GreedFall 2: The Dying World review – role-playing on the Old Continent

Nacon’s troubled prequel is finally ready for its full release on consoles and PC, as it attempts to live up to the lofty ambitions of the original game and its unusual setting.

Launching games in early access on Steam can be a double-edged sword. On the plus side, it helps nurture a community who’ll hopefully tell their friends to buy it on full release, while also giving developers a massive free play test. But on the negative side, players can get a deeply flawed first impression of a game that ordinarily wouldn’t be seen by the public for months, or even several years.

GreedFall: The Dying World (back when it was called GreedFall 2) entered early access in September 2024 and has not been getting an easy ride. The original game had more than its fair share of technical problems when it was released, and its sequel has come in for plenty of flack during its early access period, while at the same time its developer suffered a round of layoffs. Double-A games like GreedFall are rarely highly polished affairs, and now that it’s available in its final form it’s interesting to see how it fulfils what are once again quite lofty ambitions.

Like the first GreedFall, the backdrop to the sequel is a multi-polar colonial world, this time with a plague spreading across its continent. Your heroes come from the so far untouched island of Teer Fradee, their ornate dress and spiritual connection to their ecosystem reminiscent of Native Americans. The musket toting, technologically more advanced nations invading their land set up mines, carelessly annihilate swathes of wildlife, and call the indigenous people ‘savages’.

There’s a degree of historical realism about its setting, although you’ll also find huge mythical beasts and be able to use magic. Your first boss fight is against a freshly conjured nature golem that’s gone on the rampage, forcing you first to fight and then to flee. This proves to be only the first in a number of set pieces the game has to offer, as it alternates between limited open world sections and more linear exploration.

Conversations similarly vary between straightforward and consequential, your words and deeds sometimes affecting your reputation with party members and the wider community. The story propels you from place to place fairly frequently and membership of your group also changes, your standing with different teammates influencing how they support you, and whether they might be in the market for a little romance.

There are other, more significant changes and initially the most noticeable is that while some conversations are in English, plenty are spoken in Yecht Fradí, the invented language of the aboriginal people from which your hero hails. It sounds entirely convincing, its principle downside being the need to look at subtitles for many of the conversations, which isn’t always easy when you’re navigating or trying to follow someone’s tracks.

Combat has also changed considerably, and not entirely for the better. The fact that you’re offered three different approaches to controlling fights at the beginning of the game suggests its developer, Spiders, wasn’t sure about it either. What emerges is a semi-real-time tactical fighting system, inspired by BioWare’s early work but built with a drastically lower budget.

You can opt to just control your own character, as if you’re in a Mass Effect style action role-player, letting your party do their own thing, while at the other extreme you can pause time and issue specific orders to every party member, just like Star Wars: Knights Of The Old Republic. While it is possible to micromanage every aspect, other than the occasional boss fight we didn’t find it made much difference except to make battles take a lot longer to finish.

Battles are riddled with rough edges, the targeting system and the way you trigger different attacks working fine but never feeling necessary enough to make it all worth it, especially since your party seem quite happy to activate their own special moves if you let them.

Compared with Dragon Age: The Veilguard or Dragon’s Dogma 2, it’s all a bit clumsy and lacking in panache. Far more impressive are the game’s contrasting and architecturally distinctive environments. From the wilderness of Teer Fradee to the various cities and villages you visit, each area has its own wholly believable look and feel, as well as a population with their own beliefs, prejudices, and traditions.

GreedFall 2 offers first rate world building and unlike Avowed – which crammed its lore down your throat in huge, indigestible lumps – The Dying World’s conversations are admirably direct, whilst conveying all they need to about the lands and peoples you visit. Voice-acting is good and the script expressive enough to communicate emotion and societal mores without wasting your time with reams of tedious, unnecessary detail.

That’s just as well, because there’s a lot of talking, some of which comes with lasting effects. Like the original game, facial animation isn’t its strongest suit, but the combination of beautifully rendered environments, believable settlements, and a coherent sense of its warring nations, makes for a game that’s more than the sum of its parts, the over-ambitious tactical combat balanced by likeably earnest characters and a decent story.

Its other great success is giving you quests that can successfully be fulfilled in a number of ways. Depending on the skills you cultivate, you can wear disguises, bribe guards, use diplomacy to persuade, stealth to pilfer key items, or good old lethal force to just wipe everyone out – the latter proving especially cathartic after a failed negotiation with an annoying side character. It feels great to have options though and to be rewarded for exploring them.

Even post launch, GreedFall: The Dying World certainly has its issues. It also has an unusually well-developed sense of purpose and place. There are way too many bland fantasy role-playing games, but this one leans into its history and the tensions of its world, without letting that get in the way of the pacing or action. Look past the lack of polish, there’s an immersive world to explore, along with a compelling sense of progression as your party toughens up.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £49.99
Publisher: Nacon
Developer: Spiders
Release Date: 12th March 2026
Age Rating: 16

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