Spiders Game Studio, count your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ days. This dev is my nemesis. It all began when I bought Bound By Flame in 2014. It looked so interesting… but the game was plagued by repetition and jank. Then came 2016, and I saw The Technomancer… again I was enthralled by an interesting world, yet was again struck down by jank. Then came 2019, and Greedfall was released… thrice has the ♥♥♥♥ crowed on these accursed Frenchmen. This game has the color pallet of Art Garfunkel’s sweater closet, and the gameplay of a dollar store paddleball toy. I should clarify that these 30+ hours of game time are actually my third attempt to play this game. I first bought it on PlayStation at release, and immediately bounced off after the tutorial section (a good 1-2 hours) due to lack of interest in any of its offerings. I tried again about a year later, and found the story much more interesting this time around, but again, stopped only about 2 hours past my initial try. Finally, I saw it on a Steam Sale and decided that THIS TIME, come hell or high water, I would beat Greedfall. Spiders would not defeat me. Needless to say, I set the combat difficulty to “Story” within 10 hours just to get those sections done with as quickly as I could (I would say it’s probably the worst part of the game). Now being on the other side of this game, I can say that the face of the main story is good and interesting, despite being entirely predictable in nearly every aspect (the biggest written surprise came to me in a side quest, which coincidentally I was given almost at the end of the game when I spoke to an NPC and we debriefed on an entire game’s worth of things I had done for him - I suspect the devs forgot to code in objectives to go meet with said NPC after all the content related to him). This game’s main problem is that it is utterly bogged down by tedium - endless side quests & filler content that all (and I do mean ALL) involve way too much backtracking, too many recycled story beats, and not even 25% as much variety as it needs. I sincerely and unfortunately cannot wait for this game to end - for those few zealots who play games without using fast travel, good luck, you’ll need it. In spite of all my animosity towards this studio and their damned games, I regrettably do find myself rooting for them. In the same way that a disappointed father keeps showing up to his uncoordinated son’s basketball games, I’ll keep showing up for these jerkoffs. Wallet in hand, I’ll sigh and throw $60 at them in the vain hopes that the game will be as good as it seems it will be. Though these games go down the gullet like warm, zinc-tinged tap water, I do think this studio has good ideas and the makings of good presentation (for the love of God, hire a better character designer, though). At the end of the day, this is a smaller studio who is making games they want to make without the big publisher interference that we’ve seen kill so many dreams. I already know I will be buying Greedfall 2, and I also know I will undoubtedly be crying myself through all 50 hours of it. As a matter of fact, I cannot wait.