Greedfall - First Reviews and Impressions

For fun I fought in the Arena for days just to see how high you can advance. I finally got bored at level 29 and then moved to playing the first 3 or 4 main quests after that. Too powerful though. I may or may not start over but I'm probably through with this dude. He has Intuition, Locks and Crafting maxed. Uses a pistol and ring for attacks. I was playing on easy :)

Hmmm, my ring did 434 damage if anyone is interested.
 
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Leave it to you to find a way to break a good game. ;)

I'm not sure grinding in an arena is as much finding a way to break a game as it is simply discovering an aspect of the game that hasn't had enough thought put into it.

Two games I've played in the past couple of years have had arenas in them and both times my natural instinct has been to compete in them for as long as possible. I can't imagine why anyone wouldn't.

In Avernum 4, quite late in the game, a town has an arena where you fight tough monsters to test your capabilities. In order to complete the quest for this location you kill, I think, about three monsters, but you can go on further than that and do a few more for exp and cool loot. It's not indefinite though and there's about five or six combats in all. A good design that rewards exploration of content well without over-levelling you.

In Lords of Xulima there's a more expansive arena where you gradually fight practically every monster in the game one after the other, stopping in order to come back later whenever you wish. Xulima is a full 6 party member game, but for the arena you can only use one character. That one character gains xp from the fights but never enough to radically over-level them and there's also no way a low level character can solo all the monsters in the game, you always need to come back later in clumps of ability levels. A useful tool for having a look at the power level of your party while also tipping people over a single level-up if you're impatient for a new level.

Maybe it's because crpgnut is playing on easy, maybe the arena is better designed and balanced on more regular difficulties?

Edit: Blackguards also had an arena similar to Avernum 4's.
 
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Monsters respawn in Greedfall though, so players can always grind their way up if they feel like it. Doing it in the arena is just a slightly faster way of doing it. There's no reason to do so, however, as questing yields more than enough levels.
 
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Monsters respawn in Greedfall though, so players can always grind their way up if they feel like it. Doing it in the arena is just a slightly faster way of doing it. There's no reason to do so, however, as questing yields more than enough levels.

But... but... I thought Joxer loathed respawns and refuses to even look at any game which has respawns? Or, at the very least, provide a good long post about how he hates respawns. So joxer's goty is a respawn game? Haha, joyous.
 
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The respawning happens not so often.
You don't have to revisit areas so much.

So the respawning is well made in this game.
 
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Yes, I wasn't bothered by it. Anyone wanting to grind can seek it out though.
 
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Just two reasons:
  1. to level up for the next mission, if you get problems with higher leveled enemies (there's no autoleveling in Greedfall, I think)
  2. to spice up walking through the landscape
 
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Yes, that's fairly normal. Legends of Heroes: Trails in the Sky has a very similar reason for the respawns, though in that game there's the added extra of the monsters dropping gem-loot should you need to top any of those up as well.
 
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Yep, it's decently done.
In contrary to Technomancer there aren't mobs waiting on crossings or choke points that you have to visit often. As others said it's because there's fast travel and normally between a travel point and your point of interest there aren't any respawning mobs.

Perhaps @joxer; will admit that respwans are not always the epitome of evil… who am I kidding, of course he'll find another explanation or excuse. ;)

Also a fitting comment from reddit:
The Real Story
I honestly think the real story in this game is in the side missions. Sure the whole malicore story is good, but when you get to learn all about the other factions and brings balance to the island. That's a great story.
 
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Yea the side stories are awesome and the quests are very well done. I can't imagine grinding away at an arena, seems pointless beyond getting the champion title, and I would only do that if it was related to a quest (which it can be in games) or as a way to get practice.

People will always find a way to very purposely break games IMO. If that is what they enjoy then that's great but complaining about it afterwards doesn't make sense. Like people who say the game is too easy who also cheat, edit the game, and otherwise go out of their way to unbalance the game.

Game was well balanced and enjoyable for me at least. I only hope it does well enough so they can make more games as I am rapidly becoming a fan of Spiders as a developer. Which is good as lot of my favorite devs have fallen of the pedestal and rolled off the cliff.
 
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Game was well balanced and enjoyable for me at least.
I'm playing a "mage" on normal difficulty with with maxed Willpower and Mental Power, and maxed mage skill trees. (Not in parallel, but going for Storm spell asap.)
When fighting mobs I just run just into them, cast the storm spell followed by spamming Shadow burst. When mana is depleted, in most cases all but 1 or 2 creatures are dead. I let my companions kill them or wait a bit until mana is restored and cast a few Shadow bursts. I never used a secondary weapon and don't bother having maxed out gear.
You just have to make sure that fury is filled after a battle so you can start your next one with Storm again. If it's not filled I start with some Stasis and/or Shadow burst until it is filled.
Playing like this fighting mobs is very easy.

When fighting bosses it's a little more difficult as you I can't make good use of the Storm spell. Here I need some mana potions and it might even happen that I get killed if I failed to dodge and/or was too reluctant to heal myself.

So with this really simple strategy you need to play on hard difficulty at least.
 
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Perhaps @joxer; will admit that respwans are not always the epitome of evil… who am I kidding, of course he'll find another explanation or excuse. ;)
You do remember me stating the game can't be 10/10 because of certain design crimes? I mentioned too many "wait for nighttime" occurences as one. Another is trashmob respawns. Note however that unlike Dragon Dogma and DA:Bears, respawns do not instantly appear thus the crime in Greedfall doesn't deserve the capital punishment. :)
I'm playing a "mage" on normal difficulty with with maxed Willpower and Mental Power, and maxed mage skill trees. (Not in parallel, but going for Storm spell asap.)

So with this really simple strategy you need to play on hard difficulty at least.
That and tons of mana pots = win.
However instead of tons of mana pots get some ammo instead and invest 4 points in the pistols tree (you don't need the rifle step, those are too slow just as 2H melee) keep the healer spells and ditch the magic missile. Expert made easy. ;)

About arena XP grind I have no idea why are some people doing it. mmo and nintendo gameboy audience?
Regular sidequesting playthrough will get you to level 37 which is more than enough for everything while soft level cap is 45 - after 45 you don't get any more points. There is no level based achievement and a couple of talent points more don't make any difference thus I can only suspect certain players were previously brainwashed into delusion that unpaid repetitive job is gaming.
 
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I'm playing a "mage" on normal difficulty with with maxed Willpower and Mental Power, and maxed mage skill trees. (Not in parallel, but going for Storm spell asap.)
When fighting mobs I just run just into them, cast the storm spell followed by spamming Shadow burst. When mana is depleted, in most cases all but 1 or 2 creatures are dead. I let my companions kill them or wait a bit until mana is restored and cast a few Shadow bursts. I never used a secondary weapon and don't bother having maxed out gear.
You just have to make sure that fury is filled after a battle so you can start your next one with Storm again. If it's not filled I start with some Stasis and/or Shadow burst until it is filled.
Playing like this fighting mobs is very easy.

When fighting bosses it's a little more difficult as you I can't make good use of the Storm spell. Here I need some mana potions and it might even happen that I get killed if I failed to dodge and/or was too reluctant to heal myself.

So with this really simple strategy you need to play on hard difficulty at least.
I've experimented with all the different styles, and this approach is probably the easiest for most fights. As you point out, it's not amazing for boss fights, but it'll make short work of anything else. Using a pistol is probably the easiest way to handle most bosses.

That actually became something of an issue for me, as I didn't really change my approach, my spec or my gear for the last 20 hours of the game. Ah well. At least it was a fun build to be stuck with.
 
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I forgot a part of this sentence:
So with this really simple strategy you need to play on hard difficulty at least to have an actual challenge.
 
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I did a similar style @Morrandir; but I also wasn't really looking for a combat challenge as it was the story stuff that sucked me in.

I am playing a blade guardian now (one handed blades with only light magic) and even that is powerful enough to go from easy to normal combat.

I admit I loved being a mage the first time. Shadow Burst and Storm Wave (or whatever those two are) was pure bliss in fighting regular mods. Bosses took a lot of running around, potions, and slowly whittling down.

I rather liked being that powerful at the end but I had a rough time adapting to things and had not learned the mechanics very well at the start (for some reason I never used stasis till I was like level 20 and suddenly figured out how useful it was).

So I enjoyed the feeling of power at the end :)
 
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When you have four difficulty levels to choose from, and "Normal" is only the second level, you have to expect that it's probably going to be fairly easy.
 
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Um, as far as I know I'm the only one gimping the arena and it is only with one of my 4 concurrent game characters :)

I have a bunch of builds.
 
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