Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition

The game is great. The writing is godlike. THE EULA HAS BEEN ROLLED BACK! GET OVER IT ALREADY!

Owlcat Games are on a mission, which they started with Pathfinder: Kingmaker. Their games should dwarf them all. They are ought to contain more quests than the entire Bhaalspawn saga (Baldur's Gate) combined. The same goes for the combat. And texts. And everything. And you know what? Based on pure playing time, they'd already achieved this with their debut. Unfortunately, they're trying this on budgets that clearly have a limit. Thus, for every decent section in this game, you're finding tons of filler. Repetitive mob combat that may as well be the result of an intern going over their maps, finding empty spots to fill, and applying a copypaste job via the editor. Dialogue and text that is plentiful, but obviously rarely had the budget of an editing pass. Quests that oft aren't the result of iteration processes either, but finalized as they came. With Pathfinder Kingmaker, I took a long time out before finishing. WIth this one it's been three already since release. And I've decided I've had enough -- after a good 80 hours of playing, no less. The final straw was Owlcat turning even the most remarkable place into something unremarkable: a city of demon's. Rather than engaging in anything interesting, they task you with rotating the in-game camera to navigate that city, as paths only open up and buildings give way only if the camera points the right way. The quests you trigger there are of a similar kind: fetch and errand jobs that require you back and forth between city sections. The pity is that the good bits of their games are actually good. But a "less is more" approach would benefit them greatly.

Latest DLC added a bunch of features and additions to the game - that was not required, but very welcome. It was good to see the developers continue to add features and content to the game, outside of the scope of DLC obligations. Devil mythic path had some improvements and a new quest to corrupt Galfrey, which is very thematic for the Devil. The game is a few years old now and is great to see the devs continue to work on the game. It is a big game with many items/classes/feats etc. and the devs have touched on some more changes in future patches - such as legend mythic path improvements. Hopefully some gold dragon improvements come as well.

The most important part of an RPG is the storytelling. This game, it never felt like I could care about the story. the main character feels cookie-cutter, no background at all. Most of the companions, even those with background, I cared about even less, and the game forced me into accepting characters that were written at a relatively low quality and very obvious who was really a villain, who wasn't. That could be partially forgiven if the mechanics worked well, but they just didn't. The game was designed to be very difficult, artificially so, such that unless you play specific optimizations, knowing in advance what you will encounter, you are likely to get destroyed. Again and again. Note, that's on "normal" difficulty, not one of the extra high difficulty levels aimed at people who prefer such. Several areas are designed in ways that can induce vertigo in those who are susceptible, with no warning of the design elements. Overall, I just found too many "routine" monsters that were immune to everything a "normal" party had at that point, including having an armor class so high as to be effectively immune to physical attacks. We're not talking end-game bosses here, but monsters encountered around level 10 (in theory, close to half-way through the game), being as hard to deal with as the end-game bosses in the preceding game from a pure statistical perspective -- yet encountered ten levels earlier. The changes in traps (must carefully move a character around to find the "trap deactivation point" way away from the trap) also reduced enjoyment in the game.

Completed with only a mythic path. It' strange: I liked it, but most of its stronger aspects make also the game a mess. So, the good ones 1. Pathfinder! gives tons of classes/templates, spells, equipment, things to choose from 2. You can set a lot of parameters regarding combat, because (the game tells you) it will be difficult (true? maybe) 3. Choose between turn-based combat and realtime with pause, great! 4. Huge campaing, awesome.. a lot of things to do, stories, npc to meet; everyone beatifully designed and there's a great number of situations you'll encounter and choices that will make the difference 5. Mythic Paths. Great Idea, very fun to play, very very nice addition to the mechanics/storytelling 6. Crusade Mode. The Idea is a very powerful one, adds another layer onto the game! 7. Companions make the story enjoiable 8. The ending was a nice surprise, it fits But.. 1. Predefined career paths (a way the game is supposed to help you) are not good enough even for default settings; you'll have to look outside the game to find solutions.. why? 2. This cant be a justification for very bad encounter balancing; i have played 3/4 of the game with the settings at minimum (damage to party, no criticals, enemies depowered, etc) because without them it was too frustrating; in a party on real life, a similar effect will cause the campaing to end 3. I played only in turns mode.. i thought maybe this will take a bit longer to finish the game? Now i think.. a LOT longer 4. Ehi, wait a moment.. maybe it has too much things to do? Sometimes i thought "oh, no.. another encounter? please no" and that's not a good reaction 5. Will i ever see all they can offer? For the (4) point, probably i will not often replay the game; a pity 6. Do we needed it? You can disable it or turn into automatic-mode, but this will make you miss (i readed) locations and stuff.. bad 7. They do not leave if they disagree 8. "things back to normal" if you do not maximise crusade results? really?