GreedFall is an RPG from the French studio Spiders, set in a fictional colonial world strongly inspired by the seventeenth century, where the player, a diplomat of mysterious origin, sets out for the island of Teer Fradee, full of magic, healing nature, an incurable disease, and growing tension between European colonizers, trading companies, and native tribes. The game combines thorough dialogue choices with a real impact on individual factions and their mutual alliances, alongside real-time action combat that can be supplemented with tactical pauses and a choice between several combat styles - sword and shield, firearms, or magical abilities, with the chosen approach also affecting how the player resolves conflicts with individual factions and their representatives.
On PS4, the title impressed especially with the scope of its open world and the number of quests that sensitively reacted to the player's earlier decisions, even though the graphics and overall technical execution didn't match big-budget RPGs from larger publishers - character animations and some environment textures often felt cheap and stiff. Even so, the atmosphere is held together more by the imaginatively designed world, costume design inspired by Baroque fashion, and orchestral music than by the technical precision of the engine itself.
GreedFall was received as a pleasant surprise from a notably smaller studio, one that took clear inspiration from the style of classic BioWare RPGs and, despite a more limited budget, managed to offer an engaging, believably written world full of politics. It is still praised today by fans of classic decision-driven RPGs for not shying away from complex factional politics and morally gray choices, even though it occasionally clearly runs up against the limits of a smaller production and lower budget. The game's success, after all, gave Spiders room and the publisher's trust to work on further, more ambitious projects.
Why play: For fans of classic decision-driven RPGs from BioWare who will appreciate complex factional politics and morally gray choices, GreedFall is an engaging surprise from a smaller studio despite the limits of a lower budget.
Game 132 of 278 for Sony PlayStation 4
