GreedFall: The Dying World

I went into The Dying World carrying genuine affection for the 2019 original, a B-tier RPG that punched above its weight on worldbuilding and companion writing. What Spiders has delivered here is a prequel that gets the soul of that game right in places and fumbles the execution in ways that sting precisely because the bones are good. The narrative premise is the most interesting thing about the whole package. You play as Vriden Gerr, a Teer Fradeean sage-in-training, a Doneigad, in the game's invented native tongue, who gets kidnapped by colonizers and hauled across the ocean to Gacane, the disease-ravaged Old Continent. Where the first GreedFall asked you to think about colonialism through the eyes of a well-meaning colonizer, this one puts you on the receiving end of that dehumanization. It is a genuinely clever inversion. The problem is that the main plot never quite capitalizes on it: the central villain spends most of the runtime offscreen, the first six hours drag before the world opens up, and the prequel structure boxes the story into a corner, nothing that happens here can be too consequential, because none of it echoes forward into the first game. Companion sidequests are where the writing breathes. Characters like Ludwig the smuggler, Safia, and Sybille have real personality, and their arcs reward players who take the time to bring them along on quests. One companion, Till, appears to have had his content cut before release, arriving half-finished in a way that is difficult to ignore if you pay attention. The combat overhaul is the most divisive decision Spiders has ever made. The original game's action-RPG system, clunky as it was, is entirely gone. In its place sits a real-time-with-pause tactical system with three configurable modes: Tactical Mode, where you direct all three party members manually; Focus Mode, where you control only Vriden Gerr and let companions act on their own AI; and a Hybrid between the two. The AI in autonomous mode is actually competent enough that Focus Mode works reasonably well, and the controller mapping is surprisingly clean. Ability variety across the 12 starting profiles, Protector, Hunter, Obsidian Warrior, Wild Fighter, Doneigad, Living Blade, Elite Shooter, and others, gives you genuine build variety on paper. The Talents system, spread across six skills including Diplomacy, Stealth, Alchemy, and Craftsmanship, lets you approach quests in meaningfully different ways: talk your way past a guard, sneak past, or craft a potion that changes the encounter entirely. That part is proper RPG design. The combat itself, though, runs into a problem of ability sameness: too many skills in a given tree produce similar projection and knockdown effects, and the pacing of early fights can feel flat before your hotbar fills out. The presentation is uneven. Environmental vistas on the Old Continent are frequently striking, with dense city districts that feel lived-in. Character models and facial animations are another story, and the voice acting leans on a mishmash of accents that undercuts the otherwise solid worldbuilding. Performance at launch was rough, motion blur, stuttering on camera pans, occasional crashes, and while patches have addressed some of this, the game still carries the marks of a studio that was under significant financial and organizational pressure during development. The context matters: Nacon filed for insolvency weeks before the 1.0 release, and reports of layoffs and deteriorating conditions at Spiders preceded launch. That context does not excuse a half-finished companion arc or the technical shakiness, but it does explain it. For players who loved the first game's vibe and can make peace with a slower, more tactical combat loop, there is a real RPG here, one with a fascinating world, choices that carry faction weight, and enough companion charm to pull you through the weaker stretches. For fans hoping Spiders would refine and sharpen what made the original tick, this is a more complicated ask. Approach it as you would a Eurojank cult classic in progress: patient, forgiving, curious about the lore.

Monika · Scout Team

RPGs

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