Greedfall: The Dying World

In December 2025, developer Spiders announced that they were changing the name of Greedfall 2: The Dying World to Greedfall: The Dying World (the number 2 was removed), as they felt that the game was not a direct sequel. At first, this seemed like a somewhat mysterious decision, but after playing Greedfall: The Dying World, it makes perfect sense, as it is a different game in several ways compared to the original from 2019.

Narratively, Greedfall: The Dying World is a prequel to the first game. It takes place three years earlier, and you take on the role of a native of the Teer Fradee tribe, a tribe that lives peacefully in harmony with nature. Without giving too much away, I can say that you take on the role of a "Doneigad", which is a kind of spiritual leader or spiritual protector. Your small village is dangerously close to where colonists from another world (our world) have settled, and their gold mine is polluting the waterways, making the villagers sick from eating the fish, and the colonists are practically emptying the forests of animals with their disgusting traps, meaning confrontation is almost inevitable.

Greedfall: The Dying World is structured like an old-school role-playing game and clearly draws inspiration from Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age: Origins, which is certainly not a bad thing. It all takes place in a fantastic and adventurous world based on something reminiscent of Europe and the Spanish Golden Age of the 16th and 17th centuries. It is not strictly an open world game, but is divided into large open zones where you can explore and discover your surroundings, collect weapons, clothing, potions, money, and lots of resources, and there is a relatively high degree of freedom to tackle the game's tasks as you wish.

It doesn't take long before you become acquainted with the brand new combat system, which has been completely redesigned compared to the first game. But before you get there, you must first create your character in a highly detailed character editor and then choose between 12 different character types/classes. There is everything from a Warlord, Healer, and Scout to an Elite Shooter, Hunter, and Protector, all of which, quite traditionally, have their own strengths and weaknesses and their own upgrade tree, where you can shape your character as you wish.

As mentioned, the combat system is very different from the first game, which was more action-oriented, while here in The Dying World it's much more tactical. It simply gives you more control over your party members, as it's built around the "pause-and-play" or "tactical pause" mechanic, which means that we are dealing with a real-time combat system, but which you can pause at any time to get an overview of the battlefield, issue orders to your party members, move them around, use potions, abilities, and other things, all of which are executed the moment you restart the game.

It's a slightly different, and also a little old-fashioned, way of approaching combat in a role-playing game in 2026, but old-school RPG fans will probably welcome it, as it's not something we see very often anymore. If you can't quite come to terms with this old-school mechanic, you can actually choose how tactical it all should be, based on three profiles: Tactical, Hybrid, and Focused. Tactical is, of course, the most tactical of them all and is the game's default setting, where you have full control over your party members, while Focused plays a bit more like the first game did, but you can still pause the game and then you have a few tactical options. Hybrid lies somewhere in between the two extremes.

I tried all three tactical profiles and found Tactical to be the most effective, but that's mainly because the real-time part of the combat system doesn't work nearly as well. The real-time battles are messy, clumsy, and imprecise, with the different characters standing on top of each other and striking left and right, and you lack feedback from your own character (you can switch between all your characters during battles), as it's difficult to tell if you are actually hitting anyone or anything in all the chaos. I'm not at all sold on this part of the combat system, and it's a shame that more or less half of the combat system doesn't really work.

Greedfall: The Dying World is a typical AA game, as it's sometimes obvious that it was made by a slightly smaller team. In addition to subtitles that don't always match what is being said and a few spelling mistakes in the help texts, I also experienced NPCs moonwalking when they got stuck in the environment and fading away before your eyes if you move at a normal walking pace. The artificial intelligence of the NPCs is flawed, as a guard can stand on top of one of his dead colleagues without reacting to it, which completely waters down the game's stealth sequences. At one point I suddenly found myself missing a party member, who turned out to be stuck on a ladder that he couldn't figure out how to climb. There are several examples of these little things that may not directly ruin the game, but they are irritating.

The visual aspect of Greedfall: The Dying World is very divided, in the sense that the aesthetic part is really well done. This applies to everything from the truly beautiful and well-designed costumes worn by the natives to a truly atmospheric, exciting, and well-designed game world. There is everything from lush forests and ruins in the desert to large, bustling fishing villages by the sea and veritable metropolises. It's a real pleasure to explore this exciting world, as long as you can avoid too many battles.

The technical aspect is somewhat different. Here, you have two different graphics settings to choose from: "Favour graphic quality" and "Favour frame rate" and unlike many other games, there is a surprisingly big difference between the two. We tested the game on PlayStation 5 Pro, and it was very clear that the surroundings in particular took a big visual hit when we ran the game in "Favour frame rate" mode. Everything simply became blurry to look at, details in the surroundings disappeared, the leaves on the trees clumped together into small blobs, and it was as if you were seeing everything through a pair of greasy glasses. In "Favour graphic quality", everything was much sharper, but the frame rate was lower and, from what I could see with the naked eye, was around 30 fps and sometimes lower. I ended up playing in "Favour graphic quality" because I found it difficult to live with the grainy look now that I had seen how sharp it could look, so I had to live with 30 fps.

The sound is quite excellent, with lovely sound effects, voice actors who do a good job, and both English and the natives' own language are spoken throughout, which helps to enhance the authenticity. The in-game soundtrack is really well put together, and the game has one of the most beautiful title melodies we've heard in a long time. You can hear it in the trailer at the bottom of this review.

I don't want to reveal too much, so this review only scratches the surface of Greedfall: The Dying World, as this is a big game we're dealing with here, and you know that when the tutorial/prologue alone takes 3-4 hours to complete. This game is aimed at the more old-school role-players out there, and if you remember and loved Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age: Origins, then you'll probably like Greedfall: The Dying World. However, the game never really grabbed me. I really loved the beautiful world, which drew me in time-and-time-again, but it was difficult to get started (a boring tutorial of 3+ hours is simply too much) and, basically, only half of the combat system really works.

If you've been looking forward to Greedfall: The Dying World, then I think you should give it a shot. I'm annoyed that the real-time part of the combat system is as clunky as it is, because it's really the only thing that really holds the game back, but unfortunately, that's a big part of an action role-playing game.