GreedFall

Look, let’s be honest. This game is what happens when a smaller studio decides to make a massive, choice-driven BioWare-style RPG. And you know what? It mostly works.
You play as a fancy diplomat with a sword, a pistol, and a baffling amount of charisma, sailing to a mysterious, super-green island called Teer Fradee.
If you miss classic BioWare RPGs (like Dragon Age: Origins or Mass Effect), can forgive a modest budget, and want to explore a beautiful, mysterious world with a great crew, get it on sale. It’s an AA game with AAA ambitions and a whole lot of soul.

GreedFall is a story-driven RPG that really focuses on its factions, choices and setting. Combat can feel a bit clunky and stealth is almost non-existent and feels very limited and poorly implemented but it’s the RPG systems and decisions that keep you invested. There is a LOT of running and backtracking throughout the entire game and it genuinely becomes one of its biggest pacing issues, often slowing progress down more than the quests themselves. The story still carries it along. The supernatural side is strong but the game still stays grounded in ideas like power, colonialism, greed and nature.
P.S.: NPC variety is very low, with the same few characters reused constantly and lots of NPCs just standing still or feeling broken, which breaks immersion.
P.P.S.: Audio quality is quite low. Dialogue and sound can feel flat and underwhelming at times. I had to turn my speakers up quite a lot to hear things properly.
🎚️ Difficulty
🔲 My grandmother could play it
🔲 Easy
☑️ Normal
☑️ Hard
🔲 A challenge to be reckoned
🔲 In the heat of confrontation, (Only PVP games)
🗺️ Graphics
🔲 MS Paint
🔲 Bad
🔲 Meh
🔲 Normal
☑️ Very Good
🔲 An original artistic direction
🔲 Beautiful
🔲 Masterpiece
📚 Story
🔲 This game has no story
🔲 Basic element of the contractual requirements
🔲 It's there for people who want it
☑️ Well written
🔲 Leading to more in-depth researches/thoughts
🔲 A model to get inspired by
⌛️ Length
🔲 0 (No story)
🔲 Short
🔲 Average
☑️ Long (Felt longer!)
🔲 To infinity and beyond
🎶 Music
🔲 Just filling noises/No music
🔲 Trivial and uneventful
☑️ Good and/or fitting the game's artistic dispositions
🔲 Memorable
🔲 Transcending whispers of a forgotten world
🕹️ Interest
🔲 I would rather watch paint dry
🔲 Hard to enjoy
☑️ Repetitive and/or uninspired
☑️ A good moment
🔲 Sticking out of the pack
🔲 You will remember it long after
🔁 Replayability
🔲 A one-time experience
☑️ For achievements (If you don’t want to replay, keep lots of saves.)
🔲 If you wait a few months/years (or with mods)
☑️ Definitely (Extreme difficulty achievement)
🔲 Infinitely replayable (or almost)
🐛 Bugs
🔲 Never heard of
☑️ Minor bugs
🔲 Can get annoying
🔲 Impacts the player's experience badly
🔲 The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
⚙️ Requirements
🔲 You can run it on a microwave
☑️ Low
🔲 Average
🔲 High
🔲 NASA computer
💰 Price
🔲 Free
🔲 Underpriced
🔲 Perfect Price
☑️ Could be cheaper
🔲 Overpriced
🔲 Complete waste of money
🤑 Worth Buying
🔲 No
🔲 If you have nothing else to play
☑️ Wait for sale
🔲 Yes
🎯 Expectations
🔲 It's a completely different game
🔲 This game is a scam
🔲 It's missing many features they announced
☑️ Looks very similar to the steam page
🔲 Better than expected and/or announced
🔲 Masterpiece, no patch or feature has to be added.
✒️ Final Rating
🔲 1
🔲 2
🔲 3
🔲 4
🔲 5
🔲 6
☑️ 7-
🔲 8
🔲 9
🔲 10
Thank you for taking the time to read and think about this review.

Have you ever wondered how diplomacy works? This is the perfect game to showcase this. A beautiful RPG with captivating artwork and equally outstanding gameplay. The story is about two cousins; you play as De Sardet (Male or female), a noble diplomat who accompanies your cousin to Teer Fradee, a remote island, to find a cure for a plague they call Malichor, which your mother is currently suffering from, along with half the city. Your cousin Constantin d'Orsay has been appointed by his father, the prince, as a governor in New Serene, and you'll be helping him with his new assignment and trying to convince the other colonial factions to work with you, along with the islanders (The natives)
Basically, the whole game is about building a reputation across all the cities and among the natives. Gaining their trust wouldn't be an easy task; you'll have to balance your choices, and that was the fun part. As in any RPG, you get multiple side quests alongside the main questline, which has 5 chapters; it is better to finish the side quests before proceeding to the main one. Keep in mind that those quests take time to finish; the gameplay isn't rushed; it leans more toward the slow-paced side. It took me 5 hours to clear the prologue alone!
The battle system reminds me of their previous game, Bound by Flame. It is a mixture of tactical and hack-and-slash; you can also switch your weapons and classes mid-battle, using a sword or any melee weapon, then pull out your muskets and shoot those enemies, then heal yourself with magic or attack them with shadows. I enjoyed the fight a lot; you can also plant traps and throw grenades. You'll also gain skills and attributes as you level up, just like in other RPGs.
As you progress through the story, you'll meet new people and gain companions you must bring with you; however, you can only bring 2 of 5, so choose wisely, as NPCs will react either negatively or be convinced by those you bring. The right companion will give you advice about the mission, or even help you with it, but if you insult their faction, it will lower their approval. It is similar to Bioware games, especially Dragon Age 2. Once you finish their side quests, you'll have the opportunity to romance four of the five companions; however, two of them are gender-locked.
The graphics are out of this world; the scenery is so beautiful, and each map you visit is breathtaking. I couldn't help but take screenshots of half the game. The character designs are very nice; you can create a male or female character. While there are few options, they are still good. I enjoyed the outfit styles; they are immaculate and finely detailed. And the voice acting is top-notch; everyone did an outstanding job, especially Constantine and the female MC. You can feel the emotions from their voices. The writing is solid and kept me engaged in each and every quest. I liked the natives language and how they embedded it into the conversations.
You are going to travel from one region to another. While there is a campfire that lets you fast-travel, along with other 'stones' or the edges of the map, it still felt like a chore sometimes. I didn't hate it, but wished we had the opportunity to travel without needing to go to those campfires. The journal is very useful and full of information you'll need to track your quests. You also have to pay attention to what the NPCs say; they'll refer you to someone else for extra information, which now appears in your quest log. Talking to the other NPCs will trigger extra lore.
Pros:
+Emotionally beautiful story.
+Beautiful soundtracks.
+Phenomenal voice acting.
+Outstanding graphics and character models.
+Great character development.
+Medieval fantasy.
+Useful journal.
+Hours of adventure.
+Auto-save and infinite manual save
+Good mixture of combat systems (You can use all classes at once)
+Multiple endings.
+Steam achievements.
Cons:
-During conversations, sometimes the companions and other NPCs block the view, and you can't see what is going on.
I played the game with a controller and had no issues. I highly recommend this gem, and I'm happy to see that the new one has already been released. I'm excited to play it after finishing writing this review.
Other Reviews From the Same Developer
Bound By Flame Review
𝐹𝑜𝑟 𝑚𝑜𝑟𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑣𝑖𝑒𝑤𝑠 𝑐𝘩𝑒𝑐𝑘 𝑚𝑦 𝑐𝑢𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑜𝑟 𝑝𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝐹𝑒𝑒𝑛𝑎'𝑠 𝐶𝘩𝑜𝑖𝑐𝑒
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Saw a lot of negative reviews, videos and posts saying this game was boring, which made me hesitate on getting it BUT MAN WAS I WRONG. Sure there are some repetitive elements but the lore, dialog and core gameplay reminds me of old school DA Origins and Mass Effect with a little of the Souls like combat as the cherry on top. 10/10 no regrets

I've now played the game for 23 hours and I can honestly say I really like it! I'm about as far removed from a Souls-enjoyer as you can get, so am just playing on Normal difficulty, and am still having a blast in combat. I'm playing a magic user and just let my boys Kurt and Vasco go ham on the enemies while I run around blasting everything with Shadow magic and Stasis, so perhaps combat jankiness is not as obvious to me as it would be for people who like to play frontliners.

Some parts of the world are absolutely stunning. Although most terrain isn't super dense, the mountains and skies and some of the tribal villages are really nice to look at. Some of the parts reminded me of a mix between a mid-tier Horizon Zero Dawn and Dragon Age: Inquisition. It's not exactly open-world, but it's not so linear that you feel rail-roaded in the same way as you do in games like God of War.

The mini-bosses also look amazing, some have some really cool abilities, and the rest of the creatures vary in difficulty based on level of armour and resistances, making gameplay relatively varied in that respect. Drops are regular and useful, meaning there is a reason to engage with creature / human mobs.

The Skills / Talents / Attributes combinations are a fantastic way to put your own personal spin on a character, or you could just min-max to the enth degree if that's your thing. Upgrade materials aren't too difficult to come by, and many basic materials respawn. For my first 10 levels, I freely upgraded good gear with green-level upgrades (only) and only felt a little underpowered for a few levels between levels 10 - 12, but then great gear started dropping and I had a big boost in damage and survivability. Gold isn't plentiful but gear drops are decent enough to keep the party alive for most fights (I am now Level 17 and the only things which I have really struggled with so far are the 5th Arena challenge and one of the creatures close to a camp I made in an area I wasn't high enough level for yet).

That being said, I echo what some people have said about the game feeling like a fetch quest sometimes, especially when the quest is something like 'Speak to someone on the 2nd floor of a building, go rummage around in the basement for papers, go back to speak to that same person again' but that's mostly in the city settings. Annoying, but not something which makes up the majority of the quests. I feel like people get frustrated with the first few hours of the game as that part is in the city and therefore you are running around from person to person. This opens up a bit as you leave the city areas.

Is the voice-acting the most solid I've heard in a game? No, not by a long shot. Some of the accent choices are... choices! But it's not a big deal, although I do wish I could ask Kurt to shut the hell up about how things are about to get 'dicey' at the beginning of every combat. We get it, Kurt! If the voice-acting really annoys you, just enable subtitles and lower the in-game voice volume. Developers: please take notes for GreedFall 2! Speaking of companions, they are significantly less annoying and stupid than, for exaple, Lydia in Skyrim (sorry if this reference triggers you, I know it does me!).

All in all, every time I play this game, I am annoyed at all the people who downvoted it into the ground because those votes had been stopping me from enjoying what is, essentially, a very enjoyable game. People need to pause before deciding to get angry when a game isn't exactly what they want and just try to enjoy it for what it actually is - in this case, a nice little escape from reality, with cool monsters, pretty landscapes and a decent storyline.

Ugh, I would say recommended with a HUGE CAVEAT:: ONLY if you're into janky games like TWT and Elex, etc and ONLY if its on deep sale.

This game IS servicable. Don't misunderstand. I still generally enjoyed my romp through the game, I liked the story, and the combat is fine. There's some itemization, some customization, some relationships / dialogue choices, etc etc etc.

But.... GOOD..LORD.. the DIS-RE-SPECT these developers have for your TIME! (deep breath). The amount of ridiculous running you do going back and forth...back and forth....back and....forth? Over and over and over and over. A weaker man would have snapped.

I finished the game and I liked the story, but I will not be replaying to 100%. I'll go insane and you'll see me on a bodycam video, I swear...

Unsure if I'll be looking into Greedfall 2 or not at this point....I need a break.

Halfway through my adventure. Concerning this beefy unique historical rpg and subject matter color me immersed, impressed and impassioned. The narrative, the writing, voice overs and historical garb all excellent. Having played two Spiders game prior I can easily attest to Greedfall being their best game I've experienced by far. Some I've seen argue AAA versus AA. Not my concern and the argument is pedantic at best
Greedfall is an historical period piece and deals heavily with the Spanish Inquisition and I love it. Who would of expected an RPG embedded with The Spanish Inquisition?
Props to my friend "Damsel of Distress" who recommended this title. There is so much to like here though there are a few nit picky shortcomings such as the occasional undersized combat zones having undesired effects such as combat abandonment by enemy forces. Another is an unwanted film grain that can't be turned off and a brownish filter. A Reshade preset is recommended to mitigate. I understand Spiders, now unfortunately disbanded, was a small studio and considering the small touches of brilliance I can without doubt forgive any shortcomings I've encountered.
Spider's writers are phenomenal and their artists are quite capable. I can't imagine why they would be disbanded. Their potential is huge having a solid foundation of talent their publisher should of expanded their team and let them cook. Hopefully Spiders can reconstitute and with a larger team and more time, perhaps a more patient publisher willing to invest and bear fruit, the sky is the limit.
Lossless Scaling compatible.
Edit: Finished. Unique story that's well thought out. Longer than I imagined. Many side quests, more than 20 though I may have missed a couple. As I said in my original review, impressive voice overs and excellent costume garb. You'll see reviews condemning the combat however the combat at times can be very challenging and there are a number of ways to build your character. Again, thanks to my friend for the recommendation and thanks you Spiders for a really good production.