Developer Spiders has been consistently plugging away in the action RPG genre for a good many years now. The influence of BioWare’s Mass Effect can clearly be seen in most of their games, with a heavy focus on exploration, character-driven storytelling, choice-based gameplay and hack and slash action in which you’re usually backed up by a squad of companions.
It’s a formula that still works incredibly well today, especially in talented hands. Now, while BioWare’s games have become more action-oriented in the last couple of years, with the RPG side of things feeling like they’ve taken a step back, Spiders has managed to remain true to that Mass Effect formula almost consistently with each successive action RPG.
Which makes 2026’s Greedfall 2 The Dying World a significant outlier in their RPG oeuvre.
Returning to the World of Greedfall
Greedfall 2 The Dying World is a prequel to 2019’s Greedfall. Greedfall 2 expands upon the lore and world setting of the first game by pulling us into an adventure that expands across the Old Continent and locations only mentioned in the first.
Set a couple of years before the events of the first game, the once island paradise of Teer Fradee is where our quest will begin as you start on your journey to become your tribes new sage.
But the colonisers from the Old Continent of Gacane have already set up shop on your island and begun to desecrate its natural beauty in pursuit of wealth and a cure for a mysterious plague sweeping through their homelands. Just as your journey begins, you’re captured and shipped off to the Old World and its dark mysteries.
A Story Rooted in Colonial Conflict
Greedfall 2 continues it’s 17th Century inspired tale by diving back into the Golden Age of exploration, an age mired in the horrors of colonisation, racism and rampant, ecological greed. The game, while not explicitly graphic, doesn’t shy away from those horrors either.
Racism, supremacy, ecological pollution and the annexation of a land that isn’t theirs are just some of the situations you’ll encounter before the game expands its horizons to the political intrigue of Gacane that threatens everyone. And it’s a story well worth exploring, even though its messaging is hardly subtle.
Along your journey,, you’ll build up the usual assortment of scoundrels and ne’er-do-wells to support you. They have their own personalities and Faction alignments which can open or close doors for you thus making progression easier or harder. And, if you try hard enough, there may just be a little romance in your future, too!
Choices and Consequences
Where the story goes, in some sense, relies as well upon your choices. What you do in the world matters to its various factions and your comrades and can make the difference between having to combat or stealth your way through an area to been allowed to explore it. And, of course, what you choose determines your companions relationship with you. There’s no real right or wrong path though, as much as it about what your end goal is.
There’s a lot of dialogue in this game for you both to listen to and read. The islanders of Teer Fradee have their own language and, when not engaging with foreigners, speak in it almost exclusively so be prepared to engage in lengthy sessions of subtitle reading.
Classic CRPG Mechanics
What makes Greedfall 2 so different from Spiders previous RPG’s is that it takes a major step back and goes full CRPG with the mechanics. Think Neverwinter Nights, Knights of The Old Republic and Dragon Age and you’ll have a spot-on idea of how this prequel plays.
Everything you’ve come to expect from the action RPG genre is still here and it’s all driven by virtual dice rolls. There are various skill, ability and stat trees to pay attention to. And what you put your points into determine the strength of your dice rolls when performing actions such as disarming traps, searching locations or trying to intimidate someone in a conversation.
Just about every action you take gives you XP and since enemies can, but don’t always, respawn, you’re going to want to maximise every XP gain chance to level up, especially since you’re not locked out of opening up the other character classes after you’ve chosen your main class at the basic character creation screen.
Classes, Skills and Combat
These classes determine your combat style, from offense to healing to ranged, and the skills you’re going to have available to use. Each class also has a Stance that you have to take into account as they come with pros and cons to each. One, for instance, let’s you deal more damage in combat at the expense of taking more damage as well. There’s a lot to consider where combat and role play is concerned.
There are four gameplay styles available for combat. Tactical is the full, micro-managing experience where you have full access to camera control, full tactical pause control to issue orders and your party members operate with basic AI and need to be ordered on what moves to make outside of auto-attacking. This requires you to pay full attention to what’s happening onscreen or you’ll be filling up that body bag real quick.
The Hybrid mode takes some control out of your hands, from both camera and tactical pause options, but will still need you to manage your party members. Focused mode focuses solely on your character with limited camera and pause control while the rest of the party gets full AI control.
For my money none of these options gave me the finesse I was looking for. But the fourth, Custom mode, did, which let me customise the experience to my liking. I setup full AI control on the rest of my party with full camera and tactical controls enabled. This, I found, worked out best and gave me the option to micromanage without really needing to.
It was rare that I had to intervene this way with the rest of the parties actions and it made a great change to the amount of wipes I’d been suffering till then.
And if you’re really struggling you can reduce enemy damage or, if worse comes to worse, enable God mode.
Challenge and Exploration
As with games like Neverwinter Nights, Greedfall 2 provides a pretty stiff combat challenge, especially if you don’t level up and manage your parties gear and skills. That old Bioware motif of been at exactly the right level for each of the games challenges seems to be the mantra here as well. But you will also find your party of four getting mobbed and outgunned regularly so you always need to be on your toes with every combat encounter.
Combat may play a big role in the game, but Spiders have tried to give you multiple options to resolve a situation, whether it’s through diplomacy, doing side jobs for others or even some basic stealth gameplay. The stealth system is really bare-bones here and works well enough for what it is, i.e, crouching down and hiding in bushes. Sadly you can’t stealth kill enemies and engaging in combat will bring everyone in the immediate area running to you.
Crafting and Progression
Rounding it out is a crafting system that lets you create new items and customise, recycle or upgrade your weapons with. There’s tons of material to be collected in the world and from the liberally spaced treasure chests.
Visual Style and Technical Issues
Visually, Greedfall 2 continues the same, striking 17th Century European art style that gives the games visuals a very specific, painting inspired look and atmosphere.
That said, this wouldn’t be a Spiders game without some jank. None of it is game breaking mind you, but it is noticeable. While the environment design and character models look great, some of the animations can look a bit wonky, specifically the main running animation for your character. And I noticed some small issues with animation for cloth that had it deforming incorrectly or sticking in weird poses.
There’s some small errors here and there in the subtitles, most notably in the form of missing words and, at times, the journal doesn’t always give the correct descriptions of what I’ve achieved or what to do next. And sometimes quest markers don’t show up on the map even when tracked through the journal.
Default character running speed could be faster and there’s a bit of a tank feel to the way you move. The controller works fine enough in combat, but I can’t shake the feeling that it was really designed with a keyboard and mouse in mind.
Final Thoughts
Thankfully, these small issues don’t change just how much I enjoyed the game. The more I played Greedfall 2, the more I loved it. And no small amount of that is due to how much it made me feel like I was playing Neverwinter Nights all over again. Which made me realise just how much I’d missed that classical gameplay style. That Greedfall 2 made me feel like that all over again about classic CRPG gameplay is no small praise indeed.
The change over to tactics based gameplay may put some fans of the original off of it, but change can be good. And in this case, it is. Greedfall 2 is a deeper, more immersive RPG experience that I couldn’t stop playing.
GreedFall 2 The Dying World Your Journey Begins
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The game was provided to us for the express purpose of reviewing.
