I mean, seems like the reviewer didn't even finished the game. And his main complaint is that the game feels like many other RPGs and it lacks innovation.
I'm honestly lost at what he was expecting from this RPG innovation.
Different strokes for different folks and all, but a 5 for this isn't reasonable. I'm a decent way through the game (though haven't finished) on PS4 and the game is technically solid though graphically underwhelming with a pretty well fleshed out role playing system that could have used a few more combat options.
But honestly, this is exactly what we've been getting from Bioware for years with less polish- which is exactly what was advertised.
Just to get some perspective on how Gamespot rates things, it doesn't appear they typically use the "entire scale." over the past 6 months the lowest score they handed out was a 4, with a handful of 5's and the typical review landing a 7 or 8. In this case a 5 is an abnormally low score for them and indicates a game with serious flaws. 1-3 aren't used at all, and the "4" scores I read (a PC game called "Ancestors: The humankind odyssey and a re-release of Metal Wolf Chaos) were games so heavily flawed and frustrating they were basically unplayable and not worth the effort to even boot up.
It's not a good review. Case in point:
There's religious fanaticism, and then there's Inquisitor Aloysius from
Greedfall, a man so excessively villainous his whole schtick borders on farcical. A member of Thélème, one of the game's six factions, he appears when you first step into the town square of the city San-Matheus. What draws your eye is the sight of a hulking woodland beast howling in pain while tied to a stake in an enormous burning pyre, as a captured native islander looks on helplessly. When asked why the creature and his people are subjected to such cruelty, the Inquisitor bellows an odious response about cleansing the corrupt souls of his tribe. Then in one swift movement, he yanks the islander's head, stabs the poor soul with a knife, and yells obscenities about heresies into the sky.
uh...yeah. the game makes it clear that the Ordo Lumis inquisitors are an extremist sect of Theleme, Aloysius is the WORST of them, and Theleme (even though they aren't particularly sympathetic) in general is not that nasty. Even within Theleme, the missionaries and Ordo Lumis do not get along, as Petrus helpfully points out. The mother cardinal even apologizes to you for having run into Aloysius because she knows exactly what he is.
That uncomfortable scene is emblematic of the plot in Greedfall; its tales of colonialism and political subterfuge are tackled with such little nuance that it verges on parody. The islanders wear face paint, have heavy accents, and venerate the woodland beasts as deities, while the cardinals, bishops, and alchemists refer to them as savages that need enlightenment or salvation. Greedfall relies heavily on these kinds of blunt narrative tropes for its setting, much in the same way it does on a very familiar open-world RPG structure. And while it's very easy to lose yourself in its competent, if comfortable, formula, it means that Greedfall ultimately feels unremarkable at best.
the "natives vs. islanders" conflict while a big part of the narrative is not the sum of the game. The Natives are not one big faction either (though your reputation with one tends to apply to reputation with all of them) and I've run into more than one Native Tribe vs. Native Tribe conflict. There is also the issue of the Bridge Alliance and Theleme not getting along, and although I haven't seen a lot of it so far there are indications of tensions between the Nauts and the Alliance, and the Nauts and the Merchant Delegation. Nobody appears totally happy with the Coinguard and they come off like a pack of thugs, but thugs everyone happens to need. The reviewer fails to mention any of this.
You play as the charming diplomat De Sardet from the Congregation of Merchants, who's in charge of brokering peace between two warring factions: the Thélème, a theocratic nation that preach their gospel heavily and want to convert as many natives as possible, even if it's by force, and the Bridge Alliance, home to a nation of alchemists who wield their vast and incomparable knowledge of science for political ends.
This is again, not what the game is. Bridge and Theleme are big, important factions but brokering peace between them is not the point of the game. Hell, there's a sidequest I ran across where a member of Bridge is selling out to Theleme, betraying his faction for material gain and you straight up tell him "Merchant Congregation is neutral, I don't care what you do between yourselves." Your character's personal motivation is to cure a plague that's devastating the continent he comes from. Selene (the opening area) is a plague ridden nightmare and this must be fixed. Your mother (presumably) dies of this plague while you set off to discover a cure. There are several questlines that focus on the search for this cure. The reviewer fails to mention this outside of a cursory mention of the plague in the opening paragraphs.
Even your companions and other characters are cookie-cutter emblems of their group: Siora is the native princess who wishes to seek peace for her clan; Petrus is the religious Thélème advisor with tons of political savvy; and Kurt is the loyal, headstrong mercenary whose stoic demeanour can barely disguise his world-weariness. Most damning of all is your character, De Sardet, who, as the big hero, embodies the "white man's burden" allegory that also plagues other colonial-themed narratives; it's all on you to liberate the natives or unite the factions against them.
....there are six companions in the game, Though one is (so far) available only for a very brief period of time. The reviewer fails to mention Vasco (Nauts), Aphra (Bridge alliance), or Constantin (Congregation of Merchant) at all! Are these also cookie cutter? because they don't get mentioned in the review.
I agree with the commenter above- it does not appear that this reviewer actually played through this game.
