Greedfall is a kind of underrated video games that punched nicely above its weight with some extraordinarily distinctive worldbuilding that actually made it stand aside. After going hands-on with Greedfall 2: The Dying World, I’m actually keen to leap again into the weird and magical island of Teer Fradee, which looks as if it’ll be retaining all of its great weirdness, whereas additionally making a serious pivot within the gameplay division. Enjoying as a supernaturally gifted native belonging to the Yecht Fradi tribe, I acquired the prospect to satisfy some attention-grabbing characters, discover the labyrinthine woods I referred to as residence, make some extraordinarily questionable story choices, and most significantly, take the all-new fight system for a spin. Even on this extraordinarily early state, I see a number of potential on this audacious and unabashedly eccentric followup.
Developer Spiders has by no means been shy about its BioWare influences, however whereas 2019’s Greedfall actually pulled off some distinctive worldbuilding and characters, its fight left one thing to be desired. The sequel hopes to appropriate this shortcoming by putting off the easy hack-and-slash bouts present in its predecessor and changing them with semi-real-time strategic clashes that really feel very paying homage to Dragon Age: Origins. Now you’ll be pausing the battle, assessing the sector, and queuing up a set of actions for every of your characters earlier than permitting the circulation of time once more and watching your machinations unfold. This similarity to Dragon Age isn’t unintended, because the studio particularly cited Origins as a beloved sport it is hoping to emulate with this slower, extra tactical fight model.
The early alpha construct I performed undoubtedly nonetheless had its wrinkles, however I might already see the imaginative and prescient for this pivot, which strikes it away from the crowded area of fast-paced third-person motion video games and offers it a way more distinctive, old-school really feel. The role-based skills you’ll unlock and unleash in your enemies do issues like cowl an space of the battlefield in immobilizing, toxic bramble like some type of witchy druid, or allow you to leap into shut vary with a melee-based tank character to deal heavy injury, and every has its personal cooldown so that you can juggle whereas planning your subsequent set of strikes. Meticulously poring over varied stat listings and skill results appealed to the spreadsheet-loving RPG nerd inside me, and the novelty of swapping between characters made me really feel like a commander issuing orders to my subordinates from on excessive. It’s been a minute since I performed a sport that made use of this kind of fight, and it scratched an historical itch I didn’t know I nonetheless had.
Toggling between all of the characters in my celebration additionally helped me higher perceive how every of them labored and differed of their preventing kinds, and the way they might show helpful whereas out exploring the world. For instance, studying that certainly one of my celebration members had a eager eye for monitoring animals by means of the wild and was adept at disarming traps and selecting locks led me to favor them whereas operating across the woods. One among my different allies, however, was largely simply good at thwacking enemies into pulp with a hammer the scale of a kid, so I made certain to toggle over to her at the start of every skirmish. That’s one thing that the primary sport might have benefitted from, since enjoying as simply De Sardet might get stale in an RPG that lasts dozens of hours and has an entire lot of preventing. Not solely does this new system inject some selection into the combo, but it surely additionally helped me perceive the characters higher and every of their explicit quirks, strengths, and shortcomings.
Fortunately, I received’t have to attend lengthy to play extra Greedfall 2, which is slated to hit early entry later this 12 months. Right here’s hoping they’re capable of comply with within the footsteps of Baldur’s Gate 3, and switch this formidable sequel into one thing actually particular.
Travis Northup is a author for IGN. You may comply with him on Twitter @TieGuyTravis and skim his video games protection right here.