Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition

It is an ambitious 2nd game from a relatively new company, that sometimes struggles with its lofty goals, but still manages to do an impressive amount of things right. No other cRPG that I can think of offers so much variety or complexity when it comes to character creation. (Only NWN 2 comes close) It demands a lot of investment and navigating through seemingly endless options can indeed be intimidating for newcomers to the genre. Even for seasoned players it can get tedious and exhausting at times but once you wrap your head around it, it is also immensely rewarding. I think the game would greatly benefit from some more user-friendly features in that aspect but all in all, it is my main reason to return to it over and over again. There's only 3 years between the release of Kingmaker, first of the series, and this one. I think it's a short time for a game of its scope and as a result, it was pretty buggy on its release but since then Owlcat did a pretty decent job ironing most of them out. Now it plays quite smoothly and in my last couple playthroughs I've hardly encountered any memorable bugs, and certainly no game-breaking ones. When it comes to writing, well... I would say that both the story and the dialogues have improved since Kingmaker, but it's not on par with classics like Planescape: Torment, NWN2: Mask of the Betrayer, KoTOR 2; or the newer titles like Pillars of Eternity and Disco Elysium. While I may not consider it a literary achievement unlike those I listed above, it certainly serves to flesh out the world, its characters and the epic feeling of the power fantasy that it is meant to be. Audio/visual aspects of the game are very good without being revolutionary, but the soundtrack is fantastic! I'm not a fan of dungeon crawling DLCs with a minimal amount of story and impact on the main game, but for combat enthusiasts is works just fine. To be given a fair chance is the least it deserves and it made me look forward to Owlcat's next titles

Franchement on n'a droit qu'a ça en ce moment c'est de la loterie. On achète un jeu on veut pouvoir jouer et ben NON. Crashs et freezes rien qu'aux menus, je ne sais plus quoi dire ... j'ai demander un remboursement, je veux y jouer donc j'attendrais quelques patchs, 1 ou deux mois. J'ai vraiment aimer le premier donc celui la je ne peux pas passer a coté, grande est ma frustration ...

This game is so badly optimized it overheats the CPU even when reduced to 4 cores. Cyberpunk 2077 runs without any heating problems on 6 cores.

The graphics are good. It has an interesting story. The characters are entertaining. The introductory part of the game is very fun. But as soon as you're given the army to command, the fun goes right out the window. The travel fatigue when moving from one location to another makes it feel like you're struggling to slog through the game. The time limit on quests makes it feel like the game designers are trying to rush you through the game and penalizing you for wanting to explore the world they built. The army battles are just meh. The game was advertised as this grand warfare experience, but you're basically just moving icons around a grid. Overall it is disappointing.

I loved Kingmaker despite its flaws; played it twice. Wanted to like this but finally gave up on it. The few pros: great music, fun if unbalanced combat, fun mythic system. Now the cons. Yes, the game is annoyingly, cringily woke. Could be worse, but still pretty bad, as others have covered. Uncritically reproduces the currently culturally hegemonic morality as presupposed orthodoxy (multiculturalism, internationalism/globalism, pro-LGBTQIABCD+, etc.). Only the gay romance option triggered for me; no way to say "I'm straight". Almost all fighter/tank NPCs female. Etc. Main issue here: how heavy-handed and forced it all feels. Tons of bugs, which might improve over time. None were game-breaking for me, and I didn't experience any crashes, but I only made it about halfway before finally losing interest. *Very* poorly written. Immersion-breaking language like "getting wasted"; where Tolkien wrote "As you wish, I care not", this would read "Okay, I don't care". Nurah hates the PC and blames them for her whole life even though she just met you... would at least make some sense if it were Galfrey. No realistic reaction to Woljiff's betrayal available. Etc.: I could go on all day. Unbalanced af. Highly customizable difficulty just ends up meaning you'll either find fights too easy or too hard. The worst of postmodernist literary conventions (subversion for subversion's sake). Demons that are good, Aasimar that are evil, etc. Literally why even have angels and demons if you're going to do this? Alignment system feels like a joke. Writers' understanding of morality reeks of the superficial pseudo-profundity of the eternal graduate student who's read one or two books by Nietzsche and never progressed further. "Lawful" might as well be evil half the time. A thousand other small things-e.g., "Do you want to meet with the traveling merchant?" + only option is "continue"- but I'm out of words. TL;DR a huge disappointment. Worst of all, lacks the charm of Kingmaker.