GreedFall Mixed Bag

We are having a hard time with this drought in the Western-style RPG genre. It's not a Dragon Age and Mass Effect trilogy without its flaws, but we remain bright examples of everything an RPG should strive for in many aspects. A good and detailed story in a fascinating world, interesting characters, a tense fight, a loot and a typical RPG progression. The new GreedFall RPG at first glance has all of the above, but the Spiders studio is not known for polished high-budget games. Despite their gradual progress from game to game, GreedFall also shows that something is still missing.

It's a good story, but ...

GreedFall initially makes a really strong impression. The world in which the game takes place is inspired by the colonial era of the 17th century, which is additionally seasoned with magic and all sorts of fantastic creatures. The game starts out slow, but really makes good use of the entire two-hour tutorial segment. Inside, he manages to give the impression of being in a living world by representing all the major factions and some of the supporting characters. Along the way, the player constantly tickles the imagination with the promise that bigger, better and more impressive things follow around the corner.

The whole premise revolves around the not so long ago discovered island of the name Teer Fardee. Continental factions are already haunting the island, and everyone wants to use this wonderful and mysterious land to their advantage. The game also has a malignant malichor disease, and the islands represent the only chance for a potential cure. In the story, it's really easy to draw parallels to the real discovery and colonization of America, and the island even has its own version of the natural-born natives the colonists disrupt the way they live.

Unfortunately, this colonial aspect of the story has not been fully exploited, and it only scratches the surface. It all comes down to the oppressed natives, the evil colonialists and the naive hope of coexistence. The hesitation of the game to focus more on the fattan elements in combination with the premise means that the thematic becomes very predictable and average.

Fortunately, the thing saves the player's ability to influence the course of certain events through his decisions, and that aspect of the game has worked great. There is almost no mission where it is not necessary to make a decision that will determine its course. These can lead to a peaceful resolution, a fight, or a segment with sneaking. The current outcome of decisions can be predictable, but the far-reaching consequences are generally not immediately apparent.


The colonial factions are also well-conceived and, in addition to personality, give context to political turmoil and intrigue that would not be ashamed of a solid episode of Game of Thrones. In addition, the reputation of the players with each of them is an important segment of the game, which in some missions, and especially in its ending, has a significant impact on the turn of events.

Unfortunately, the game segments closest to the player suffer from certain problems. The first of these is the anemic main character in the form of a noble diplomat named De Sardet. The character's creator is poor in options, but it is possible to make a representative, male or female protagonist.

In both cases, the voice actors do a great job and their expressive voice is actually the only indication of personality that De Sardet has. The rest of the game constantly invokes his noble title, is eternally serious and unchanging no matter what your decisions are during the game.


The second reason is the supporting characters, who, although they have some personal stake in the story, just don't give the impression of real companions. By their credibility, they are about 17 levels below the most boring side character in Mass Effect. The reasons for joining the protagonist are trivial and their relationships are non-existent. Communication with them is dry, and only missions to earn their loyalty out of the territory of complete genericism.

All of the above causes a lack of emotional connection to the world and characters, and consequently to the story. As with Witcher, the best missions here are those dealing with intrigues in the realm of moral grayness, while the rest is averaged down to the level of skipping dialogue.

GOODPLAY GOOD BUT…

The world in which everything is going on is visually really beautiful and that is about its reach. It is spatially split into several smaller sections that unfortunately lack the variety and dynamism. Cities of different factions are by far the best realized part of it, but they often use identical buildings, layout and interior design. Nature and territory between cities do not have different biomes and are reduced to only one type of environment. NPC characters don't have a daily routine, and there are actually too few of them, which is why the world often looks very empty, and you have absolutely nothing to do outside of the missions.


The player's movement around the environment is very limited, and the edges of the map are not masked by a natural obstacle, but often cut off by an invisible wall. There is no incentive to research as point of interest questionnaires are visible even before the map is discovered, and resources for the crafting system are scattered along the paths the player is already going through. The consequence is that walking between often very distant targets in a mission is very boring, and the monotony is occasionally broken by combat alone.

But there is also a thread of salvation here in the form of praiseworthy RPG elements of the game that greatly reflect on gameplay. In the character creator, one must choose one of the three classes offered - warrior, technician, or wizard. Fortunately, the system is flexible enough to allow a certain amount of skill mix, but also the ability to completely change invested experience points an unlimited number of times.


De Sardet can enhance both talents and attributes. Attributes influence the type of weapons and equipment that can be used, while talents such as charisma, locksmithing and intuition determine how to approach missions. Need to break into an enemy base? Depending on the talents, it is possible to break in and sneak in, dress in other faction's clothing, walk in a conversation, jump from a neighboring building, blow up a weak wall and the like. It is a system that is at the back of almost every mission and greatly contributes to their diversity and dynamism.

In my case, missions actually rarely escalated into combat scenarios, because I fully committed to my role as a conciliatory ambassador. But the fight is inevitable and like many other aspects of GreedFall - half-baked. It is mechanically not overly complicated, and uses a combination of a weak, more powerful and very powerful attack with cold weapons or magic, and various guns and rifles. Opposition attacks can be avoided or counter-attacked, and many of them come with armor that needs to be broken first.

Although a little stiff, she can be fun thanks to her fighting skills and visually diverse weapons and equipment. It is possible to change the same for fellow soldiers, but unfortunately there is no option to control them during the fight or to define in any way what will work in it. In the end, it doesn't matter, since the opponent's AI is non-existent, and after a few levels the player becomes invincible at the highest difficulty setting.

GRAPHIC IS GOOD BUT…
Despite frequent recycling of graphics components, GreedFall looks very nice. It has solid textures and a very good lighting system that really evokes the atmosphere of the player's environment. The game is definitely brilliant in semgnet too, which I find very important in this type of RPG - a lot. The range here is visually diverse, with armor and weapons designed thematically.


Of course, it is not a visual aspect of the game without certain problems - why would you be in a game like this at all? This is especially true of characters whose facial expressions are stiff and mouth movements are out of sync with what they are saying. It's not something that significantly affects the game, but it's eye-popping, especially when one considers the exceptional quality and expressiveness of voice acting. In translation - the emotions of the characters are heard, but rarely seen.

Fortunately, I haven't encountered any bugs when it comes to performing missions, but I have a few graphical ones. Missing or overlapping Texans, characters that do not load, enemies that do not respond to my presence or stay on a fighting stance during dialogue and the like. Fortunately, the game is not overly demanding, and the framerate is generally stable, and the crunch only falters when the screen is flooded with enemies and a bunch of combat effects.

GOOD GAME BUT…

GreedFall is a game that really confused all my gamer senses. At first glance, there is everything an RPG of this type needs to have - a solid story, an interesting world, suborceres, expansive RPG elements and good visuals. But although it has width, it absolutely lacks depth. Almost all segments lack something that would bring them to the level of games from which GreedFall draws inspiration. And that's by far the biggest problem since playing GreedFall fantasized about re-playing Mass Effect or Dragon Age.


We can consider that the game is very ambitious since it is made by 30 people with a far smaller budget, but that doesn't mean it's worth your time. If you're really itching for a lack of RPG games, GreedFall can serve. But equally, if not for the better, you can also scratch the rewind of an older Bioware piece.