Greedfall - First Reviews and Impressions

This is not a pirate-game. There's one sailor faction in the game - the Nauts.
One of your party members belongs to them ... and there are enough hats in the game for all tastes

joxer said:

Again playing a brand new game in insane difficulty? I really don't see a point, normal is challenging enough.

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Not everyone is trying to rush through their game . Some people actually enjoy challenge, and Normal difficulty is pretty easy imo.

joxer said:

You'll never return to Serene. So your first talent point should be invested into lockpicking.

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I disagree. There aren't many locked chests in Serene and none of them contain anything unique. Plus if you want to cheese you can just use Kurt's armor to open those chests anyways. I played through the prologue twice. Took lockpicking the first time and science the second time. I had more fun with science.

It's more fun to roleplay instead of taking a skill because of FOMO.

crpgnut said:

Do you have to wear the goofy-ass hats? How much of the game is pirate-themed, all of it? I'm pirated out. Other than that WGD's shots look pretty decent. Not sure if I want a tiny rpg though. 48 hours is really small for a supposedly open-world game, should call it open-county. However, I typically explore every nook and cranny and I know Joxer doesn't. It must hit a big sale too. Only because it's not my type. If I was a party-based rpg player, I'd own this already.

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You want to keep the preorder goofy-ass hat as you won't find any helmet with that bonus. You don't want to put hats on your companions' heads, all are weak in combat.
Forget pirates. No pirates.
48 hours for AA game is not small.
I did turn every stone. Thought I did. But couldn't find 3 scrolls somehow.
Said, you can't romance all people at the same time. Makes the game everyone's type except mine, yet I love it.

crpgnut said:

Do you control the other party members or do they do their own thing? If I don't have to control them, then I may very well get this now. It looks pretty decent. Oops, is there magic or just alchemy? Nvm on magic, I just missed the vid on it. Quite a little bit of magic, so I'm gonna buy it even though I hate pirate talking, ships, ship combat, and the whole clothing armor style of the game.

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They do their AI thing.
There is magic and there is alchemy. Separate.
There is no ship fights, no pirate talks and no pirates.
I wonder would you hate the looks of clothes & armor if you lived in middleages. It's not corsets!

JDR13 said:

Not everyone is trying to rush through their game . Some people actually enjoy challenge, and Normal difficulty is pretty easy imo.

I disagree. There aren't many locked chests in Serene and none of them contain anything unique. Plus if you want to cheese you can just use Kurt's armor to open those chests anyways. I played through the prologue twice. Took lockpicking the first time and science the second time. I had more fun with science.

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Normal is easy and you played twice through and no FOMO… *sigh*
IIRC you can't wear initial Kurt's armor with just any character. It requires something irrelevant to, let's say, a mage. Sorry, can't be sure as I sold that rubbish armor soon after. Hell lemme restart and screenshot it.

EDIT:
You were right. There is no STR or AGI requirement I have mixed it with some later ones.



So yes, you don't need to take lockpicking. I admit mistake. But you still want lockpicking maxed asap. I mean two points as your third one will come from whatever you're wearing. As you can only blacksmith lockpicking +1 on armors' strap. Of course would be wise earlygame to have spare sets with vigor +1 and science +1. Both science of 1 and vigor of 2 are needed later in the game so with prepared outfits you don't have to backtrack often.

Please someone open hints thread.

Hmmm, game supposedly has skill checks but they're not real. There is a very early quest where you supposedly have a 50% chance of succeeding with a charisma check. I saved just before this and chose that dialog 7 times and never had a success. The only way you avoid a fight is if you pick a certain skill as your first talent point; or at least it seems that way. I hate it when games offer fake chances…

Bought it when I saw both alchemy and magic as that means a basic mage build and that's a biggie for me. Also, I'm waiting for updates for two of my survival games (SCUM and Crossworlds: Escape).

Well, tried two more times and passed that check, so my opinion goes up quite a bit. I guess I just suck at dice rolls, lol! Now, I'm going to play it one last time to see if I get a failure or a pass. I already know the outcomes make a bit of difference which is super cool.

P.S. I'm playing on easy. I have zero interest in the "challenge" of a game. If I want that I play something that takes real brains, but since the zombies ate mine long ago, I don't even do that anymore

Maybe it is like king bounty where they precompute results (well use a random seed) so you can't simply reload and try again - you will always get same results ???

crpgnut said:

Hmmm, game supposedly has skill checks but they're not real. There is a very early quest where you supposedly have a 50% chance of succeeding with a charisma check. I saved just before this and chose that dialog 7 times and never had a success. The only way you avoid a fight is if you pick a certain skill as your first talent point; or at least it seems that way. I hate it when games offer fake chances…

Bought it when I saw both alchemy and magic as that means a basic mage build and that's a biggie for me. Also, I'm waiting for updates for two of my survival games (SCUM and Crossworlds: Escape).

Well, tried two more times and passed that check, so my opinion goes up quite a bit. I guess I just suck at dice rolls, lol! Now, I'm going to play it one last time to see if I get a failure or a pass. I already know the outcomes make a bit of difference which is super cool.

P.S. I'm playing on easy. I have zero interest in the "challenge" of a game. If I want that I play something that takes real brains, but since the zombies ate mine long ago, I don't even do that anymore

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Maybe you should start playing visual novels. I hear those are pretty easy.

Charisma is the only talent that's percentage-based. Everything else is a hard skill check. Level 1-2-3

Does Hunie Pop count? Fun game! One thing I have learned is that's there is a bunch of treasure that doesn't show up with the golden glow. You need to explore those nooks and crannies. For instance, when you get ambushed look around those sites. I've found a couple stashes of 100 gold just wandering around. Not telling where, that'd be a spoiler

Damn but this game is freaking amazing! I haven't had this much fun with a game ... well I don't know how long. I can't keep away. Already played more hours in a single setting than I have in years. The story and characters are wicked engaging and the whole island is so fun to explore.

This game gets better once you reach the island. Old Serene was kind of a slog, and I bet that hurt reviews as many reviewers never play much of these games.

I agree the male main character voice is petulant and whiny. I restarted as female and find the female voice to be more in-charge and confident sounding. The orange glow on items is pretty distracting. Sap on trees look like torches! I wish the companions looked more different from each other. It gets confusing. Otherwise really enjoying this game.

Between sap on trees torches and irritating sonar from ME2 brought back to Dragon Age Hinterlands to temporarily "torch" everything, I'd take Greedfall's torches any day.
In case I didn't say it, maybe I did, male voice is not whiny.

Can agree on your other points.

You guys are enjoying it a lot more than I am. I find it to be a poor man's NWN2 or Dragon Age. The party members in BG2, NWN, NWN2 and Dragon Age blow away these little mannequins that follow you around in this game. I figure if these dudes are following me around, they should be talking to one another and my character constantly. Instead, they normally only talk during a quest. I'd drop these guys for Allistair and Neeshka any day.

I'm hoping that the game gets more interesting once you leave town. New Town seems just as dull as Old Town was. The quests are mostly running back and forth talking to people with an occasional fight. Loot needs to be much more gathered. Way less chests but with much more inside each one. Instead of 500 chests with 2 crafting items in each, lets go with 25 chests with decent loot. Then hide 5 chests with really good loot in out of the way locations. I say this as a guy with maxed Intuition. I'm playing on easy, so I can get by with a level one attack skill.

I'm hoping the game really picks up once I leave the cities and explore the outdoors.

Don't get your hopes up for any great exploration. That's not the game's strong point. It's decent, but limited. I hate not being able to jump, climb, or swim except for a few context-specific spots.

I'm not a big fan the loot system either. Too much stuff just randomly scattered about, and no one blinks an eye when you're looting crates right in front of them. Also not a fan of the orange glow myself, but it's sort of necessary here due to how many crates, barrels, etc, are copy & pasted everywhere.

As far as the companions go, I actually like that there's not a ton of dialogue. To be honest, I feel like some games, i.e. Dragon Age, have a little too much talky talk.

joxer said:

We need a hints thread.

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Can't you start one in the General RPG section?

I'm hoping someone from Watch will do a proper review on this - I keep hearing it's great but no details on what makes it so fun

purpleblob said:

I keep hearing it's great but no details on what makes it so fun

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Really difficult to answer. I could easily list nomerous things that I don't like.

I guess I'm just a sucker for this type of game. I haven't played anything since 3 months as there's very little that fits my taste. But if I had to say which parts are above average I guess it would only be the general setting (including factions), plot presentation, and C&C. Of course the story of a civilized culture invading uncharted lands inhabited by indigenous natives is all but new. But it's in fact more complex that that (won't spoil anything) and being 15 hours in I really want to know how it unfolds.
I think the companions are average. Every single one of them is interesting, but they aren't fleshed out that much. As mentioned there's hardly any conversation besides quests, and quite quickly they go from total stranger to best friends with De Sardet by just solving their companion quests. Which plotwise again are quite good.
@crpgnut; said that the game is a poor man's NWN or Dragon Age. Of course it is! I don't have numbers but when you compared the budgets I bet that Greedfall's is tiny. Give Spiders an EA- or Ubisoft-like budget and imho their next game would blow away the Dragon Age series (except the first one perhaps).
You can see the same when you look and the gameworld. As mentioned here it seems quite lifeless. There isn't much going on. In all of the four big towns there's each a single same looking tavern with a handful of silent guys that give you a one-liner when you try to talk to them. Same goes for the cities itself. No buzzing marketplace, only a few NPCs, no mini-games (dice, cards,...). Also outside the cities nothing much is happening besides occasional fights.

I guess Spider's general strategy is to take it slowly. They iterate very little with each game. I remember an interview with Björn Pankratz from Piranha Bytes who said that as a medium developer they just can't afford to have a failed game. They'd go out of business. I guess Spider's is going the same way. They know that their games have a small fan base and if they develop a similar game they'll have the expenses covered plus a little more to make the next game a little bigger.
Perhaps Greedfall could give them a boost as it seems to be a lot more popular than the previous games.

I like it that all side-quests and all companion-quests are adding to the overall narrative. There are no quests like fetch me 20 mushrooms, because I need them for the next meal.
I recommend to do all companion-quests - only then you will understand what is really going on on the Island.

How big is the game world and what is density of points of interest? Is it comparable to Gothic 1 and 2? Does the world have ... how to say ... "hand crafted" feel? Or rather generic?

Seems Greedfall is 5th at UK sales charts (1st Borderlands and 2nd Gears). So I guess its doing quite well for low budget game. Which is only assumption on my side as Im just parroting what others said, I did not see any real info about budget.

Last week #1 UK sales was the taxfree cassino sim NBA 2K.

How the world is big… I'd say it's of DA:Origins size.
Trashmobs and boxes net you random loot. Chests contents are handplaced while bosses and minibosses most of the time automatically add the handplaced loot in your inventory plus you can get separately a random trinket from their corpse (usually a few coins).
Unique (legendary) items are not possible to get as random loot. those are either handplaced or are a quest reward. For example an unique scythe you can pick up only form a certain altar.

Andrew23 said:

Which is only assumption on my side as Im just parroting what others said, I did not see any real info about budget.

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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.

I really like the quests. This give the best rewards - not coin or items but information. The quests pull you in and are not simple fetch quests. The story is so rich and complex you crave to know more - and seems like the deeper I dig the more I find. Probably the first game ever where even when I don't like the companion I do their quests. There have been so many games where I skipped a companion and their quests. But I am finding in this game their story is interwoven with your own and what is going on in the world. It also fits - as a diplomat it makes sense for me to get to know people I may not like (Aphra is the only companion I really dislike and started doing her quests last as I also don't care much for the Bridge Alliance either).

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.

The world is beautifully crafted with many landscapes and settings far more beautiful than anything I saw in Skyrim or DA games. Certainly having more random creatures, places, people out and about adds life to the game but overall I was content with what they did with their resources. A little more would be nice but it wasn't a detriment to me.

Companions are great and I thought they had a lot of depth. I didn't get that comment about them being shallow. Want a shallow companion? Try some of the ones in Skyrim. These companions all have their motives, their stories, and their personalities. I would have liked more story and dialogue - I always crave as much as I can with companions - but I found they had enough to give them life and personality and meaning. Almost on par with FO4 companions.

Anyhow to me the things that make this game shine, for me personally, is the setting and atmosphere (unique to me and just love the whole ambience and look of the game), the story - it is deep and filled with twists and turns, the companions, the quests and all the choices and options, the tone - its a serious game with some dark aspects that are intense but not over done, and the character building.

My main nick-picks are:

- Reused NPC faces. It can't take that much time to make a new NPC face. I saw one old man used like 5 times in quests/merchant and one quest person used twice who was identical except for name.
- The interior general homes. Two rooms - a single downstairs and upstairs and not even a door to suggest other rooms. Give at least 4 - kitchen/dining, storage/study, bedroom/bath, living room/sitting room. Just bugged me.
- Layout of a few buildings like Coin Guard. So many halls and doors. Can be a bit of a maze.
- Clarity on key dialogue lines for romance. I admit this is a niche complaint but I was pissed I messed up my relationship because of a single innocuous dialogue tree with three choices with absolutely no indication of any sort that one of them was critical to a romance later on. 20 hours later into the game I learned, after I looked it up as I was wondering why the romance was taking so long, I had missed that one dialogue. I could understand if it was something obvious or even a subtle hint ... but it wasn't at all. Not a single clue it was important. I almost restarted but was too far ... so if I play again I will do it.

I admit it bugged me all weekend as I live for romances and companion relationships and it was a key factor I was looking forward to in the game. Alas Fee De Sadre will be a bachelor.

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.