GreedFall follows three historically inspired factions as they colonise the island of Teer Fradee, a land mixing elements of America, Ireland, Australia, and others on its quest to create an all encompassing pastiche of these places during the Age of Discovery.

It then gives the conquistadores actual magic and everyone is tripping over one another in the hunt for a cure to a mysterious, seemingly paranormal plague. The questions of colonialism, politics, and identity are gradually dashed in favour of a largely environmentalist tale which winds up no less unfocused and absurdist.

Something which can also be said of the gameplay. The core is an action system where you fight alongside two companions and can pause to assess the situation. Character building features the usual warrior/mage/rogue trifecta but it is so wildly unbalanced in favor of ranged options that it turns the choice into one of difficulty selection rather than player expression. And none of these choices affect anything else except combat. There is a separate system of talents such as charisma or vigor that get checked in dialogue or for doing feats but they are more or less irrelevant, mostly boiling down to if you fight less mobs or get a bigger loot.

Things are no better in narrative terms, as there is little payoff or consequence, the vast majority of time you are the errand boy of Teer Fradee. This is made worse by how GreedFall presents major story choices based on how many side-quests you finish, instead of whatever limited stances you can take along the way.

Thus, the game feels like a “Frankstein's Monster” cobbled up from different genre tropes and player expectations – a sin also present in Spider's previous games. In GreedFall they managed to present a higher quality of polish and the market rewarded them, but in the process they've also lost that “je ne sais quoi”, which made for a great underdog.