Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition

After backing many KS board games, this was my first VG back. I was taken in with the promises and history of the genre, having being a huge fan of isometric CRPGs for a long time. I own Kingmaker, but never really got deep into it; since this was to be an improvement, I figured why not? It's just..bland. Played for 12 hours or so as of right now and still not out of "Act I" I think? Characters are ordinary tropes (as of my current playthrough), already encountered bugs that are hindering my progress because certain NPCs did not pop at the right moment and cannot complete this "Act". Even with multiple saves, I found the source was an error a little more than 6 hours (over half the current playtime) back, and I just don't feel the need to go back and re-experience so much again, OR start over hoping that one flag gets checked this time around. What saves the one-star review from me is the nostalgic feelings and the above-par music. Voice acting is wooden, combat is mediocre, unless one plays in the "super hardcore" mode I guess where every decision can one-shot your own party accidentally. For those who truly enjoy playing around with different types of character builds and experimenting with different tactics, it might scratch that itch but if you are looking for a deep tabletop or BG/IWD/early FO style experience, just patch and restart those classics. I might tackle this later and update my opinions, but it's just not demanding my attention at the moment. I hope it improves with patches later!

You guessed it, the horrible encounter design from Kingmaker is back but somehow even worse this time around. If you like savescumming, "Save or die" mechanics and minmaxing everything then this could even be a 5/5 game for you. If you on the other hand prefer at least a moderate amount of RP, then you'll be scrathching your head and wondering who thought up the encounter design that often make you face mobs so overtuned they make the bosses look like their minions instead of the opposite.

As a huge fan of the Baldur's Gate series and rest of the Infinity Engine series. I think that the Pathfinder games are a true successor to those games, especially Wrath of the Righteous. The game is quite niche though, and certainly not for everyone. If you like huge, long campaigns and obsessing over builds and systems, then this your game.

Designed to "wow" you in the first half of the game, and I suspect that is the reason for so many positive reviews and general success of the game. And the first 100 or so hours are truly great and the game deserves all the praise for that. Well made mythic paths, tons of options for character building, gripping story, mostly bug-free. But once you start looking through this facade and you get into the second half of the game, it's like a punch in the face. Balancing, writing, pacing, everything falls apart. Boring side quests that are in there for no other reason than to make the game incessantly longer, with one especially tedious, designed to make us gamers remember why we hate puzzles in cRPGs and that, for some reason, devs insist on putting them in. Mostly unsatisfactory and uninteresting endings to companion quests, bar some positive exceptions. Crusade mode, so well executed in the earlier acts, falls apart too, and becomes a joke. Reaching max level in 3/4 of the game, taking away the main reason to fully run all the quests. Random optional bosses with higher stats than literal deities (not that it helps them in any way). And bugs, so many bugs in the last two acts of the game, even 4 months after release. It's so bad that I would almost call this game a "Jekyll and Hyde" of gaming industry. The first half of the game is so good that I do not want to trash Pathfinder: WotR, hence the 3 stars, but at the same time if you are looking for that cRPG gem of the decade this really isn't it. The later parts kill it, and all my future playthroughs (if there are any) will end in Act IV. Kingmaker was/is the better executed and better game out of the two overall, I would say.

Lots of "oh no, the game drove me into an impasse, time to load a save from 5 hours ago", lots of "score a twenty or never hit anyone in this fight", lots of "*confuses whole party from 100 meters away*". And I'm no even playing in harder difficulties. This game has a lot more features than other comparable games, but darn is it unpolished, unfriendly and unbalanced. Oh and the voice acting is sometimes ridiculous (props to that GI Joe angel).