This new tactical RPG takes me back to the glory days of the best BioWare games

Playing Baldur’s Gate 3 was a nice reminder of how much I enjoy tactical RPGs. While the turn-based format is always welcome, however, I still have a craving for that particular brand of real-time action where you can pause at any time to direct each member of your party. So with the Greedfall 2 launch imminent, I sat down at Gamescom 2024 to try out a section of the early game, and it instantly took me back 15 years to Dragon Age: Origins, where BioWare emphatically reminded us just how fun that classic style of CRPG can be.

We’re just a few short weeks from the launch of Greedfall 2 into early access, meaning you’ll be able to get your hands on the follow-up fantasy RPG very soon. It’s also worth noting that, since my Gamescom demo, Spiders has announced a new agreement with its employees including an increase to minimum salary and an audit of working conditions, following an open letter penned by several employees that made claims of poor management, lack of direction, and developer burnout at the studio.

Despite being a sequel, Greedfall 2 takes place three years earlier, following the tale of a Teer Fradee native. Captured by foreign invaders and brought to the Old Continent, Gacane, you’ll have to navigate the lands as an outsider, dealing with the conflicting factions across the lands as it falls to ruin. Fortunately, you aren’t alone, with a crew of like-minded companions by your side.

As mentioned, the sequence I get to play is fairly early on, a little while after an introductory sequence that sees your group escaping from their imprisonment. That means I don’t get to see character customization in full, although I do have the chance to set up my character’s stats and pick party members that can best complement my chosen skills. While you have full control over your party’s loadouts, they’re still very much independent, and the choices you make could see them grow close to you or turn against your ideals.

If you’ve played the previous entry in the series, you’ll have some idea of what to expect when fights break out, but Greedfall 2’s combat feels even closer to that classic brand of old-school BioWare RPG I love – the likes of Knights of the Old Republic and Dragon Age: Origins. While you can play things out in real time, you can pause the action as often as you want and manually direct either your chosen character or every individual member of the party to take their next actions.

Me being me, this made my brief time to play an agonizing prospect, because it’s clear that there’s a lot of mechanical depth to dig through and my immediate instinct was to want to carefully read through every ability at my disposal and study the optimal moves carefully. Given my limited access, I had to forgo this and simply throw caution to the wind, but even then I found myself quickly adapting strategies on the fly. Fortunately, these early enemies didn’t put up too much of a fight anyway.

Most characters have a mix of health and armor, and abilities will typically specifically target one or the other – perhaps you’ll choose to intentionally break enemy armor for an easier time, or maybe you’ll focus on skills that can bypass it. If you’re a big fan of putting your strategy skills to the test, you can ramp up the challenge to a more tactically demanding difficulty level. Conversely, if that’s not your bag, you can slide it down to a story mode where you’re essentially untouchable during fights.

As I explore, I come across a camp that seems to have been visited by the person I’m seeking. A successful ability check based on my survival skill allows me to pop up a visual indicator of tracks to follow. I’m told that if you fail on this, however, you aren’t completely locked out; you can still spot the tracks if you’ve got an eagle eye, they just won’t be so clearly presented to you.

Once we find our target, who is being held captive by a bandit group, we’re presented with plenty of ways to approach, and these will change depending on who’s in your party. Some companions will bring specific knowledge, talents, or connections to the table that can open doors for you – one is a proficient diplomat capable of talking her way into or out of most situations as needed. The simplest solution would be to fight the troublemakers directly, but we instead opt to bargain with them; find some sufficiently valuable treasures to trade, and we can earn our friend’s freedom.

Each of the companions will also have their own quest line and goals to pursue, and you’ll want to keep them happy, lest they decide it’s not worth their time to stick around. In some cases things can be even more dire – one has hitmen on her tail, for example, meaning that if you don’t resolve things quickly enough, chances are she’ll end up dead, leaving you down a potentially powerful pal (and probably quite sad about it).

Greedfall 2 launches via Steam Early Access on Tuesday September 24. Spiders says it wants to use early access to “develop the game with the community, balancing and adding features with the help of the players themselves.” It’s expected that this will take at least a year, although ultimately it’ll come down to when the developer and players are satisfied. If you’re eager to learn more, you can wishlist it on Steam right now.

There are plenty more big upcoming PC games in 2024, so join us in looking ahead to everything still to come. Or, if you’d rather check out something you can play right now, the best turn-based RPGs should give you plenty of options.