The original GreedFall was released five years ago, and like many games from developer Spiders, it was both ambitious yet buggy. There was enough for an interesting adventure, but you always got the feeling that more could be done with it if had been given more time. Critics gave it mixed reviews, with players having a more positive opinion. We now have a sequel with GreedFall II: The Dying World, and we got to take the latest build for a spin before it launches on Steam Early Access.

GreedFall II is set three years before the events of the original GreedFall. You are a native of Teer Fradeean, the island that would eventually be taken over by hordes of colonists. On this day, you're about to complete your training to become one of the village sages when you're given one last test — in two parts. The first task is to find out what's causing the mysterious illness to spread among your fellow villagers. The other task is to discover why your food sources are starting to become scarce. Somehow, both of those things seem to be tied to the foreigners that have started to appear on your shores. Eventually, this leads to your capture by those foreigners and a quest to regain your freedom.

GreedFall II is still an RPG, and just about all of the gameplay from the first title has been carried over to the sequel. The game still has two forms of combat: real-time and tactical, but you'll have to get used to the fact that the fighting uses an MMO-style combat system where distance between enemies doesn't matter when executing melee attacks. Stealth is still present, but it remains simplistic; you can now go into an investigative mode to more easily see traps and important items to pick up. Skill trees are still present and can round out your character's abilities, but the trees are much easier to decipher now.

The best part of the original game that has made its way over to the sequel is the quest system. None of the quests are ever simple, and almost all of them lead to long event chains that have you wandering to and fro in the hope of getting what you need. Most of the time, the places unlock up another quest in the chain, so you're rarely left with nothing to do. A good chunk of the quests also have several different ways to solve them; you can even bypass entire quest chains. A good example of this happens when you're tasked with closing a mine. You can get a friendly forger to create some documents while you go to a fort to obtain a seal before presenting it to the mine's foreman. You can also rescue some trapped miners, get some proof that mining causes the fish in the river to die, and get the workers to all quit. Either method remains satisfying, and the variety of solutions can be missing from other RPGs of this type.

There are issues from the first game that are still present in GreedFall II, even if you discount the graphical ones, like bad lip synching. There are moments when you'll wish that the game would give you better hints about what to do or where to go to complete an objective. A good example of this happens early on, when you're asked to find some items to help wounded hunters. You're never told where to find any of the ingredients to craft the potions needed, and you're also never told that there's a villager who happens to be a merchant. Some choices in a conversation can also go completely south without any warning. For example, the diplomatic approach to a confrontation with a group of foreign animal hunters is to somehow threaten them to go to war against your own village warriors. You'll encounter moments like this fairly often, but you'll still come to appreciate how deep each questline and activities can go.

Two big changes stand out specifically to those who have played the first title. The first is the ability to assign commands to your companion characters in Tactical mode. You can still let them automatically command their own actions, but you can override it if you want them to do something specific. The second is changing out your companion's stats and abilities whenever your party levels up, giving you the chance to either beef up their current role or diversify their skill types and abilities. Again, these two things don't seem like significant improvements for an RPG, but when you consider that these features weren't present in the first game, having them here makes an impact.

One thing that will catch your attention above all is that this is a Steam Early Access title, which is highly unusual considering all of the parties involved. Nacon isn't a new publisher, as they've been quite prolific on Steam alone. Spiders has also been developing games for a long time, and this is the first time it has decided to go the Early Access route. This can be interpreted as the French developer perhaps taking more time to iron out some issues, but it can also be interpreted as a move to ape what Larian did with its games: creating a dual release hype cycle while also fostering (hopefully) good word of mouth to drive people to the game before the full release. Either way, be warned that progress wipes will occur if you take on the game now instead of waiting for launch. The game still has some issues, with crashes and some items spawning in late.

Either way you interpret it, GreedFall II: The Dying World shows promise while still feeling rough. The improvements to the battle system are welcome, as is the ability to kit out your companions to make them more useful in a fight. The lack of markers or hints for objectives can be frustrating, and the lack of a glossary for some things can lead to needless wandering. It remains an interesting title overall, but we are curious to see how things shape up now that the public can see the game develop over time.