REVIEW

Greedfall Review

by Luke Walsh, September 18th, 2019

Greedfall is an instanced but open-world RPG in a savage land surrounded by supernatural tree-like monsters all wrapped up in traditional RPG elements and systems. Questing takes time even from the get-go, combat is exciting and gets better and the game evolves but the game just lacks an overall polished finish, however, it does find a decent foundation to make it a worthwhile adventure.

Even from the start, the story takes control over the game’s ability to guide your character to prepare for his sea-bound journey with a series of quests and an abundance of sidequests straight out the gate.

With close comparisons to be made to RPGs like Witcher and Dragon Age: Origins you’ll set sail across the ocean to an uncharted island known as Teer Fradee. Set in the 1700s themed around Paris/London in the same timeline of the industrial revolution where things were dirty, poverty was ripe and politics, religion and colonisation were battling against each other.

Once you get to the island of Teer Fradee you are greeted with beautifully crafted landscapes but feel a little empty and times and lifeless. On PC the game looks really nice, but there were times when the game crashed or framerate issues surfaced with loading times being a bit sporadic between locations.

Mouse and keyboard were fine to use but a controller had the same issue I found with Witcher 3 – it sometimes felt De Sardet was a mini tank with not very fluid movements for a human being but was not long before I could deal with it.

Animations were a bot wonky with remnants of old-school RPGs felt a little bit robotic and awkward encounters. This was not too much of an issue as the story carries a lot of the narrative but everything interacts and moves a little bit stilted.

Customisation of your characters clothing and weaponry though is on an opposite end being incredibly detailed and you can pick up many on your travels to kit out each character to match the class arch-type you want them to play as.

The same can be said for the overall gear system as you would expect with this type of RPG. From being able to craft better gear to wear, plus weapons for each character and utility items such as traps and bombs there is a lot of preparation you can do to kit out your character.

Magic brings an interesting degree of variation to combat and uses the standard MP resource which will replenish while in battle much like stamina. Guns however which are a slightly different mechanic to stagger enemies is a finite resource which you can craft or find in loot boxes. Magic seems to be stronger in combat than gunplay which makes one the easier choice as you spec our your characters skills, attributes and talents.

Combat, however, is great and is similar to the Witcher where run and gun is not always the best way to win a fight and can quickly kill of your teammates leaving you running away or dead. There’s a lot of detail in the “boss fights” and animation are well made and scales well with your party as you expand your ability.

There’s also a nice combination out in the world of monsters that are good for farming and testing our your powers and more alpha style monsters that take more tactical approaches.

Questing is one of the best parts of Greedfall even from the beginning of the game when you are setting sail from the city of Serene. This is mainly thanks to how well written they are and the choice you are given to make which can have consequences later down the line.

Some quests handle some hard-hitting narratives and most of the quests are fairly dark. The storyline will take you around 55-60 hours to complete and there were not many quests I can remember that was disappointing, other than the odd “fetch quests”.

Greedfall is an intriguing adventure which I thoroughly enjoyed and had some complex characters and choices that needed to be made and some unexpected twists and turns along the way.

While the game was a little glitchy and sometimes stuck a little too close to the traditional RPG formula keeping it back from being “something new” to the genre it was still all the best bits of what made RPGs of old standout successes that still works today for the most part.