➤ Greedfall, the review 🎮

Since its announcement, now two years ago, Greedfall showed an unusual charm, an intriguing aura of mystery for a title that seemed to combine story and fantasy in a wholly original way. Already in our test, carried out a few months ago, we told you how the style of the Spiders title, published by Focus Entertainment, was really able to hit and involve from the first moment; today, in ours review by Greedfall, we confirm that initial impression and we tell you how difficult it is on PC and console to colonize an island that hides much more than a simple mystery.

The narrative

The background of Spiders was not the most reassuring, the previous works were all united by excellent ideas that proved to be lacking in terms of personality and bite. Greedfall certainly starts from some common problems with the past, such as the size of the team, which has remained unchanged, and the budget that financed it certainly not triple A. Yet the title seems to be the result of the team's assimilation of errors. development, limited only by exogenous problems of another nature. The first real big doubt that gripped us before the review lay in the solidity and caliber of the narrative of the game. The mix between eighteenth century and fantasy was certainly fascinating, but how much and how this union could be created on granite foundations was yet to be discovered. Well, on balance Greedfall offers a solid narrative that branches off with a well-structured intertwining between main and secondary missions. The strength of the title is in the choice of opting for secondary missions that are not a mere filler, but that broaden the background of the protagonists and that push the player to discover more about characters and events.

Despite everything, there are two well-marked narrative arcs to act as the main road: finding the cure for Malicore, a disease that infests Europe and especially the Serène, your nation of origin, and manage the colonization of the island of Teer Frade between bloody civil wars and meticulous diplomatic actions. As you can imagine, therefore, the narrative stratification is well structured with your base of operations, the city of New Serène, as the fulcrum from which everything branches off. Factions, plots, deceptions, mythology, ancient gods and history will accompany the protagonist and his cousin Constantin on a journey to discover the unknown and themselves. Also on a stylistic level, Greedfall tries to propose a "silent narrative" that is coherent with what is proposed by the active plot: names and clothes, for example, fully draw from the classic conception of the colonial eighteenth with armor reminiscent of the Spanish and Portuguese Conquistadores, with some hats inspired by the English navy and capes that make you think of the French Musketeers. In Teer Frade, on the other hand, the native populations aesthetically different from any type of Indios, propose a social similarity with the Native American populations: in fact they are proposed as subjugated by the desire for Western domination, usurped the dominion of an island they belong to "by foreigners with guns ".

The combat system with tactical pause

From a narrative point of view, therefore, Greedfall is solid, interesting, well structured and with several important themes addressed with the right mix between historical truthfulness and fiction. The nature of the Spiders title, however, is not that of a graphic adventure, but of a Western-style action RPG that must therefore have a combat system and extremely solid character growth. Greedfall, we tell you right away, is not without its problems, but at the same time it offers solutions against these gaps as if, in a conscious way, those weaknesses were a "small price to pay".

The basis of the combat system is simple: two melee weapons and one ranged weapon, the ability to cast spells, one simple and one powerful strike, dodging, parrying and a "fury" strike as a bonus. The mechanisms are extremely classic and tested: you hit and dodge, while you learn the attack pattern of the enemies to make the most of their blind spots. The problems arise in the realization of all this: the woodiness of the characters is in fact very accentuated and often in combination with a not always excellent conformation of the battlefield one ends up incurring some unexpected and not properly desired death. As we told you, however, Spiders offers a solution to all this by inserting the tactical break. Being able to plan the moves, give orders in a thoughtful and thoughtful way and perform actions not by pressing the keys on the pad allow the player to avoid the aforementioned problems by eliminating all the part of "reflections" which is then subject to the major influences of woodiness.

Technical level and role system

As for the growth of the character and everything that surrounds the combat system, Greedfall offers several excellent ideas and some revisable. Your alter ego, created at the beginning of the game through a discreet creation editor, will be completely customizable not only in theequipment but also in terms of ability and peculiarities. The initial choice on which attributes and talents to prefer will not be binding and you can therefore change your growth in the course of work. Basically this will be divided into skills, attributes and talents. The former will affect your way of playing, with bonuses and skills related to weapons and armor, while the attributes will affect your statistics such as strength, charisma, agility, altering which equipment and actions you can use and perform in the game. Finally i talents they will touch on some aspects such as the crafting of weapons or consumables or act on magic. The role-playing aspect is a preponderant element in Greedfall: in fact, often using brute force will not be the wisest choice, while intimidating, bribing, persuading or threatening may be alternative solutions capable of offering you better and different results. All this will depend on your customization and therefore replayability also benefits from these solutions, with entire quests that will be modified by your actions.

Even the party of allies that you can bring will be aesthetically customizable, but the most important choice will concern the relationship with them. Talking to them, discovering their past and helping them when they ask you will lead you where Greedfall wants, or in the great stratification of secondary missions that serve to expand the depth of the title. On the sidelines of the main actions, all those RPG elements such as loot and crafting remain. Each weapon or armor found in the loot or bought from merchants will have different strengths and rarity; on these attributes, however, you can go to act through craftsmanship, or the possibility not only to create but to modify the equipment in question. Changing the hilt of the swords or the pommel, changing the material of the butt of arquebuses or flambergs, but also inserting parts of armor or changing the material of a suit will affect your statistics, but also the aesthetics of your character. An interesting combination, which expands the possibilities and the layering of a game that focuses heavily on the role-playing side.

Unfortunately, among the various notes to report there is also the technical level of the game. This is not an extremely lacking game on a visual level, but the modest nature of the budget in many cases is noticeable, with textures not always in high quality and some polygonal models of careless secondary characters. On the other hand, the quality of the inhabited centers and the island of Teer Frade is superb, which really show a strong personality. Even the monsters you will face, especially on the island, will be very characteristic with the bosses at the top of the list for design and quality of the workmanship. Side note for ambient music and sounds, truly inspired and able to pursue the player in key moments. The lyrics are completely in Spanish but for dubbing you will have to settle for English.

Comment

Tested version PlayStation 4 Digital Delivery Steam, PlayStation Store, Xbox Store Price 49,99 € Resources4Gaming.com

8.0

Readers (91)

8.1

Your vote

Greedfall is not perfect, but it is certainly the best expression of the Spiders team. A distinctive action RPG, which offers a solid narrative, an inspired mythology and a plot that deviates from the clichés of the classic exponents of the genre. The combat system suffers from excessive woodiness, but makes up for everything with the introduction of the tactical pause that offers interesting strategic possibilities even in the most excited moments. The role-playing side, an interesting and well-balanced character growth and the design style of monsters and settings compensate for some physiological shortcomings from a technical point of view. In this early September, Greedfall plays the role of surprise by focusing on the pleasure of discovering an inspired role-playing game, full of mysteries, but also of reflections.