Greedfall - First Reviews and Impressions

If I were to rate this game on pure fun factor (and not a score based on trying to be neutral and looking at mechanics, etc.) then a 9/10 for me. The only reason not a 10 is my pique over the romance thing and there is a lot of running around.
I'll have to write a minireview on steam one of these days and will slap the same score on it - but my reasoning is not completely the same.
What makes it near masterpiece in my case is themes of stories told within quests. Atrocities humans did to their own kind through real history are retold in this game, AA game. So many of those are impossible to see in any other game.
Ways those are told are pitch perfect, for example I've seen criticizing the moment an inquisitor strangles a native in public and there is no reaction, hell that's exactly what happened in reality and happens even today. Although some are aware it's wrong, noone reacts. It's brilliant.
The only atrocity I haven't seen in this game, and we had in real history of our species, is deliberate sterilization, but tbh it just can't fit (no offsprings = less guinea pigs) so it'd be illogical to have it inside Greedfall.

The reason it can't be 10/10 in my case is not of technical nature. Sure, graphics is not TW3/FF15 but it doesn't matter when the overall style is great. A bug here and there, so what, what matters is that there is no bug everywhere thanks to the game not being another Gamebryo abortion.
It's design crimes that annoyed me. For example why half of 80+ quests have a point "wait till it's night to proceed"? I wanted to suggest always nighttime mod and then I got a quest to destroy nests that appear only at early morning. So even a mod cannot fix this horror.
Except that, there is almost no humor in the whole game. The game shows the world darker than Mordor as even in Mordor there was some humor present.

Thanks for starting the hints thread.

EDIT:
I'm lazy so I'll just use this post of mine as steam minireview. :)
 
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Besides the wonderful quests I love the world itself. I don't find it that empty. It is a bit more bare than some other games but still enough in it to be enjoyable. I have a different view on the NPC's as well. They are quiet but do their own thing. I find it accetable that not everyone focuses on me the PC. I don't need all the NPC's to pay attention to me or want to talk to me. There is enough of them around, doing their stuff, that I am fine with it. I don't want to stop and talk to every single person in the game and find they have tins of dialogue trees to wade through. I am fine with focusing on the key people and letting the rest of them go about living their lives. So I differ a little from Morrandir in these aspects.
Perhaps I did not express myself well. It's not my wish that the world evolves around me. Quite the contrary: I want that there's stuff going on without me for the world to feel alive. But it seems that without me there's not much happening in the gameworld.

If I were to rate this game on pure fun factor (and not a score based on trying to be neutral and looking at mechanics, etc.) then a 9/10 for me. The only reason not a 10 is my pique over the romance thing and there is a lot of running around.
I'm only 15 hours in, but currently it would be about 8 or 8.5 of 10 for me.

Ways those are told are pitch perfect, for example I've seen criticizing the moment an inquisitor strangles a native in public and there is no reaction, hell that's exactly what happened in reality and happens even today. Although some are aware it's wrong, noone reacts.
But I wanted to react! It bugged me that I couldn't do anything.
 
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You'll have to wait till some act of violence happens on the street where you live. Or saloon fight occurs while you're out for a coffee.
React then. Or… Will you really? :)
 
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You'll have to wait till some act of violence happens on the street where you live. Or saloon fight occurs while you're out for a coffee.
React then. Or… Will you really? :)
Yep, provided that I can shoot shadow bursts from my hands at will and I'm politically protected by one of the top 3 influential persons on the continent. ;)
 
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But I wanted to react! It bugged me that I couldn't do anything.

You talking about the first time you enter San Matheus and that horrific scene with the Inquisitor? But you can react - just after he is done.

I ran over and talked to him. I reacted plenty and said I did not share his faith and we got into combat. I whooped his ass and then he limped away muttering that this was not over between us

I think I understood you - I did not mean to imply that you wanted people to react to your presence. I was using that as an example why they didn't react. Meaning they were doing their own thing.

What I meant is that it didn't bother me and I felt the NPC's fit in nice enough doing whatever. But it bothered you that they were not doing more in general. That was what I meant that we shared a different view on it is all :)
 
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You talking about the first time you enter San Matheus and that horrific scene with the Inquisitor? But you can react - just after he is done.

I ran over and talked to him. I reacted plenty and said I did not share his faith and we got into combat. I whooped his ass and then he limped away muttering that this was not over between us
I can't remember eyactly what I said, but apparently I was a little more diplomatic. :D
But want I meant was that I wanted to intervene
before he kills the native and the guardian burned to death.
It would have been ok for me to not succeed but just standing around watching was not the thing "my" De Sardet would have done.
 
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Well, it's not budget, but Spiders employs more than 20 people, in addition to a number of freelancers and authors. Bioware employs ~800. That should be enough for a rough estimation.

Yes. Greedfall is the biggest game of Spiders with the biggest budget, but still fraction of what EA/bEAware has. And EA can also reorganise teams and support priority projects adding more developers. Yet Spiders were able to make better game than what EA/Bioware was able to produce in recent years. Spiders = Bioware killer. :)
 
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Yes. Greedfall is the biggest game of Spiders with the biggest budget, but still fraction of what EA/bEAware has. And EA can also reorganise teams and support priority projects adding more developers. Yet Spiders were able to make better game than what EA/Bioware was able to produce in recent years. Spiders = Bioware killer. :)
I just read that Spiders had been aquired by Bigben Interactive last July. They have a revenue of 250 Mio €. Perhaps they'll get significantly more funding for their next game.
 
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I can't remember eyactly what I said, but apparently I was a little more diplomatic. :D
But want I meant was that I wanted to intervene
before he kills the native and the guardian burned to death.
It would have been ok for me to not succeed but just standing around watching was not the thing "my" De Sardet would have done.

Oh aye I wanted to do that too! I RP'ed I was just too stunned, too far away, and he did it too fast for me to stop him. I think, considering the possible diplomatic consequences, and not knowing anything about what was happening and all that ... it provides a little rationale while a Legate (who was charged with being diplomatic) might have hesitated for a moment and then could only react afterwards.

At least that was my internal rationale :)
 
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Yeah, yeah... they always have an excuse. ;)
 
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Lots of good points being made, the game sounds interesting for sure, it's good to hear that the quests are very interesting and are there multiple ways to solve each Quest?
The fact that they're not fetch quests is a huge bonus.
My only question is how is combat throughout the length of the game.
Does it get repetitive or tiresome, that was the biggest problem I had with Mars War logs, I couldn't play it through because it was so tedious backtracking and repetitive, similar combat with no variety.
And I know it's a given but in Mars War Logs that game had way too much running around back and forth as well.
 
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Lots of good points being made, the game sounds interesting for sure, it's good to hear that the quests are very interesting and are there multiple ways to solve each Quest?
The fact that they're not fetch quests is a huge bonus.
My only question is how is combat throughout the length of the game.
Does it get repetitive or tiresome, that was the biggest problem I had with Mars War logs, I couldn't play it through because it was so tedious backtracking and repetitive, similar combat with no variety.
And I know it's a given but in Mars War Logs that game had way too much running around back and forth as well.

I didn't play Mars War Logs but I played Technomancer and that had a ton of running around and lots of respawning. Loved the game but the respawns did annoy me a lot.

Greedfall still has that - but more refined. Like there is some respawning of beasts and such but some of the time (maybe 50-75% ??) they are out of the way so you can avoid them if you want. I just know I was able to go around or avoid many while others I had to face each time I took those paths they were on.

Also it isn't everything that respawns. I found it much more bearable in GF then Technomancer. To the point that it hasn't bothered me much in GF.

Running around - there is A LOT of it so no sugar coating it. But a plus in GF over Technomancer is the use of campfires, travel stones, and coaches. You also can travel from each of your diplomatic homes in each of the 3 main cities.

Consequently once you start getting campsites set up (just have to discover them) and villages, combined with some key travel points in the cities (like you can FT to your home and some of the Naut ports), it was more bearable. Find a village, home, port, carriage, or campsite and then from there travel to the closest location to whatever place you need to go.

Also when traveling long distances you get a special temporary camp site with a merchant where you can craft, sell/buy, reorganize party, then continue on the trip.

I found this went a long way to reducing the annoyance of some much running around ... but there is still a lot. Just a bit more easily managed so they seem to improve each game.

Combat - someone else will have to speak. I am not big on combat and play these games on easy. I enjoy it but only because I can enjoy all the fun combat talents (and its cool as a mage) without every battle becoming some big strategic fight. Only the boss fights are hard (and more matter of patience then really hard). The combat is not overly complex but I found it just about right for myself ... but I need to be clear combat is never my focus in any game. Either something I have to put up with, at worst, or, at best, something fun to enjoy but without the stress and hassle of being too difficult.

My general impression is that those who love complex and complicated combat will find it boring. I enjoy it myself.
 
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The game would be a 6 for me at the moment. I could do with a lot more freedom and less hand-holding. Get quest, follow yellow circle, talk, follow yellow circle, talk, follow yellow circle, finish quest, get next yellow circle. RepeatX50 to finish game. Anybody that complains about Skyrim and then praises this is a jokester (a joxer?).

I'm typically not into companion romances. Vilja was an exception but she had 1200 lines of dialog and was fleshed out. Most of the time, they're just silly imo. I prefer the bump and grind of the Witcher series :) Random sex as a quest reward for the win! The character models in this game don't make that alluring any way. None of the companions are lookers; well unless you happen to like tats and scars. Not my thing. Also, that mold growth on my dude and Siora is just gross. That is one goofy ass gimick. Ugly!

However, I haven't messed with exploration outside of towns. If that is any good, I may actually finish the game. If it's as lame as the town quests, then I'll shelve this forever. I assume there are no dungeons since they haven't been mentioned. Normally, if you have magic, you have dungeons but I don't think that's a thing here.

Still plodding along with it for now though.
 
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The game would be a 6 for me at the moment. I could do with a lot more freedom and less hand-holding. Get quest, follow yellow circle, talk, follow yellow circle, talk, follow yellow circle, finish quest, get next yellow circle. RepeatX50 to finish game. Anybody that complains about Skyrim and then praises this is a jokester (a joxer?).
Find a mission board (none are in towns) and take missions. No circles. No chatty. No handholding in missions.
Solve the Professor Seraffadin's Footsteps sidequest if you dare. This one doesn't even have hints.
Where circles are on the map, don't follow those blindly, in some cases you'll "solve" a quest in a way you didn't want to.
Finally you can disable or set to minimum exploration UI. I suggest not disabling it completely as you might trigger an unwanted something by pressing E by an interactive object you don't want to currently interact with. And because no tooltips, you don't even know it's interactive.

I don't remember talking about handholding in Skyrim ever. I did talk about bugs and no story. Hundreds of times. IMO those two are more important than different quest design. If I wasn't clear about that before, hopefully now I am.
 
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Mission Boards. I will def look for those. I've gotten outside finally and I do find this a little more interesting than the towns. Found a skill altar, fought something nonhuman and found a little cave that had actual treasure. Good! I was about to drop it completely until then. I've got a timed quest back in New Town though, so can't wander too far.
 
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However, I haven't messed with exploration outside of towns. If that is any good, I may actually finish the game. If it's as lame as the town quests, then I'll shelve this forever. I assume there are no dungeons since they haven't been mentioned. Normally, if you have magic, you have dungeons but I don't think that's a thing here.

I don't know how it's possible that you haven't explored outside of towns yet. You must still be very early in the game. Did you do your typical routine of starting over a dozen times. ;)

The exterior areas are more enjoyable imo due to larger areas and a greater variety of enemies. There are some dungeons in the form of caves and ruins btw. Don't expect the same kind of exploration as a Bethesda or Piranha Bytes game though. Like I said before, that isn't the game's strong point.
 
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Anyone found the treasure mentioned in the abandoned letter? My guess is that this is the bag of 100 gp found very early in the game, but not sure.
 
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Get quest, follow yellow circle, talk, follow yellow circle, talk, follow yellow circle, finish quest, get next yellow circle. RepeatX50 to finish game. Anybody that complains about Skyrim and then praises this is a jokester (a joxer?).
YThe quests might be considered dull when you just have to wander around and push a few buttons. The difference to common fetch quests is that the side quests in Greedfall have a meaningful plot, often interwoven with or related to the main plot. For some players this is a big deal.
 
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I've finished the game after 69 hours with level 37 on normal difficulty. I had a lot of fun and the endgame was great as well - recommended!
 
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