Greed: Black Border

I enjoyed 'Greed: Black Border' for its classic isometric RPG elements, but the game has some significant issues. The boss fights were particularly difficult, which took away from the fun. The real deal breaker, though, was the game crashing with a script error right after I defeated the final boss. I missed out on the ending video entirely—thank goodness for YouTube, where I was able to watch it. This technical flaw really dampened what could have been a satisfying conclusion.

It's a very basic Sci Fi take on Diablo (or perhaps Inquisitor-Martyr) set on a space craft and an alien planet. There are some light puzzle elements. You have to exactly align the lift mechanism in Chapter 1 which is tricky, but other than that, there's nothing too difficult. Whilst the game is basic, it gets those basics right, albeit with no additional frills. It ran smoothly for me with no game-breaking bugs or tortuous third party account requirements that plague some other games. It is often very cheap on sale . There's not much re-playability but for a game this inexpensive it's a steal.

A fun meat-grinder, "turn-your-brain-off" kind of an ARPG, Greed: Black Border is good for burning time and chilling. The story is nonsense, the skill system is strange - you can only have one type of passive ability (defensive and offensive) active at a time - and they throw in some puzzles requiring actual thought. But if you can get past that, definitely recommend getting when on sale like I did.

(Plus, for the graphics snobs out there, the game, despite releasing in 2009, has some truly ahead-of-its-time effects, such as particles being realistically-lit by dynamic lights, including gunfire, in addition to clever use of 2D textures for some extremely smooth-looking graphics, especially with forced antialiasing.)

It's a diablo-style arpg, very mediocre in everything. It gets very repetitive especially by the end, clearing that alien crystal cave is its lowest point in quality. However it's still good enough to waste time with if you have nothing better to do, as there's nothing missing the mark majorly. It's competently put together, short and has a mildly interesting quirky story. You can shoot some bugs, aliens, robots and zombies.

A good little time waster, very repetitive, same old thing stage after stage, not much incentive to want to play it to the end though. Nothing that a good MOD with an interesting story wouldn't fix. But can you be bothered?

That one popular review pretty much sums it up nicely. It's a fairly monotonous ARPG with no real stand-out features or aspects, but does manage to be fairly competent overall. Early on, its quirky implementation of shift-to-fire caused some frustration, particularly because I played the most ranged class.

When holding Shift, as usual for this genre, your character won't move. In this game though, they will also not lock to an enemy when an enemy is clicked on. They will only lock to that enemy if clicked on without Shift pressed. With Shift pressed, you will aim straight-line to the cursor. This often causes you to miss shots due to the isometric perspective of the camera and the shape of enemies. It's frustrating until you learn to compensate.

The game also demands a lot of the player's movement for this genre, setting up situations much more akin to third-person Action-Adventure games, or platformers. The genre isn't really tuned for that mechanically, and it does make for some tricky trap sections, which the finicky controls make fairly punishing.

Again on the theme of movement, you have a dodge-roll. The game sets up the enemies to have high-damage attacks that cannot be ignored, and must be dodged, which is done by recognizing a tell. It's a fun little nod to interactivity in a way the genre has historically lacked. Later on, this is expanded upon with different colours denoting a different upcoming attack. I did like this aspect.

There are three classes, and all are based around ranged dps, though they are geared toward different ranges, those being close (ranged), medium, and far. I only played the far-ranged class, and the gameplay is mostly a very simple repetition of shooting enemies with your basic attack, while using roll to avoid high-damage melee or ranged attacks, before kiting and repeating. The close-ranged class probably wouldn't kite the same way.

There is a small skill tree with some varied active and passive skills which expand a little, one way or another, on your character's strategy, but I was only able to get enough points to max a pair of actives with a couple extra points for a third, and max one passive. However, I did not achieve this due to being unaware of the amount of skill points you get over the course of the game. I ended up maxing one active and one passive. Some of the skills are set up for some synergy, but with no respec, it requires advance knowledge to do on the first playthrough. The game has a "New Game+" type higher difficulty mode in the vein of a Diablo "Nightmare" style, which you bring your leveled character into and through which you may continue to level and build. I didn't bother with this.

In practice, the gameplay settled into a pattern of attacking enemies with my basic attack and my one maxed AOE active skill, alternating with the aforementioned dodge-roll/kite setup.

If the game has one major upside, it's the visuals. While not groundbreaking or impressive anymore, they are nice and probably the game's best feature. Hampering this, the three locales are fairly mundane with the exception of the last leg of the third. The boss fights of the first two are mostly forgettable but I did enjoy the final boss. The soundscape of the game is competent but average. The music is generic to sub-par.

It was a pretty neat ARPG. I'm glad I played it. It drags at times, but I did enjoy the the last leg of the campaign quite a bit. The story overall is fairly uninspired though. It won't let you down much if you're an ARPG fanatic but there are many other things you could play which do better.

A waste of time in both gameplay and activity (nobody plays games claiming to be productive). The controls are bad: attacking in one direction requires holding down the Shift key and holding down the left mouse key. Do this with any delay on the first step and you're running toward the enemy as the latter key is also for movement. On that note, enemies - undead, robots, repurposed crabs (this is as far I got), no real variety. The grunting noises of the zombies (the most original concept in gaming since health bars) get outright annoying very quickly, probably compensating for the other enemies' lack of voice. The voice actors didn't place much effort into the sounds either, but that's not the real issue. The soundtrack at least compensates for the other audio drawbacks.

The character abilities are poorly described and you have no idea what you have to expect until you actually spend a point there. This led me to invest and waste point in not only bad attributes but only later do I realize you can't have both a passive increase to damage and bullet explosion at the same time. Same goes for passive defensive: it's either or. Nice thing to know BEFORE you invest your skill points.

On the skill point investment matter, initial progression is abysmally slow and money is scarce whereas as further toward the second chapter enemies are basically drowning you in coin, indicating a poor distribution of progression and balance. The game would be more replayable with any of the other 2 classes (wow) if the gameplay wasn't so unnecessarily stretched out. The combat itself gets tedious very soon and there's no real skill build that can actually keep you engaged for long.

I picked this up on sale and so don't really mind the price, I had some entertainment for what was spent. On the whole, however, it's kind of boring and rather poorly made.

Diablo-esk genre that's exceedingly dull, and uninspired. Everything takes *FOREVER* to kill. 5-10 shots (10-15 seconds) to kill the absolute weakest creature. So, when you get swarmed by 20 of them... it makes you want to smash your head into the keyboard. When I made it up the first elevator... it suddenly got drastically worse. Even your most basic non-robotic enemy would regen faster than I could damage it.

The screenshots look *absolutely* nothing like actual gameplay!!!

Inventory: you can hold about 6 items. I haven't made it to any place to trade yet.
Skills: So uninspriing, I had a hard time picking the "least bad" one. I immediately regretted my choices.
Combat: Shift and click never would go exactly where I wanted... not holding shift meant my long range guy would run straight into death. So... At *best* it's Hold shift, click fire 5 shots, run back (by this point it's regened half the damage you did) Repeat and *HOPE* nothing stepped in front of it to soak up damage while it regenned to full. Repeat this about 5 times for each time you pull *ONE* really 'weak' creature. Walk into an ambush... and you could fire all day long and never kill anything due to mobs trading places and excessivly fast regen.


TLDR; Dull, uninspired, and TEDIOUS!

I recommend Greed: Black Border (GBB) but it's a borderline decision. I recommend it if you feel for a 10h quick action zombie smashing fix! It felt short and I usually spend ages in games like these selling every piece of unwanted loot and backtracking and checking out every corner of every map. So with all of that, I finished GBB in roughly 15h and you might say: "It's not that bad..." But compare that with many other games where I easily have 80+ hours if not outright in the few hundreds and 15h is short.

Also there is a lack of weapon, armor variety and monster types. So I guess, in general, the game lacked some content. Now maybe, if you continue after beating the end boss (because you can restart the game at a higher difficulty level), maybe do you get new item images for armor and weapons? I'm not sure but I did not feel like doing the campaign again.

I should also mention that because of the way I play, I only assigned some of my skill points, as a ranged damage dealer and finished the game easily on normal difficulty.

With those negative aspects behind, let's look at the positives:
+ It's an isometric ARPG (Diablo style) but set in a sci-fi futuristic environment.
+ Dropped items are randomized
+ Nice environments (maps) and nice unit animations
+ Good sounds

Negatives:
- Not enough content
- Lacks a bit of polish
- Not enough replayability

So overall, unforatunately, I have to say that if Mass Effect 1 or 2, Diablo 1 or 2, Company of Heroes 1 or 2, Titan Quest, Path of Exile, Dawn of War 1 or 2, etc. are on sale at around the same price as this title, then buy that other title. These games are each worth about 6 times GBB!

This is an isometric action RPG. Everything you love about the Diablo games, or Torchlight, or Titan Quest/Grim Dawn has been toned down quite a bit here. Not as many classes or skills or equipment options. I haven't even run into any side quests yet. So, in essence, this is a poor man's sci-fi version of Diablo. However.... this is a poor man's SCI-FI version of Diablo. Fighting robots and mutants and aliens on spaceships and distant worlds is a very cool idea for this genre. The graphics aren't super great but they certainly aren't bad either. I am enjoying them just fine. And the soundtrack is techno and rock. Great music to blast enemies away to. The bottom line is, if you're a Diablo/Torchlight/Titan Quest fan and you find this game on sale, I recommend picking it up. The sci-fi theme and techno music alone make this a worthwhile buy for us action RPGers.

This game had a lot of potential that it unfortunately did not live up to.

The Good
+ Great atmosphere
+ Good soundtrack
+ Sci-fi Diablo gameplay
+ Each class plays very differently, as advertised
+ Inexpensive

The bad
- Short; only three chapters
- Lack of variety in gearing
- Plot elements are really thin
- Feels unfinished

I'd like to recommend this game, but as it stands, I really can't. The premise is cool, and the game does an excellent job of setting the tone, but unfortunately, it just doesn't deliver. The game is short, it feels rushed, the gear is bland, and the levels are a bit grindy. If it had an expansion, it might get a better score from me.

3 Different Character classes. Interesting loot and skills.

Firing these weapons at the zombies and robots as you uncouver new sectors of an awesome spaceship environment, is a blast for me.

Plus there are checkpoints so I probably play this game 30-45min a day and it fails to cease to amaze me.

Dull combat system
Repetitive and linear levels
broken multiplayer
The game got rapidly boring from the beginning.
Avoid this mess and save your dosh for something else

A horrible, poorly thought out and executed trainwreck of a game with poor controls and a severe lack of creativity. I'd really like to know what the developer did to receive such positive reviews.

I'd like to say that it's heart is in the right place, but several glaring problems really make it a horrible experience, including instant death agility puzzles (What kind of cunt thought it would be a great idea to have those annoying rotating sawblades of death and three hits and you die sentry guns you need to get past), which is especially annoying to traverse when paired with rather sloppy controls and poorly placed checkpoints. On top of that there's an almost unwinnable first boss battle, unless you know how to best build your character and be able to eat that incoming damage. Also, when I got to the next chapter, I was hoping for new opponents, but for the most part these were nothing more than a case of "same enemy type, different appearance" which is just plain lazy.

Seriously, do not buy, this game is shit.

Pretty much the same as everyone else is saying. Started out ok, then devolved from there. Bad dungeon crawl when everything you pick up is the same. Bad controls, repetitive, all around boring and quit when I was tired of dying over and over. Play Diablo or Torchlight or anything else.

Firstly, please note that my "hrs on record" is wrong because I play with Steam in Offline mode. I have finished the game and played all three characters up to the point where all their skills are unlocked.

I really enjoyed this game, so I wanted to offer an alternative view to all the negative reviews here! Firstly I think this game is pretty clearly inspired by Space Siege. This is perhaps a rather questionable choice in inspirations, but Greed is a much better game because it has character classes with skill trees for each.

The game has things that may grate with a new player. Enemies can be real bullet sponges. Level features are reused often enough that levels can seem a bit long-winded. Also items aren't randomised much at all and you will see the same armor and weapons repeatedly. Damage numbers on weapons you find are too low early in the game. Each character class is restricted to their weapon type (gatling gun, long range plasma rifle or flamethrower).

After experimenting with the different classes and looking over all the skills I decided to make a character based around maximizing my ability to spam my skills. (Skill damage increase with character level unlike weapon damage.) I did this first with the flamethrower guy and it was great fun! The fire effects in the game are excellent. The flames, smoke and burning sound effects combined with the ability to set large sections of the screen on fire was very entertaining. One of the top level skills is a long range flamethrower effect that reminds me of John Carpenter's The Thing. Making heavy use of skills made playing this character more like a fire mage.

After finishing the game the first time, I went back and played as the long range character and she also has some pretty entertaining skills. I appreciate that the game rewards a bit of planning about how you're going to build your character with some fun (albiet repetitive) action. So for all it's flaws, I still really enjoyed this game.

The game also does a bad job of communicating some important information. Useful tips for someone starting the game:

• If your mouse is laggy go into the graphics settings and disable Post Render.
  
• Make sure Highlight is enabled in graphics settings. It will help you find interactable containers.
  
• In the Inventory screen, click the icon near your currency count then click on an item to scrap it. This turns the item into scrap which sells for less then the item, but stacks and only takes a single inventory space.
  
• After you get to Act 2, an icon appears in the bottom right hand corner of your Inventory screen that lets you teleport back to the shop once every 5 minutes.
  
[*] Leave skill points unallocated until you find a save point, then buy new skills and test them. If you don't like them, just reload to get the points back.

I don't know what all the thumbs down are for on this game. Graphics are decent, gameplay is simple yet fun, it's relatively hard, and the sci-fi atmosphere is well done. If you're a fan of Diablo style RPGs and/or sci-fi themed games, ignore the haters and give it a try. It's worth spending only $5.

P.S. To the haters: it's not really fair to compare this game to Diablo and say it doens't match up. Of course it doesn't, Blizzard didn't make this game. The only similarity is that it follows the platform and gameplay formats of Diablo. Other than that, nothing else fits the center of the Venn diagram. This game is not a "rip off" of Diablo.

Awful. Simply awful. What originally started as a sort of simple dungeon crawler with a little charm to it, quickly became a nightmare with each moment grinding against what little patience I had left. The first chapter is fine, nothing special, completely tolerable. Once the second chapter, OF THE THREE CHAPTERS IN THE GAME, began, a lot of glaring issues began to emerge. First of all, controlling your character is broken. Simply broken. Your soldier will randomly stop, start, run in circles, fire at nothing, or just flat out kill himself. The characters themselves have less personality than generic sodas, and the class balance is absurd. The experience curve is ridiculous, requiring multiple playthroughs to "catch up" to the zones you wish to clear. Fortunately, you don't even need to care, as most of the enemies are easily bypassed by just running, assuming your character doesn't have a stroke. The shopkeeper must be a mythological creature, because I've only seen him in photos making out with bigfoot. Item "customization" is non-existent, with actual equipment being an afterthought. Skills have no weight and don't even feel like they do anything (except the nuke, which HAHA kills teammates). Co-operative play requires jumping through hoops to get a lobby to function. The game looks muddy, seems like it was made around 2001 but plays like something you would have bought for MS-DOS. The bosses are, to be frank, stupid. The checkpoint system lets you zerg bosses by simple resetting from checkpoint. I got this game for $0.49 during a steam sale when it seemed like a steal. But at this point, I would have rather bought 49 gumballs and choked to death. This is not a game that can even be enjoyed with friends who are just goofing around. If you feel like learning what being lynched feels like, grab this game from your local dumpster. It's probably in the one thats on fire, since only Satan incarnate would own this game to keep in his torture pits. Play Path of Exile instead, it's free and doesn't make me feel like I'm eating a truck's tire with a bendy straw.

First i liked the game. I really did. Nice atmosphere, nice voice acting. Interesting skill system (switching active and passive skills on the fly.)

BUT!

My save file got corrupted! Every time the game saves it crashes. I can restart the game and load the game at the saved point anyways, but u can't do that before a bossfight! (It will automatically save infront of the boss encounter = Crash. But it won't load there after restarting the game.)
It became impossible for me to finish the game.

And i can't recommend that. Bummer.

A fairly bad sci-fi diablo clone.
Uninteresing story, mediocre graphics and repetitive enemies.