HIGH The first sight of the colony’s oxygen engine.

LOW Trying to figure out how to back eject from an ice climb on a sharp time limit.

WTF The ships still have fuel enough to launch?

The modern media landscape being what it is, I’m never surprised to see a sequel. Often, though, I ask myself whether a particular one is necessary.

Deliver Us the Moon, a perfectly good game about a lonely effort to revive a lunar power station, didn’t seem to be crying out for one, even though the villains’ departure on an obviously-doomed planetary colonization mission was a clear hook. As it happens, the developers took the bait, and the story continues now in Deliver Us Mars.

Much has changed this time around. I felt that Moon suffered from the silence and general disembodiment of its main character, as well as the absence of other individuals to interact with. In  Mars the protagonist is vocal and numerous characters are frequently on screen, albeit somewhat stiff-faced. If anything, the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, as Mars has a bit too much chatter and far too many flashbacks.

Unfortunately, the expanded dialogue mainly reveals that many of Deliver Us Mars’ characters are completely insufferable, including those clearly intended to be sympathetic. The protagonist, Kat, is perhaps not the worst, but she’s introduced to us as a child willfully destroying a toy just given to her by her father, and this foolhardy self-centeredness ends up driving much of the plot.

Of course in a game in which the Earth is suffering a climate catastrophe, there’s plenty of willful destruction to go around. Deliver Us Mars is a depressing experience, devoid of optimism for either the potential for colonizing space, or our chances of rescuing the Earth.

As the title suggests, the fleeing scientists of the first game decided to make their new home on Mars, a location not clearly superior to the Moon as a potential home. Their efforts have gone both better and worse than expected. The terms of the story and of Kat’s connection to one of the colonists require that the scientists have, without support from Earth, developed functional industry on an alien planet at a pace that beggars belief, which is just one of the plot’s many striking implausibilities.

A game of this kind tends to fill those holes by dotting its levels with bits of lore, and Kat can find holograms and snippets of text. Yet, it feels like there’s frustratingly little to glean even from surroundings that should be data-rich. This leaves gaps in the story, like how anyone came to think that sending four people to bring back three giant, possibly unfueled spaceships was going to work.

As it happens, the task involves a lot of walking. Much time is spent in plodding traversal, occasionally spiced up by floaty drives in a rover that handles like the second coming of Mass Effect’s Mako. Outdoors, Kat has a time limit on her oxygen, although thankfully the devs eschew Moon’s habit of strewing areas with canisters containing ridiculously tiny quantities of oxygen to extend the timer. The limit rarely matters except when Deliver us Mars asks her to do a bit of rock (or ice) climbing.

The climbing approach is fairly standard. Kat has a pick in each hand controlled by a mouse button or trigger. Holding down that control slams the pick in, releasing it allows her to reposition it. It’s all right as far as it goes, but rock-climbing feels like a mechanic in search of a purpose. The developers gamely keep trying to supply one, but however many platforming challenges Kat encounters, each scenario seems modified to suit the climbing, rather than the climbing being a natural solution to any problems the story poses.

There are also puzzles to solve in the form of routing power beams (generally for opening doors) and positional tasks that are used to unlock holograms. I did not find these to be interesting but at least they, unlike the climbing, felt like they belong.

The sense of story being divorced from events is further accentuated in sequences where Kat is asked to perform tasks related to spacecraft launch. As a highly trained astronaut, Kat should know exactly what to do, but as a player I was forced to scan around until I found an active control panel, figure out how to use it, then carry out a request. None of this was particularly difficult (and at least it fit the context) but it accentuated the divide between the character and me, not least when I was asked to slide forward a throttle and did this while Kat’s immobile hand was visible elsewhere onscreen.

Deliver Us Mars demands a sequel, in the sense that it artlessly uses a couple of post-credits scenes to set one up, but there’s nothing here that left me wanting more. Its puzzles are rather dull and the most notable gameplay activity, rock-climbing, feels like it belongs in an entirely different game. I don’t care for most of the characters that survived Deliver Us Mars’ sloppy, facile plot, and its scenario is hopeless and depressing. A third installment may be inevitable, but I’m not eager for that package to arrive.

Rating: 5 out of 10

Disclosures: This game is developed by KeokeN Interactive and published by Frontier Foundry.It is currently available on Windows PC, PS4/5, and XBO/X/S. This copy of the game was obtained via the publisher and reviewed on a home-built Windows X PC equipped with a AMD Ryzen 2700X processor, an ASRock X470 motherboard, 32 GB RAM , and a single GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card using driver 531.29. Approximately 10 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated T and contains Mild Blood and Violence. Per the ESRB: “This is an action-adventure game in which players assume the roles of astronauts investigating a lost colony on Mars. From first- and third-person perspectives, players explore spacecrafts and colonies, solve puzzles, and avoid hazards (e.g., electrical bursts). As players progress, they can unlock journal entries depicting holographic images of violence/peril: colonists suffocating to death; characters sucked into space as a result of a terrorist attack. One sequence depicts an exploding space craft, with a woman left on board. Some scenes depict human corpses scattered across facilities, including a man with blood on his face.”

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. However, they cannot be altered or resized. During the course of play, there are several noises that are important, for instance a chirp indicating that another quarter of the oxygen tank has been used or an alert from the that a collectible has been identified. Although there are visual counterparts for these noises I noticed that the sounds were more accurate about status and directed me to search areas I had otherwise ignored. I believe the game will be more difficult without the assistance of sound.

Remappable Controls: On PC, this game offers fully remappable controls, but I have seen complaints that this is not true on other platforms. Players on console might want to investgate before a purchase.

HIGH A fascinating world to explore.

LOW Too much running around towards the end.

WTF An abusable enemy aggro radius.

Greedfall made me feel like I had traveled 15 years into my past, to a simpler time when a younger me was first experiencing Gothic 2.

My sister would watch me play back then, inexplicably drawn to its world while never ceasing to comment on how bad it was. However, despite looking rough even when it was new and aging poorly, Gothic still feels like a believable world, offering a sense of place by treating its NPCs as a society and giving them a purpose. Progression wasn’t reduced to fetch quests or filling a loyalty bar, but achieved by actually getting to know the members of each camp and working together.

To this day, Gothic 2 remains one of the most memorable RPGs I’ve ever played, and while it likely won’t be as memorable, Greedfall feels familiar in that way. It offers a refreshing, updated take on the same sort of old-school Eurojank RPGs I loved as a kid, and like all the best titles of its kind, it’s slightly rough around the edges but has more than enough heart to make up for it.

Greedfall is a narrative RPG that can be played as a third-person action game, or step-by-step for those who like to play strategically. Players take on the role of De Sardet, legate of the Congregation of Merchants. Through diplomacy, wit, or brute force, De Sardet must maneuver the complex political web on the island of Teer Fradee while also finding a cure for the fearsome plague that has befallen her people and claimed her mother.

Character customization options aren’t complicated, but they yield satisfying results. Players can select their preferred gender, a few other defining traits, and then one of three combat archetypes — strong melee warrior, resourceful gunslinger, or spell-wielding magician. Although Greedfall recommends the talents and attributes for every class, players are not forced to follow a standard build and they can also respec (via item use) if they wish.

Despite being ripe with outlandish monsters and magic, Greedfall’s narrative pulls from real history. It proves that a theme such as European colonization can provide an excellent canvas for a fantasy RPG, tackling heavy topics such as racism, forced indoctrination of native people, and institutionalized abuse through superb world-building and writing. Diplomacy plays a huge role in this game.

Following this, the choices a player makes matter and there are multiple nonviolent ways to approach a situation such as stealth, companion abilities, or charisma and intuition to unlock contextual dialogue options.

During a mission where I had to retrieve a document, I could choose between killing the guards or dressing up in their faction’s uniform and infiltrating their base. NPCs can also be persuaded using contextual dialogue options that are unlocked by leveling charisma or letting companions do the talking. Needless to say, the means through which players achieve their desired outcome will impact their relationship with different factions and companions.

Sadly, regardless of how issues are solved, the narrative themes aren’t explored fully. The portrayal of certain characters felt superficial and some of my “game-changing” decisions had little impact on the world. Some characters, like Inquisitor Aloysius or Dr. Asili, are so excessively evil they border on caricature. Furthermore, even after a major plot twist, the parties involved didn’t display any significant, long-term changes. They would simply deliver a short speech and then jump back to their normal state. 

In terms of the cast beyond De Sardet, Greedfall offers several companions with a system similar to Bioware RPGs such as Mass Effect and Dragon Age — Kurt the mercenary, Vasco the Naut, Siora the Native princess, Aphra of the Bridge Alliance, and Petrus of Theleme.      

While these companions are well-written in conversations, they aren’t memorable. I spent more than 60 hours in Greedfall and did every loyalty quest, and still found it hard to care about them. Petrus, for example, kept calling me “child,” which honestly reminded me of that creepy old uncle that nobody likes. Kurt, on the other hand, is a likable and loyal character that, sadly, felt written off during my playthrough.

Also, while I love romancing characters in games, success here boils down to completing a loyalty questline and getting one dialogue option right. When pursuing my character of choice I failed the first time, so I had to reload a save. The reward was a cringe-inducing roll in the hay followed by an even cringier declaration of love.

Mechanically, Greedfall offers expansive, yet shallow RPG elements. Players can assign weapons and armor to their companions, but cannot directly control them in combat, so most of the time they run headfirst into battle and die pathetically. It’s possible to craft upgrades and sockets for gear, but not to craft the equipment itself. Three skill trees offer unique perks, but none of them have enough depth. There are only so many abilities you can unlock, and once unlocked, players must continue improving them until they can unlock a new one. 

I have mixed feelings about combat, but by keeping in mind that it isn’t the central point of Greedfall, it felt good overall. With each strike, De Sardet generates Fury. When enough builds, it unlocks additional attacks or inflicting more effective blows. There are also useful abilities such as kicking, parrying, riposting and healing, and items to use such as traps, bombs, firearms, grenades, and potions.

As for me, I decided to start on Hard but quickly changed to Extreme. As a spellcaster, it was easy to crowd-control and melt enemy HP as magic completely ignores enemy armor. I also tried melee and found it to be harder, but not impossible since Greedfall provides many useful tools and upgrades for every situation.

Graphically, Greedfall‘s assets aren’t groundbreaking — parts are often re-used and when examined in isolation I found much of it to be aesthetically sub-par, but as a whole (and with some creative lighting) the developers paint a beautiful world. I hid my HUD through most of my playthrough to be more immersed in the world, and I give kudos to Spiders for creating some of the most beautiful natural landscapes I’ve seen in a videogame. 

As far as my criticisms go, Greedfall is a Eurojank title that wasn’t made on a triple-A budget, so some allowances must be made. However, there is an incredibly frustrating combat mechanic that resets a fight if players step out of a predefined area.

The world also has a lot of invisible walls, so large-scale exploration is limited, and when coupled with the fact that Greedfall isn’t open-world, but rather a collection of smaller connected areas, players will find themselves running from campfire to campfire while battling the same packs of monsters along the way. There’s also not much to do that’s not directly quest-related in cities, and the facial animations aren’t great. 

Overall, Greedfall‘s setting, narrative and themes offer a refreshing change from the standard RPG soap operas and it has more than enough meat on its bones to satisfy an RPG fan’s itch. I believe it shines when viewed like an immensely satisfying sidequest — it was interesting enough to keep me glued, but ultimately it lacks the breadth and depth of something bigger. 

–– Baabuska

Disclosures: This game is developed by Spiders and published by Focus Home Interactive. It is currently available on PS4, XBO, and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via paid download and reviewed on the PC using a keyboard and mouse. Approximately 65 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. There are no multiplayer modes.

Parents: According to the ESRB, this game is rated M and contains Blood, Language, Partial Nudity, Suggestive Themes, and Violence. Combat feels realistic and is accompanied by screaming, bloodstains and gunfire. There are references to prostitution and a scene of a man shooting himself with a gun at close range. Although no sexual acts are depicted, the game has sexually suggestive content and mild expletives.     

Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind options available in the options. 

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: I have played the game without sound and found it fully accessible. All dialogue has subtitles, which can be resized. Companion comments during combat are also subtitled. 

Remappable Controls: This game’s controls are not remappable.