GreedFall II raised two points of confusion for me. Firstly, despite that two in the name, GreedFall II is a prequel. Now, admittedly, this saved me the hassle of looking up plot recaps for the original, but having a two take place before a one just didn’t sit right with me. Call it GreedFall zero or something. Secondly, there’s the practice of putting a story-driven game through Early Access. Ultimately, the people that buy in early are likely going to experience the same story, but in a worse way. The means of presenting the story is key.
I bring up this point because, in many ways, GreedFall II is extremely rough. In fact, it raises the question of what exactly is too ‘early’ for ‘early access’? Where do you draw the line between dialing in the key parts of your game, to just straight up making people pay to be your QA department? Still, despite the vitriol that this review will inevitably spew, I don’t hate GreedFall II. There’s promise here, but it’s buried so far under bugs and unsatisfying mechanics. This game is absolutely not ready to be pushed out onto the world stage.
The Sun Never Sets
Let’s start with the positives before we drive the knife home. I really like the grounded nature of GreedFall II’s plot. Modern fantasy has a tendancy to get hung up on world-shattering events. Giant portals opening and demons taking over the world, that sort of thing. Instead, GreedFall II‘s plot revolves around a more realistic evil: colonialism. As a Brit, this is where I tug my collar nervously. Our protagonist is an islander on the island of Teer Fradee, whose homeland is ‘sharing’ space with newcomers, the Bridge Alliance. As the plot progresses, it becomes clear that this alliance is proferring gifts with one hand while tearing apart the island with the other.
The plot quests progress in a nice way too. The first main quest is to undergo a ritual to become a ‘sage’, which requires two grand tasks to be completed. These tasks relate to issues on the island and are nice and branching. Once you find the source of the issue, for instance, you can resolve it through clever thinking or just barge it and slaughter everyone, with the understanding that you’re giving ammunition to those who paint you as savages. It’s a refreshing approach to the questing and organically pushes you to explore the map, so as to exhaust your options for each quest.
The characters wrapped up in GreedFall II‘s quests are quite nicely written, too. You’re accompanied by another islander, Nilan, for example. A character who rages against all things foreign. Someone engineered to make you dislike them at first, then perhaps sympathise more as you delve into what’s going on. You’re then joined by a dashing rogue (or bored noblewoman if you prefer), a smuggler who’s helping the islanders, and a sailor trying to redeem herself. They all feel distinct, with believable motivations, and I enjoyed talking to them. Other than occasionally getting people’s genders muddled, the dialogue is quite nice too.
Putting The Boot In
That’s enough praise of GreedFall II, I’m afraid. Let’s instead go to my biggest bugbear: the combat. It’s a hybrid system. You move in real-time but you can pause the action and stack up skills. I find it a fairly bland system. It’s okay when combat requires tactical thinking, but most of the time it’s just idly trading blows until one side falls down. What doesn’t help is the fact that so much of it is broken. Allies are meant to auto-attack, which is crucial for building up action points, but they frequently don’t bother. At one point, all three of my allies just stood there, taking axe blades to the face, waiting for me to come sort it out.
Just using a skill can be a pain, too. You have to move an imprecise reticule over the enemy of choice, then pray it doesn’t bug out. In every other fight, the reticle would fly to the edge of the screen and refuse to move. You even have to use it for the basic attack (when you’re not paused), rather than it just targeting the nearest enemy. A lot of GreedFall II is broken, as it happens. The sheer amount of visual bugs is quite impressive. A violently vibrating NPC is a common sight, for one, and my protagonist had a strange habit of shaving all his hair off after important cutscenes.
There are less funny bugs, though. At one point, fast travel disabled itself, making me continually trudge back and forth across a mostly empty map. Optimisation could use some work, too. It has high requirements for the best graphics, but even when I’d dropped the graphics down, it would often drop frames in random areas. It does look fairly nice, I’ll grant it that. On top of that are some generally wonky mechanics. Stealth was very frequent in the main story, for instance, but was fairly dull. In areas where it’s necessary, NPCs walk in very obvious patterns, so the main effect is just walking slower to your destination.
GreedFall II – Not Yet Ready
The question I keep coming back to is ‘why Early Access’? Only about a third of the story is finished at this point, and the next update has been delayed without a new date. So you’re experiencing only a few chapters, but in a rough, frustrating state. Like reading the first three chapters of a novel, written on sandpaper. At the moment, the open world is rather bare, with a handful of sidequests dotted around. I slipped through the second region without even meaning to, as there were only about two main quests there. Inevitably, these areas will be fleshed out in future releases, so you’d have to replay it anyway. Why cash in now?
I suppose if you’re a big fan of the original GreedFall, and want to support the sequel, then watching it evolve and being able to give feedback is a nice perk. For everyone else, though, it’s a big risk. If I wasn’t obliged to write this review, I’m not sure if I’d have stuck it out. The sheer amount of bugs was frustrating, and the dull-at-best combat wasn’t gripping me. The writing, however, did have a hold on me. But, ultimately, a piece of writing is only as good as the medium that conveys it. By that metric, GreedFall II is not, yet, worth your time.
