Studio Spiders brings us the GreedFall role-playing game, let's explore a new world
So far, we have received from Spiders Studio a number of role-playing games that have not won the attention of critics or the public, such as The Technomancer and Bound By Flame, but the company's 24 developers have shown with each new game that they continue to improve. Now they brought us the GreedFall role-playing game, was it another failed game or was the small team able to bring something big? Read on and find out.
GreedFall
The Story -
The game starts with designing your character, male or female, with a number of interior design options. You are the nephews of the prince of the kingdom, who was sent to be governor of the new colony of the kingdom in a mysterious land recently discovered by all kingdoms and containing magic and monsters. You accompany the prince to this new land as you choose your worldview according to your choices in the game - are you for the kingdoms that have come to conquer and settle in this new land or are you alongside the local tribes trying to survive and deal with the new invaders? Each mission and every action will define your relationship for each team and the fighters that accompany you. At the center of all these events, you are trying to find a cure for the plague that has hit the world and hurt you and your family.
The story of the game is not too complex and it is the story of the conquerors and natives we have seen thousands of times in films like "Pocahontas" and "Avatar", but at least the characters and things you do in the world are interesting enough to drive this plot, and the story has a lot of interesting history and background that concentrate on past occupiers and civilizations antiquities.
The Game World -
The game world is massive and varied, you will find yourself moving through very large areas that include forests, villages, mountains and rivers. The actual cities of the game are very diverse in their structure and they liven up resident life and tasks for you to complete.
The missions are the best part of the game, as in the best role-playing games - you meet all sorts of colorful and strange characters who give you missions and requests to advance your relationship with the groups they belong to and win you special prizes.
The thing I liked most about the missions of the game is freedom of choice, each task has several options to solve it, you can get a task that requires you to get something for a bartender to help you find a missing person, but instead you can go look for it yourself. Each task can be solved in one way or another, depending on your abilities, your choice and the approach you play and it makes the world of the game feel very alive and encouraged to try different game runs.
Fight and Games -
GreedFall's battle and gameplay are pretty basic. At the beginning of the game, you choose one of three character options - power, tactics or magic. Your fighter type does not determine your character by the end of the game but it does define its initial capabilities at the beginning of the game. The power capabilities give you higher endurance capability and your character can use huge weapons in both hands or in one hand, the tactics capabilities allow the use of a gun and sword with the ability to lay traps, and the magic abilities give you the ability to freeze your enemies on the spot and shoot magic missiles. The game allows you to choose different abilities and combine, which gives you the ability to create your own unique fighter - for example I concentrated mainly on tactical capabilities but the possibility of stopping the enemy in a very useful place so I invested in this ability too.
You have the opportunity after several times that you have upgraded to improve your physical abilities such as health, energy, power and magic energy, and after another level or two you can learn new abilities that allow you to deal with the open world like the ability to identify special resources in the field, improving charisma to convince Merchants and characters in the story, learning chemistry that would blow up building walls and the ability to break into locks (a very useful ability I would recommend learning at the beginning of the game).
Of course, as with any role-playing game, you can purchase and find different weapons, costumes, potions, and various solutions to improve your character data, but they also give you the opportunity to overcome the tasks of the game, as I mentioned earlier.
But in the end, after we get all kinds of items and weapons, we have to go into battle and the battle of GreedFall is nice. You and your group fight different monsters with a light, special hit, kick, braking and dodging, the control a bit stiff (because of the animation), but the battle mechanics are pretty basic and you have the option, like Dragon Age games, to stop time and choose your next action.
Greefall's gameplay and battle do the job in this role-playing game and in my opinion are fun enough and include enough options to not bore anyone. Just a pity the monsters cluster could have been a bit more diverse.
The Graphics -
The graphics are probably the most prominent indicator of the game's budget and developer team size.
It's not that Greenfall's graphics are shocking, there are many very beautiful and very impressive moments like the port city at the beginning of the game and some of its natural areas, but the effects (like shading), physics, animation and textures look pretty cheap and weak.
What I do have to point out is that even though, the game is still awful to watch and players who come to the game with the knowledge of what to expect will not be disappointed by the graphics and even ignore its lack of quality because it is still a good role-playing game and interesting world. In addition, well done to developers who have managed to make the transition between certain areas of the game feel very natural without us looking at a loading screen half the time.
The Sound -
The sound of the game also sadly reflects its budget. The music is usually quite common and sometimes even non-existent, and although most of the speakers do a pretty good job of their dialogues, sometimes the portrayals in some characters sound pretty stiff. Which is why the main spokespeople do a good job and I still came across some really good dubbing that brought a lot of emotion to the story.
The 2 most obvious problems to the eye and ear in terms of sound are the problem of matching the lips of the recurring characters and voices. When you talk to passersby, you will notice that they usually have 4-6 voices being spoken and they will often repeat the same things everyone says "Your Majesty," "I am so tired" and the like, and while they say these phrases their lips do not move. Accordingly, something that unfortunately also happens in the main characters with whom you have full dialogues about the story, the lips move and do not match the dialogue.
Something that I can also overlook if focusing on the game's own text rather than the on-screen conversation but as I mentioned, this is one of the things that a small studio can expect.
To Conclusion -
Although Spiders Studio is still quite small and low budget, the team has outdone itself with GreedFall.
It is true that sound and graphics are not yet on the same level as other larger role-playing games, but the game world, gameplay and plot provide a great gaming experience for fans of the genre to enjoy. In addition, it is a game that complements the shortcomings left by Dragon Age games in our game library.
GamePlay:
Source: Here
(Translated from Hebrew to English by ME).
The original author is: Kobi Rozental