Gedonia 2 is an online co-op RPG with an open world to explore and unique characters to build. Developed and published by Kazakov Oleg, Gedonia 2 is currently in the alpha state of early access with a planned full release in Q4 2027. With this in mind, Gedonia 2 is not a fully fleshed out game and nowhere near being complete. There is a roadmap of things to come, including new zones, further story developments, and additional skill trees. My review of Gedonia 2 will be of the game’s current state of course, but please note that things could be improved and/or altered with future updates.
The original Gedonia released back in October 2022. As an expanded and improved sequel, Gedonia 2 offers more advanced character building, better graphics and quality of life, and enhanced crafting. Players are able to play online with up to 4 people or tackle challenges in single player. I personally played in single player, though I would imagine multiplayer can be quite an enjoyable experience. Regardless, I had a lot of fun with this one. It was fun trying out different builds and making multiple, unique characters. I even had a chuckle here and there from some of the cutscenes during quests. Visually the game may not be the most stunning, but the world was still enjoyable to explore, albeit a bit slow at times. Overall, Gedonia 2 seems like a pretty good game, which will be made even better with updates ad the eventual full release.
However, there are some glaring issues that one might expect from early access. The occasional bug, jankiness and a general lack of polish overall does come with the experience. This didn’t detract much fun from my experience, but they do exist. There are some things that I hope get updated or altered in the future. As the kids say, it might be a good idea to let Gedonia 2 cook a bit before picking this one up. Not because it isn’t fun, I still think it is, but because its very apparently still in development. After a few updates, I am hopeful that things get improved, but I wouldn’t want your initial experience to be bogged down beforehand. My recommendation depends on your personal preference on games in early access. So, choose your stats wisely, because its time to discuss Gedonia 2!
A New Character
Creating a character is obviously the first thing players need to do before diving into Gedonia’s world. Right off the bat, an important decision will need to be made—allocating your stat points. There are 4 different stats—agility, intellect, charisma and strength—each with 4 tiers. You have 8 points in total with the highest tier requiring 2 points. With each tier you spend a point on, you receive a relative additional benefit. For example, points in agility allow you multiple uses of dodging, the highest tier allowing 5 dodges and a double jump. Points in intellect increases your magic damage and mana as well as giving crafting learning bonuses.
The allocation of these 8 points seems to be permanent and I’m not a big fan of this. Many items, dialogue choices that affect the quest’s outcome and parts of the world become completely unusable depending on your stats. If you find a sword you want to use but it requires 2 strength and you only have 1, you can not use it. If you don’t allocate any points into agility, you will not be able to dodge. Certain spells and puzzles require intellect to use and if you don’t have it, you simply can not. This system is unfortunately very restrictive on what you can and can not do in the world.
I can see why the initial point allocation should be permanent, but why is there seemingly no way to improve these stats? Maybe every 5 or 10 levels, you could get a stat point. That way yes, some things may be locked initially, but players can unlock them over time. I suppose it might be fun if you had 4 players with the highest tier unlocked for each stat, but for single players it’s a disappointing system. You can make multiple characters of course, but regardless, its an important decision to make right off the bat.
After you allocate your 8 points, you can customize your character. Players have a somewhat limited selection for customizing their characters. This includes 2 body types, a few head/faces, hair, beard and eye brow styles, and color of hair and eyes. You can play as a female of course, but it seems like the game is currently coded towards males. NPCs refer to your character as “he” or “sirs” assuming you have a party with you. Customization is certainly not the most in-depth and I hope more options get added later on, but this is not the biggest issue.
You can then pick your origin out of a choice of currently 5 possibilities. Each origin comes with two additional effects. A nobleman starts off wearing noble clothes and more initial gold and can make noble speech checks. A peasant wears peasant clothes and has some food and can make peasant speech checks. I personally went with the mysterious stranger for my first playthrough. This origin starts you off with no clothes, only lucky jewelry that increases crit chance, but also has the addition of a mysterious stranger occasionally helping you in combat. Supposedly there is an exclusive quest line that comes with this origin, but I have not seen it yet. The stranger only tells me that we will meet again later before vanishing.
After all of this, you are then able to start your world. There are three game modes—arena, open world and eternal dungeon. The first two are able to be played single player with eternal dungeons requiring multiplayer. There are also 4 difficulty levels—normal, hard, extreme and nightmare. Increased difficulty changes the amount and power of enemies, the health pool in bosses and damage dealt/received. Normal difficulty might actually be a little too easy so I recommend one of the higher options. Open world is obviously the main experience, but arena is a fun little side thing to try out as well.
One thing I’d like to mention for you single players out there is that world progress stays with the world, not the character. This is important to know if you want to create multiple characters. Starting a second character on the same world does not reset things like quest progress or decisions made previously. It is probably better to have separate worlds for each character you make.
Skills, Quests, and Information
The world of Gedonia is vast and full of mystery, creatures, and sights. The map is divided into regions with an appropriate level recommendation for each. The world seems like it will be much larger than the currently released areas though, with entirely different regions on the map being visible when zooming out.
Players start near a town called Hillford. The first main quest is to go to the town in search of work. Players start with gear and equipment depending on their origin and stat allocations. You also have two skill points to spend, and gain two more with each level up. I believe the current maximum level is 50 so you will have 100 total skill points to spend among a variety of different areas. There are currently 14 different skill trees with 2 of them being in development. Different types of magic, such as storm, nature or dark magic have their own trees. There’s trees for weaponry, such as melee, archery, and banditry for daggers. There’s trees for leadership if you have companions (useful for dark magic summons), music and husbandry. In development are illusions and blood magic, both of which seem like fun to use.
Abilities and passives within a tree can only be unlocked when the skill has been leveled enough. Players need to spend some points towards leveling up the skill in order to reach the higher tiered abilities. This often requires the player’s level to be high enough though which can be a little annoying. For example, I believe I needed to be level 7 in order to unlock the second tier of dark magic. This doesn’t seem like much, but leveling can be a slow process. When you learn an ability, you can then place it down below to key-bind it. Players can equip a secondary weapon which gives you a second set of key binds. You are able to reset skills at any time, but this does not refund points spent towards leveling the skill.
I love the variety of skills available. Players can certainly build unique characters with the variety. I do wish it was a slightly faster process, such as upgrading skill level not being locked behind player level, especially if you really wanted to focus in one skill tree. If I wanted to be a storm mage who only knows storm spells, I’ll probably need to spend points in skills like music or husbandry while I wait for my player level to rise. Of course you could just not spend the points, but who wants to do that?
Exploring Gedonia is often rewarding. Scattered across the world are side quests for players to do. Probably the first one you encounter involves helping a zombie serenade his undead love. Depending on your choices, quests can have multiple outcomes. For example, in one playthrough, I helped the zombie serenade his love by finding his heart and a lute for him to play. This lead to a cutscene of him singing his song which was actually a pretty humorous moment. In another playthrough, I instead offered to bring the zombies back to life using dark magic. After performing the ritual, they did turn into humans again, but the zombie was too distraught by the use of dark magic and decided to say goodbye to his love rather than serenade her.
Many decisions like this depend on things like having a skill or stat leveled high enough. Personally, I like this concept and found it enjoyable to see how quests could end with different approaches. I’m not too sure how consequential these outcomes will be in the rest of the game, but I would imagine there is indeed an impact of sorts. The main quest line seems a bit more streamlined, but does have the occasional choice here and there.
There are also 8 different crafting areas. This includes things like blacksmithing, alchemy, cooking and weapon crafting. I did read a review on the steam page that stated the crafting is just a clone of WoW‘s crafting system, including a feeling of it being too MMO like, but I can’t confirm or deny this. It does seem like a somewhat slow process to level up your crafting even with the full bonus from having the highest intellect. Outside of this, you can of course view your inventory (three pages worth of space) and your character sheet.
Gedonia, A Blessed Land in Early Access
Visually, Gedonia 2 is not the most stunning thing out there. However, the world does feel vast and full of things to explore and see. Caves can be explored, though a local map is unfortunately not available, making them a bit annoying to navigate if they aren’t streamlined. I would have also loved if quest icons appeared on the mini-map compass in the corner. Anytime I needed to check where I was going for a side quest, I needed to open the full map, and this sometimes didn’t give an accurate location. Despite this though, Gedonia 2 does have sights to see and inspires in me a want to explore.
Combat can at times feel a bit clunky, especially when it comes to mana regeneration. It isn’t a smooth increase in mana, increasing by 1 over time, and instead just kind of regenerates in chunks. Swinging swords and axes felt fine as did using a bow. Different enemies obviously have different types of attacks. Most enemies seem to only have a few possible attacks though so they were easy to become familiar with and dodge away from. I personally had a lot of fun letting my skeleton army gang up on an enemy while I’m at a distance slinging spells and staff charges.
As mentioned though, the game is currently in the alpha state of early access and does have bugs and jank. Sometimes summons/mercenaries walk through walls. Their AI doesn’t seem the brightest either, not getting out of the way of attacks or going the long way around to get to an enemy. Sometimes quest dialogue would be repeatable which didn’t seem like an intentional feature. Sometimes the voice acting would cut out as well. At one point I was able to equip a shield requiring 2 strength even though I only had 1, and I am not sure if this is intentional or not. None of the bugs or jankiness I encountered was game breaking or even detracted much from my enjoyment, but it is something to be aware of if you decide to play.
Planned Full Release in Q4 2027
Overall, I like this one. I had fun playing and will definitely be keeping my eye on this one for future updates. With some more quality of life improvements, more content, and more polishing, Gedonia 2 will be a much better game than it currently is. If you’re a player who likes open world RPGs and doesn’t mind early access, I can happily recommend picking this one up. This is especially true if you have a friend or friends to play with, as I am positive this makes the experience even more enjoyable. It may not be the best open world RPG out there, but it has a charm to it that I hope many players will enjoy. Personally, I’m probably going to “let it cook” a bit more before playing myself. After all, there is still over a year before the game’s planned full release in Q4 2027.
Thank you for reading and watch out for man eating squirrels!
