Introduction
Greedfall is the latest role-playing game from Spiders, the French developer behind such titles as Of Orcs and Men, Mars: War Logs, and The Technomancer. The game is available for the PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. I played the PC version, thanks to a Steam token provided by the game’s publisher, Focus Home Interactive.
In Greedfall, you play as de Sardet, the legate of the Congregation of Merchants. Your nation is being ravaged by a deadly plague, and when you hear that a newly-colonized island has plants with unidentified healing powers, you decide to go there and look for a cure. Of course, other nations head for the island as well, and that means you have to mix together combat, exploration, and diplomacy as you work your way through the game’s campaign.
According to the fact sheet I was given, Greedfall is inspired by “Baroque art from 17th century Europe.” If that description doesn’t mean anything to you, then let me try my own version. The game could easily be modded so that you’re playing Ponce de Leon sailing to Florida to search for the Fountain of Youth. Or, in more simplified terms, you get to play a swashbuckler. I don’t know if that makes Greedfall unique, but the premise was new for me, and I’ve never heard of another game called a “colonial RPG.”
Characters
The first thing you do in Greedfall is create your character. You can be male or female, but this choice is mostly cosmetic. It only affects which of your companions you can romance (unlike many modern RPGs, nobody in Greedfall is gay, so you can only flirt with characters of the opposite gender). You also get to adjust your appearance, but there aren’t a lot of options for this, which is a disappointment given how often your character’s face ends up on screen. And annoyingly, you’re not allowed to name your character. This wouldn’t change anything in the game — everybody just calls you de Sardet — but it would make organizing saved games easier. Without any sort of profile information, the saves are all just jumbled together.
Characters are defined by three things: skills, attributes, and talents. Each level, characters gain a skill point. Skills mostly unlock weapons and spells, and improve how they work. Weapons can be light or heavy, one-handed or two-handed, melee or ranged. There are also special “magic ring” weapons for spellcasters. Spells include things like heal, shield, and shadow burst, which deals area-effect damage. You’re also allowed some “technique” skills, like setting traps and throwing bombs. So the skills give you lots of options for how you want to deal with your opponents.
Every three levels, characters gain an attribute point. The attributes are Accuracy (for guns), Agility (for light weapons), Endurance (for health), Mental Power (for spells), Strength (for heavy weapons), and Willpower (for mana). Along with boosting your character, attributes also restrict what types of equipment you can use. Armor requires Endurance, jewelry requires Willpower, and weapons require their associated attribute. I focused on one-handed light weapons in the game (because I prefer faster attacks), and so I maxed out Agility but also put points in Accuracy, Endurance, and Willpower to round out my character.
Finally, after every four levels, characters gain a talent point. Talents are things you use outside of combat, including Charisma (for persuasion), Craftsmanship (for improving armor), Intuition (for extra dialogue options), Lockpicking (for opening locks), Science (for crafting bombs and potions), and Vigor (for climbing and jumping). Oddly, talents only go up to rank 3, and you can receive ranks from your equipment and companions, making it pretty easy to reach a maximum of ranks with a minimum of points. As an example, any time I wanted to craft anything, I just wore my +1 Craftsmanship gloves and invited the +1 Craftsmanship companion into my party, and that gave me 2/3 points right there. I didn’t have to invest a talent point into Craftsmanship until late in the game, because it simply wasn’t necessary.
In fact, “learning everything” is a problem with the character system. I like systems where there are lots of possible builds, and you have to make significant choices as you level up. But that’s not the case in Greedfall. I earned way more skill points than I needed, and I was able to max out all of the talents that I cared about. That left only attributes where I had to make decisions for my build, and I don’t think those decisions were overly meaningful. And so while I liked how the character system gives you lots of options for how to play the game, I wish it didn’t allow every character to use every option. Choices are good.
Along with your main character, there are also five companions — one for each of the game’s factions outside the Congregation of Merchants, where your character is the representative. The companions level up and improve themselves automatically, so you’re not given any choices for how to build them. But the companions follow five different fighting styles, and so it’s easy to pick two (the most you can have with you at once) to complement your playing style. I picked Siora the healing native and Kurt the heavy weapons guard in my game.
Interface
Greedfall is played using a third-person perspective. You only control your main character, even when you have companions with you. You’re not even allowed to give your companions helpful orders like “move over there” or “prioritize your gun over your sword” or “stay away from the boss creature when it telegraphs its big melee attack.” You just have to hope that they do something useful, which, nicely, they usually do.
The interface is about what you’d expect for the PC version of the game. You move around using the WASD keys, you attack with the left mouse button, you block with the right mouse button, and you trigger spells, potions, and your gun with the 1-0 keys. However, there are also a multitude of other keys — Q for a fury attack (a “critical hit” that you power up during combat), the control key for a secondary attack (an attack associated with your weapon, like “kick” for light weapons), the shift key for dodge, C for stealth, E for interact, the middle mouse button for targeting (otherwise the game picks the “best” target for you), and the spacebar for tactical pause.
I usually do better with games that require fewer keys — especially when the shifts, controls and alts start coming into play — but I eventually got competent enough at Greedfall, mostly because it let me reconfigure the keys to a way that made more sense to me (such as moving stealth to the control key, where it seems to be in every other game I play). Since every key can be reconfigured, it also means you shouldn’t have any trouble playing Greedfall, even if you’re left-handed.
Combat in Greedfall seems to owe a lot to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, or at least the same basic attack strategies work for both games. That is, you’re going to have to learn how to parry and counterattack, or attack and dodge away, depending on the opponent. The main difference in the combat engines is Greedfall‘s gun. You can’t use your gun all the time (it can’t be assigned as your main weapon, and you’re limited by the number of bullets you have available), but you can beat all of the enemies — and especially the bosses — by staying away from them and shooting them when it’s safe.
Unfortunately, another difference between the engines is that Greedfall‘s is a bit clunkier. Actions like dodging aren’t as fluid, and you’re not allowed to cast spells or quaff potions while you’re moving. Instead, you have to stand still for about five seconds while the animation plays out — which is usually a good way to get killed.
When you’re not in combat, items you can interact with — like chests, corpses, and plants — glow invitingly. Oddly, that makes it easier to explore when it’s dark because then all of the important spots are much more apparent. Meanwhile, NPCs don’t glow, but they get an icon over their head if they have things to say, equipment to sell, or a quest to give. There are also quest markers for every part of every quest, and they always show you exactly where to go (and there isn’t any way to turn them off).
Campaign
The vast majority of Greedfall takes place on Teer Fradee, the newly-discovered island where you hope to find a cure for the plague ravaging your lands. There are six factions on the island: your nation, the Congregation of Merchants; two ally nations (one dominated by religion and the other dominated by science, so of course they’re at war with each other); the Coin Guards, who provide security for everybody; the Nauts, who provide shipping and transportation for everybody; and the natives.
Your goal on the island is to look for a cure, but that’s not really the focus of the campaign. Instead, as the legate (aka deputy) of the Congregation governor, you’re often tasked with settling disputes. Most of these disputes involve colonists killing / torturing / robbing the natives, and unfortunately they only play one note. The colonists are always in the wrong, and there’s never any gray area where you could maybe see their point of view. For example, at one point the religious faction decides to torture natives until they see the light and revoke their old gods. So do you look the other way and support your ally, or do you rescue the natives? I played as a “paladin” during the campaign, and I always sided with the natives, and yet at the end all of the factions loved me, which was disappointing.
Luckily, despite the black and white morals, the quests are interesting. There aren’t any “fetch” quests where an NPC asks you to find the ring they lost in the forest, and then when you return it, that’s the end; you get your reward and you move on. Instead, quests almost always have multiple stages, which give them time to breathe and tell their story, and they do a nice job of world-building, so you always understand the places and characters involved (including your companions). The quests and storylines also reveal the motivations of the characters, so you don’t have any bad guys doing bad things just because that’s what the plot demands. Everybody has their reasons for what they do.
Another nice thing about the quests is that you’re frequently given options for how to solve them. Combat, diplomacy, bribery, and stealth are all tools in your arsenal. As an example, during multiple quests you’re required to search a Naut warehouse. But if you just blunder inside, then you might have to fight the guards, which would lower your standing with the Nauts. So you can sneak into the warehouse if you’re careful (and drink a stealth potion), or you can wear a Naut disguise (which, sadly, is just a sailor shirt) so they don’t realize that you’re not supposed to be there. Of course, Greedfall includes a lot of action, and so sometimes combat is a requirement, even if you’re playing a rogue or a diplomat. There isn’t any way to talk your way past an angry boss creature.
The writing, on the other hand, is not great. Conversations often turn into information dumps, and they’re about as exciting to listen to as dry history lessons. The writers also try to throw some twists and turns at you, but they telegraph them from so far away that they’re hardly a surprise when they’re finally revealed. As an example, a good dozen times during the campaign, somebody comments that your character looks just like one of the natives. So guess who has a surprise lineage. On the other hand, the writers did a nice job developing a language for the natives, so when you talk to them it actually feels like you’re actually talking to a native rather than a random voice actor.
When you’re not talking to people, Greedfall is an action RPG, where a plethora of random island creatures and bandits need to be killed. Sadly, almost all of these battles are trash fights and give trash loot. There are only about five creatures on the island, and you have to fight them over and over again, which gets boring — especially when they start respawning. Fights against humans are also surprisingly similar.
Worse, the island itself is kind of boring. Every so often, you find a skill shrine (another nod to The Witcher 3) or a boss creature or a useful chest, but the vast majority of the wilderness is empty of content — or, if you find something, it’s involved in a quest, and you can’t do anything there until you trigger the quest. The colonies have issues, too. All of the residences are cut-and-paste copies of each other, and even the governor palaces are identical. Ho hum. Greedfall could really use another layer of content, more personality, and more variety.
Conclusion
There are more topics I could discuss — like how the equipment is generally boring but the cut scenes are excellent, or how there’s way too much running back and forth during quests but the save and load times are fantastically short — but they just continue the trend. Greedfall was pretty well balanced for me. It had about as many things that I liked as it had things that I didn’t, and so I find it tough to be overly enthusiastic about the game.
It took me about 60 hours to complete the Greedfall campaign. Some parts I found to be entertaining, but other parts were downright dull. I didn’t hate the time that I spent with the game, but I was happy when it finally ended, and I had no desire to try it again or hunt for achievements. So I wouldn’t recommend Greedfall at its current price, but it’s something you might want to check out when it goes on sale, or if some DLCs are added to spice things up.
