GreedFall II: The Dying World seeks to take you back to the original title’s weird and gritty world with a new combat system and enhanced features. Read on to learn everything we know, our review of the early access version, and more.
Everything We Know About GreedFall II: The Dying World
GreedFall II: The Dying World Plot
GreedFall 2 is a prequel set three years before the original GreedFall. It tells the tale of a native Teer Fradeean that was captured from their homeland and transported back to the Old Continent, the lands that were never explored in the original. The continent is full of ‘renaigse,’ or foreigners, and you soon find yourself escaping their clutches and blending into the crowded but decaying cities, all in hopes of finding your way back home, as well as preventing your same unfortunate fate from happening to anyone else.
GreedFall II: The Dying World Gameplay
GreedFall 2 is an action-adventure RPG that iterates over the unique mechanics of the original. Explore the world through its treacherous mountains, rivers, forests and, and befriend companions in the cities to seek help and do quests. You may go about your adventure your own way, whether you wish to brute force situations, using your observation to solve mysterious/puzzles, or stealthing through enemies.
GreedFall II: The Dying World Release Date
GreedFall 2 launched in early access on September 24, 2024, for the PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Steam |
 PlayStation |
 Xbox |
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| $39.99 (Early Access) |
Wishlist only | Coming soon | |||
GreedFall II: The Dying World Review [Early Access]
Really Fell Off
Having played the original GreedFall, I was understandably quite giddy at the prospect of playing the sequel. As someone who enjoys getting his behind handed to him on a regular basis by playing markedly difficult games typically way beyond his skills, I looked forward to the beatdown (and hopefully eventual victory) I will experience with GreedFall II. And, of course, I was also in it for the very controversial story decisions I will inevitably make just for the fun of it.
That was until I saw the gameplay videos a few months before and realized that, in a curious and bold move by the developers, GreedFall II would be pulling off the contrasting decision made by the Dragon Age developers on Inquisition by turning it from an action RPG into a real-time tactical one. Alright, fine, I thought. Maybe they’ll do a good job with the change. I did enjoy Dragon Age Origins quite a lot, so maybe I’ll also find my money’s worth here.
I didn’t.
GreedFall II is quite a disappointment. In fact, it’s so much so that its problems can’t be summarized with just one or two sentences. It encompasses everything from confusing visuals, jarring voice overs, terribly clunky gameplay, and sometimes game-breaking bugs.
At least the hilariously wide berth provided to you in terms of doing whatever is still there.
Even so, freedom can only get you so far if everything else makes the game not worth sticking around for. It’s not even an issue that needs a deep dive into game mechanics and lore just to understand. The problems start before the game does, with its extremely lacking character customization feature that provides much less than the bare minimum of options to make a protagonist that looks slightly more distinct than a typical, non-interactable NPC walking around.
Like, I can definitely forgive audiovisual hiccups. We’re here to play a game, not to watch a movie, after all. But what can’t be overlooked is its gameplay. No, I’m not just talking about combat—it’s practically everything, really.
Exploration? A complete hassle. Stealth? For some reason you can still be spotted even while hiding within the bushes. Crafting? Well, if you didn’t invest in any points for it, then you can forget about that existing. Heck, you can’t even enjoy being an archer with amazing range all that often because you can’t engage enemies without getting close enough to smell their body odor.
But even that could be considered “just dandy” compared to the actual experience of participating in combat. In a word? It’s bad. Like, I would have to dedicate an entire section for most, and definitely not all of my complaints… which I did (read below). Just to give you an idea, though, its issues range from pathfinding problems, sluggish response times, tactical issues due to AI behavior, excessively sensitive controls, etc.
Honestly, I think that putting a $40.00 price tag on this “Early Access” release is stretching it. The actual enjoyment you can derive from a serious playthrough of GreedFall II lags way behind other titles that are selling for the same price. I do hope that the developers iron out its problems, though. It certainly has the potential to be another great game just like its predecessor. But for the moment, that dream is far from its reach.
Healthy Quest Variations
One of the most annoying aspects about most RPGs nowadays is that not a lot of creativity goes into designing their quests. For example, certain titles may only have objectives that can be condensed into elimination, fetch, and escort quests despite the diversity in their descriptions and execution. It’s a particularly common malady in MMOs due to the limited mechanics they can work with in exchange for their social features. It’s definitely not exclusive to that genre, though.
I was fully expecting GreedFall II: The Dying World to suffer from the same issues considering the less-than-stellar first impression its gameplay gave me during my first few hours at it. So, imagine my surprise when, as I kept trudging along the beaten paths of the world with my companions in tow, that the quests actually consisted of far more than just picking up herbs and beating the next few mobs senseless.
Those still exist, of course, but more often than not it also includes something to add flavor to what would otherwise be the same burger from the same family restaurant that you might frequent on the way home from work. For example, certain fetch quests also require you to craft them into items that require an investment into very specific character skills. Such quests can even be found on the main questline! Yes, that’s a thing. Fortunately, the quest often concludes before those parts, barring you from being walled from the rest of the game.
GreedFall II: The Dying World also makes full use of its stealth, charisma, and various other mechanics to present alternative ways of clearing objectives. It gives the entire game a layer of sophistication that creative players can exploit.
Voice Over Quality Is a Jarringly Mixed Bag
As someone who’s typically very supportive of non-English voice acting in games, the quality of the English voice over for GreedFall II: The Dying World is pretty good. It felt natural, gave all the necessary emotions, and didn’t feel like it was being run through people who have no idea what they were giving their voices for.
At least until you get to the parts where the characters speak with their native tongues which, as I understand it, count as fictional languages. It gets really, really awkward at those points and gives the impression that the voice actors are simply reading off of a script while trying to forcibly inject intonations just so it doesn’t sound monotone.
Clunky Gameplay. All of It.
Perhaps the most ridiculous and, quite frankly, disappointing aspect of GreedFall II: The Dying World is its gameplay. Yes, I’m not talking about just its combat. It’s the entire gameplay experience that’s all sorts of disappointing.
Let’s start with the much less obvious; exploration. The game has a semi-open world separated by the usual invisible walls and one-foot-high cliffs that your character usually can’t step over for fear of dislocating their knees. Hence, you’re forced to travel from one point to another by going through the map’s winding roads and confusing topography.
If you think that doesn’t sound bad, then you’re right. Normally, it isn’t. However, that’s not the case in GreedFall II for a few reasons. For one, your sprinting speed is unbearably slow. Even if being able to do so without being held back by a stamina bar means you can move marginally faster than walking speed practically forever, it’s still not enough to really make you feel like you’re actually "running." It’s more of a lively jog, really.
The second reason is due to all of the traps in the game. Perhaps the quantity is due to the developers attempting to make good use of the points you invested to learn how to disarm them reliably as compared to the far more useful skills you invest in otherwise such as alchemy for making potions. Either way, there’s far more traps in the game than is otherwise necessary.
Thirdly, it’s how engagements work in GreedFall II. Unlike most action RPGs (which is what the original GreedFall is) where you can run past monsters even if they are alerted of your presence, GreedFall II’s use of a real-time tactical combat system means that the moment enemies engage you, you’re forced into the game’s combat mode which doesn’t include a button to instantly run away. It’s all just a full course of distractions for anybody trying to get to a point that isn’t covered by its relatively sparse fast travel hubs.
It’s honestly only made worse by its terribly unintuitive map, which uses icons that are difficult to identify in any location that isn’t underground or anywhere else that isn’t being touched by the sun. Plus, your AI companions would sometimes get stuck on rocks or cliffs, perhaps worried about breaking their ankles at the half foot of obstacles they must face. Thankfully, the game does forcibly teleport them to you… after you’ve already put a hundred or so meters of distance between them and yourself.
Considering that I’m running out of words, let’s get to the most problematic part of GreedFall II’s gameplay: the combat. My, oh, my. Of all the things to mess with, it just had to be the combat that was so good in the first installment of the series. As mentioned above, unlike the original GreedFall’s action-adventure format where you can parry and dodge attacks and die in real-time from skill issues, GreedFall II instead uses a very, very unwieldy real-time tactical combat system similar to the Dragon Age games of old.
Unfortunately, it’s not a very good attempt at it. The combat is so full of technical oversights that it’s practically unenjoyable. Prevalent issues include characters simply ignoring your orders, tactics sometimes being utterly useless because the enemy AI simply latches onto specific targets instead of choosing them based on position, your own AI pathfinding getting messed up because there’s a slightly larger than normal rock in the way, orders being overridden the moment you so much as press an irrelevant key mid-execution, etc.
Oh, and it takes the companion AI roughly five years before they respond to your orders. I don’t know the specific time that has to elapse, but it’s too long for a genre that demands almost instantaneous responses from the team.
Please, GreedFall team. Fix the gameplay. As it stands, I don’t even think this game deserves to be released yet, especially considering how good the original one was.
Bugs Galore
As if GreedFall II’s gameplay being almost entirely terrible wasn’t bad enough, the game is also riddled with so many bugs that you’d be excused for calling the local exterminator just to make a lame joke. Some of the bugs I encountered include, as mentioned above, AI companions getting stuck on terrain, getting soft-locked in the combat system’s tactical view (you’ll have to forcibly close the game for this, chief), and sudden, seemingly random crashes.
There are also times when the game’s RAM usage suddenly spikes to incredible values, which makes me firmly believe that those who specified that 16GB of RAM is recommended (not minimum, mind you) must not be aware that most people play games with Chrome or Opera tabs open in the background (and sometimes even Wallpaper Engine and Discord).
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GreedFall II: The Dying World Product Information
 | |
| Title | GREEDFALL 2: THE DYING WORLD |
|---|---|
| Release Date | September 24, 2024 (Early Access) |
| Developer | Spiders |
| Publisher | Nacon |
| Supported Platforms | PC(Steam), PlayStation 5,>br>Xbox Series X|S |
| Genre | Action, RPG, Adventure |
| Number of Players | Single-Player(1) |
| Rating | PEGI 18 |
| Official Website | GreedFall 2 Official Website |
