.

Spiders has at long last reached their potential. There are still some things they need to work on, but it's evident that all the criticism they've received over the years was taken to heart as this is leaps and bounds above any of their prior works. The huge step forward they took here from just The Technomancer is amazing, and they are finally ready to fill the void that was left in the single-player gaming scene when the former greats of the RPG genre lost their way.

9/10

If you're looking for a game to scratch that BioWare-style RPG itch, then definitely give this game a shot. It's got quests, companions, character building, and a great setting and world to explore.

The effort that went into this game's presentation is incredible, especially considering that the studio only consists of around twenty people. The graphical quality, art direction, voice acting, characters and world design are excellent, far beyond what I would have expected from a studio of that size. It's a huge achievement.

Unfortunately its held back by some lacklustre quest design, slightly simplistic combat as well as some poor writing at times. The story meanders around, lacking a clear focus before ending abruptly. It's a shame, because the rest of the game's presentation left me wanting more of its world and characters.

I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed this game. First lets get a few of the cons out of the way, the combat gets boring after a while, there are a few annoying bugs and the dialogue can sometimes be put together weirdly.

However it has a lot of pros I think, the story is really great and I love the approach to the game about being diplomatic with everyone for best results. Each faction was unique and interesting, along with each companion having their own compelling stories. The story was always very interesting and felt unique, the world built in this game is a very interesting one.

There are a very different endings, but the one I got I very much enjoyed and thought it was great. I wish the romance part of the game was more in depth, but it was still great. You will get some very sweet moments with the person you romance and I love that, and there is a very nice moment at the end of the game too. The story is touching, and despite there being a clear best ending, even it comes with a bit of sadness. Although the end brought a lot of closure and left all the relationships I had built on a sweet note.

This was a great game and has much of what I love about Dragon Age. These style of RPGs are some of my favorites and I hope for more like them. I would definitely recommend this game to anyone, and to also support a small developer in Spiders, and I think I'll check out more of their games.

Hmm, rating this game is a challenge. I would say that it varies a lot between average, good and bad. I confess that I forced myself A LOT to play from beginning to end, I was sleepy during most of the game due to the uninteresting story, but the combat mechanics are different and almost innovative, despite being repetitive.
I would have a lot more to criticize but you have to consider that it is a company trying to create something new. I can see some level of effort put into this game, so I would say it is just an different experience

Greedfall is such a weird game. It is objectively bad in a lot of ways, but it comes together into something that is definitely better than the sum of its parts. I had a lot more fun with it than I expected to.

The story in Greedfall is nothing special, though it is situated in a field of colonialism landmines. Greedfall does a decent job of portraying the situation in the game -- a group of factions taking over a new continent which has an indigenous group already living on it. It has a lot of what you would expect (slavers, religious fanatics, pseudo-shamanistic culture) but avoids most of the overt pitfalls. Greedfall does a better job than most media addressing this subject matter of doing so in a respectful way, which is really all you can ask for, I think.
The story is fairly simple and the game doesn't stretch it out. I was mostly invested the whole way through and enjoyed seeing it through to the end. Though the plot itself isn't very surprising, there are events that genuinely impressed me. Some of your choices have a large impact on the game and the developers don't shy away from letting you make them. Companion characters can die and the political landscape on the island can shift.
You can see the budget here in how much of an effect these changes actually have in the world. Major political fallout has a markedly less than major impact on the world as you experience it.
Characterization of your companions is good enough, with none of them really standing out. On entering combat, each of your companions has a single line they will say every time (budget again), which I found to be hilarious. "Things are about to get dicey!"

The gameplay in Greedfall is all about exploration and combat with simple character development and crafting thrown in.
I enjoyed exploring this world -- the areas are varied and interesting and the monsters and other inhabitants of the island have fairly cool designs. This is a small-scale open world game and I like that there aren't a ton of locations that feel like they were added just to increase playtime. Most of the locations are relevant and worth exploring.
I initially hated the combat in this game but by the end it worked for me. I found the melee to be unusable and the minimal stealth to be pretty finicky and unsatisfying. I used magic for the whole game and although it is basic, it is satisfying to just tear through enemies. There are additionally some trap-based skills and larger magic spells that mix things up, which kept it from getting too repetitive for me.

I really don't quite have a good explanation for why I like this game as much as I do. Greedfall's combat is just engaging enough to pull you through it, the story and characters are just interesting enough to make you care about them, and the world is just unique and mysterious enough to make you want to explore it.
If you want a fun, chill time roleplaying as a comparatively responsible colonizer in a strange fantasy open world game, Greedfall is a pretty good option.

This game is currently in the Humble Choice for December 2022, this is part of my coverage of the bundle. If you are interested in the game and it's before January 3th, 2023, consider picking up the game as part of the current monthly bundle.

An old-timey RPG adventure.

Greedfall starts with the player traveling to a mysterious island, and technically I still haven’t set sail, this is a large open-world RPG, with a lot of dialogue and environments. The story is very good, though the dialogue is written in 18th-century style and doesn’t spend time explaining some of its esoteric terms. However, the combat is solid, and there’s an ability to solve missions in multiple different ways.

On the other hand, the lip sync isn’t even trying to be right, and the more you look at it, the more noticeable how off it is, which makes it hard to focus on the speaker at any point. There appear to be several factions that you can assist, and your decisions seem to modify their opinions of you though I’m not sure by how much.

Pick this up if you like dialogue based RPGs with a decent amount of choice. You can choose what to do and how to do it, your stats and abilities will matter, as well as if you choose to be violent or play stealthily, which is intriguing.

If you enjoyed this review or want to know what I think of other games in the bundle, check out the full review on or subscribe to my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/EazjkOuE3A0

If we talk seriously, it's an OK game. It's not bad, its not awesome, its somewhere in the middle.

The story is somewhat interesting, but its a little too easy to figure out since the game treats you like a dumb child, giving you obvious hints, which then ruins the story a little. The different endings are a nice twist that gives replayability to the game.

I actually like the characters but as many have said, they are a little bland in personality. The native wild woman is a native wild woman, the crude mercenary is a crude mercenary, the pirate is a pirate, etc.

There is many better story RPG games than this like for example the Dragon Age series. If the game sells for 10-15$ then I suggest getting it, otherwise, I dont think its worth it that much.

It seems like every time GreedFall gets mentioned, there has to be a mandatory warning about how you shouldn’t expect a AAA experience. Though it can definitely compete in many ways within that market, the developers don’t have the man-power or budget to give GreedFall that level of polish and features. I was hesitant to try it out because I feared that meant it would be buggy or clunky, a game that would be admired more for the effort a small studio put into it or the old-school feel it delivered. But after having played it myself I can say that yes, it doesn’t feel AAA, and yes, knowing that a small studio developed it made me be in awe several times while playing. And I can also say that I love this game, not 'despite its flaws', but because of its many and genuine strengths.

The setting and story are refreshingly unique and the writing and pacing keep you grounded in this strange world. The different ways to influence the story and build your character deepen the role-playing experience in a meaningful way. Regarding the latter, every level up and every point spent feels important. Your decisions also affect the relationships you have with whole factions and individual people. In general, the game gives you the sense that everything you do or that does happen is part of a greater whole, e.g. the side stories that usually tie in to the main plot, as do your companions' personal quests. Speaking of companions, if your relationship level is high enough, they strengthen specific skills of yours. In that way, that narrative inter-connection even reaches the gameplay.

There are other reviews here that go into more detail about the positives and negatives, so I’ll just add some final thoughts: Although the animation is wooden, the great voice acting makes up for it. (And I personally prefer wooden faces over whatever happened to the faces in Mass Effect: Andromeda, yes, even post-patch.) And lastly, on my base PS4 I encountered no bugs and had an overall smooth experience.

Despite, at first glance, looking like a AAA game, a competitor for WRPGs such as BioWare's, GreedFall is not a AAA title, having had neither the budget nor the team size to reach that level. It is, however, a game made with a lot of heart, and if you open yourself up to it, it might just be able to scratch that WRPG itch.

The once bustling harbour town of Serene finds itself a shadow of its former self as it's ravaged by the Malichor, a plague that blackens the blood of those it touches, killing them slowly, painfully and without failure. Corpses of the afflicted line the streets, and the final hope lies on the far shores of Teer Fradee, a recently discovered island of exuberant nature that's said to be home to miracles.

Multiple nations begin colonization initiatives in an attempt to find a cure to the Malichor, among them, the Merchant Congregation of Serene. You play as Lady (or Sir) De Sardet, a daughter of a noble family who, as the game begins, has been named Legate of the Congregation. De Sardet leaves for Teer Fradee to manage the new colony's diplomatic relations with its neighbors, as well as with the island's natives.

To get this out of the way, yes, this is a story ostensibly about colonizers, which, understandably, might be off-putting to some. But while it's impossible to claim that the Greedfall never veers into problematic territory, it's a fact that, as its name unsubtly suggests, the overall message of the story is a criticism of its own characters, to the point some of the factions are explicit parallels to Christian-European colonizers and their horrifying practices.

Plus, judging the game for that alone it would do a disservice to its worldbuilding and character writing. Here, it's worth repeating that this is not a AAA game, and as such, it doesn't have an extensive, infinitely branching plot, nor lavishly written codex pages with poems and history of small villages, but it still manages to deliver on a world that feels authentic, with history, religion, politics and lots of conflict at play.

It is among this turmoil that the main story of GreedFall takes place, with De Sardet managing diplomacy as she uncovers the truth about Teer Fradee, as well as about her own people. The beginning parts drag somewhat as the game tries to get you up to speed with the setting, but once it gets going, it's a thrilling mystery, with some fantastic story beats, lots of twists and some incredibly well acted and directed scenes.

GreedFall's narrative design is efficient in how many decisions it leaves to the player: there are few pivotal moments where De Sardet is allowed to influence the story, but those choices do affect the world in meaningful ways. So do most of the quests you do, which almost always involve developing the story either of one of the island's factions or of one of the party members, and on the latter case, even when the quest does not revolve around them, you can expect them to chime in to certain situations or even act on your goals directly. Questing is one of GreedFall's strongest points.

Where the game drops the ball... For the more minor points, while repeated environments generally are a concession that games have to make, in GreedFall, there are instances where they'll take you out of the world, like when you realize all governors have the same house, despite coming from distinct cultures. Romances feel equally as dry, all of them following the same blueprint and feeling like an afterthought. And there's a lack of polish in the amount of typos in the in-game text, or in how Lady De Sardet often gets addressed as male.

As for major issues, most people that don't stick with GreedFall are probably going to name the combat system and its repetitiveness as the culprit, a criticism that unfortunately is fair. While the game's tactical pause feature might initially make the player think of the strategic gameplay of CRPGs, in practice, it's nothing like it: companions just do whatever, and the player is allowed a limited amount of decision-making during fights, focusing mostly on sustaining DPS while avoiding damage themselves. This is compounded by a streamlined skill tree that doesn't provide variety within character archetypes, requiring the player to splash points between all classes to achieve that effect.

Combat also features parry and dodge moves as well as a balance system, a feature set reminiscent of modern action games, but while those moves are powerful -- it's even possible to parry bullets, if timed correctly -- the lack of mechanical precision like in those action-focused experiences leaves GreedFall in a weird sort of limbo where it plays neither a fully-fledged tactical game nor an action one. Overall, combat is functional, but is also definitely the weakest part of the game.

The non-combat systems could also use some polish. De Sardet has talents which are sometimes required to take certain paths in quests and exploration, but not only are those requirements often easy to sidestep, but (probably because of the cost involved in creating branching levels), most situations end up being resolved through conversation, which limits the usefulness of field related skills. While this doesn't ruin the game, it cuts on the role playing and replayability.

Even with these shortcomings, however, there's still a lot of ambition behind GreedFall, as in these suboptimal systems there was an effort to give the player freedom to solve problems in different ways, and give distinct endings to quests depending on the paths taken. Plus, there's the little things, like how when a quest has the player gather information where to find a McGuffin, if they happen to already know where it is or just stumble on the location, the unnecessary quest steps can be skipped. It's a small detail, but it shows that the developers cared.

Overall, GreedFall might not be the best RPG I've ever played, but with its compelling narrative and world, as well as a passionate, if flawed, approach to genre staples, it's a solid experience that stands proudly amongst its genre peers, and one you might want to give a shot the next time you get the WRPG itch.

In this game you're a "good" (white) colonizer, the only one that can protect the poor natives of this unexplored (by the whites) island from the "evil" colonizers, even though you're also colonizing their land and often the game makes you side with the "evil" colonizers in killing all these savages that have no right to live in the land that is theirs, as if that's such a Normal and Right decision that why would the game present you with an option to not do that?
In the end, after killing the natives' leader that was trying too hard to defend his people, because you wanted to manipulate their election and put someone more amenable to your requests in his place, you learn he was actually right to defend them but obviously the game never makes you reflect on your evil actions.

Everything from the gameplay mechanics and what actions measure your progress to the narrative is racist, disgusting and rancid.

It doesn't escape me that due to the ending ruining the colonizers' plans to this land the upcoming sequel will be set 3 years in the past, the devs (who are europeans, to really put the cherry on top) had to figure out some other reason to let you continue living your happy little colonialism fantasy.

Playtime: 51 Hours
Score: 9/10

A fantastic RPG that I absolutely loved playing through and felt satisfied when the credits rolled! So in terms of my history with Spiders, I played Bound by Flame back in the day and did not like it at all, despite some good ideas it had and when I saw mixed reviews for The Technomancer, I skipped it (however, I will be giving that one a shot now that I played this). This game however, did catch my eye and it reviewed well enough that I wanted to at least try it, and when I saw it on Gamepass I decided to download it.

I really do mean that this is a fantastic game, despite some limitations Spiders had with only having a AA game budget and not a AAA one. When studios I used to love like Bethesda, Bioware and CDPR are out making games that are either online focused, live service or buggy messes at launch, I look more and more to the double AA RPG devs, to give me those single player, compelling titles. Games like Outer Worlds, Wasteland 3 and now Greedfall have done this for me! Greedfall will instantly feel familiar to gamers who love some of Bioware's older games like Dragon Age Origins and Mass Effect, and I believe Spiders themselves wanted to make a game that felt a lot like those titles, kind of like how Obsidan wanted to make a Bethesda style RPG with Outer Worlds and succeeded IMO.

In terms of what I liked, Greedfall has such a interesting world with some compelling factions and storytelling. that I just loved exploring it all and completing every quest I could find! The game does have a reputation system which I think is one of my favorites since Fallout New Vegas, where you have to manage your reputation with each faction and companion, and see how they react to your decisions. My ideal RPG will always have a system like this, and I'm glad this game had it. Combat was clunky at first, but once I got the hang of it, I enjoyed it a lot and I like how you can make your character a two class hybrid, similar to Kingdoms of Amalur which did the same thing. Voice acting was excellent across the board and the writing was really superb!

As for the bad, the game does have some annoying jank, again due to a limited budget. While the three cities look great, interiors like your three different houses in the game look identical to each other. There's also a lot of annoying invisible walls, which can be frustrating and can break immersion for me. While the games does allow you to make meaningful choices throughout the story, the game does put you in autopilot, meaning that your character speaks for you a lot of the time. Generally in a quest for example, your character will speak most of the time and only at the end do you get to make a choice. That is disappointing, but the choices you do make, do have real impact so at least there's that. These things are minor in the grand scheme of things, and I can look past it, if the things I personally find important in a game are of a high quality, which this game delivers on for me.

While I played this game through gamepass, I will still be buying it on Steam to add to my library, so I can play it again. I also went and bought the De Vespe Conspiracy DLC, because I just wanted more of this game. For the cheap price that there selling it for, its definitely worth it as it adds a new region, new weapons and armor to find and a new engaging story to partake in. It will take you about 2-3 Hours to complete and is on the shorter side, so don't expect Witcher 3 expansion levels of content. If you complete it before you finish the main story, you even get ending slides for it specifically, reflecting on the choices you made which I appreciated! But overall, I really enjoyed this game and its DLC, and I can easily recommend them both! I can't wait to play Spiders next game, and I hope they make a Greedfall 2 one day!