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.

J’ai découvert la licence avec Pathfinder: Kingmaker, qui m'avait laissé une forte impression malgré des défauts, je n'ai pas hésité à soutenir financièrement sa suite. Wrath of the Righteous est un jeu gargantuesque, avec une pléthore de classes disponibles, une multiplicité des embranchements scénaristiques et une kyrielle de quêtes. La trame principale, riche en rebondissements, trahisons et intrigues, ne déroutera pas les vétérans de ce type d'aventure. Visuellement, malgré son format 3D isométrique, le jeu se distingue par des graphismes agréables. Un gros effort a été consenti sur les effets des compétences et des sorts. De plus, les animations et la modélisation des personnages méritent d'être soulignées. La bande son est une pure réussite. Les thèmes composés pour accompagner l’aventure sont cohérents et variés. Le compositeur Dmitry V. Silantyev s’est vraiment surpassé en proposant une bande son de grande qualité qui parvient toujours à souligner le souffle épique de cette aventure. Comme il est de coutume dans les RPG, Wrath of the Righteous propose une galerie de compagnons variés qui, pour la plupart, sauront captiver l’attention. Chacun d'eux possède son propre caractère et ses aspirations, et vos choix pourront entrer en conflit avec ceux-ci. Malheureusement, il serait inexact de dire que tous les compagnons sont intéressants ; certains se révèlent être des archétypes creux. Heureusement, cela reste une minorité. Enfin, il convient de parler du support du jeu. Owlcat a été exemplaire dans ce domaine, même si le jeu est sorti dans un état perfectible, avec des bugs divers, des quêtes inachevables, des crashs et des ralentissements. Cependant, le studio s’est appliqué à corriger ces problèmes au fur et à mesure de la sortie des patches, peaufinant le jeu en modifiant l’interface, en corrigeant les bugs et en ajoutant même du contenu gratuit à la demande de la communauté, comme des ajouts à certaines voies mythiques.

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.