Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition

Added Spyware, enough said. Game uninstalled.

The game is good, very well made, decent voice acting, plenty of options, good story, all the bells and whistles. unfortunately the devs saw fit to add spyware and update the EULA in order to allow them to upload any data gathering tool they want onto your device, they claim to have fixed the issue by removing the spyware but last i checked, the EULA still includes the clause that lets them upload it freely, so more than likely they'll just try and slide it under the door at a later date, if, like me, you already screwed up and bought the game, unninstal it, if your thinking of buying, don't, if your absolutely desperate to play though, remember the magic words: Drink up me harty's yo ho.

First: The game builds up on Kingmaker and looks really great - more classes, more options, everything looks better and more polished. Nonetheless it's clearly still deep in beta-status with a whole lot of bugs - another game released while it's far from finished and with no rudimentary QA. I am still not too far into the game and while I myself encountered no game-breaking bugs up to now, there are quite a number of solid problems and basic annoyances as well as broken quests - and the game-breaking bugs are out there as you can see in the forums. Last two patches came up every 4-6 days. - Many options in character creation are faulty. Chosen character options often lead to "empty" abiilities. Just the two- or three-letter name with no further description or values. - Sometimes the game crashes during character creation or when you exit to main menu or desktop. - There are many glitches, for example if you turn off the visuals of headgear or backpack, often your character's color-schemes get messed up - chalky-white skin or clothes ot both. Same after loading a game or looking into your inventory. If turning off headgear, headbands are turned off only partially - the front-part still being visible. - Icons for skills and abilities got bigger and brighter, but quite some icons are missing a proper picture. You also can no longer see the rank of given skills and abilities anywhere in the game - for example extra channeling, extra lay on hands, extra rage, sneak attack miltiplier - since the counter from Kingmaker is gone in WotR - and there also is no counter in the description or mouse-over. - Transparency of obstacles got much worse - especially in caves. You often cannot see your characters or the enemies - or in small passages anything at all - and have to constantly rotate the camera even in follow-mode. Conclusion: While the storyline sounds really exciting and epic, the whole game still needs quite some patches and polishing.

Real talk, I'm enjoying the story in this game a lot. But the Crusade mechanic is getting in the way of the rest of the game. WoR uses an army battle mechanic almost identical to Heroes of Might and Magic/Age of Wonders - slightly simplified in some ways. But it also has the exact same problems those games did - you're left scrabbling for resources and can't put together armies fast enough to defend yourself, while the computer can spit tier-7 armies at you at will. I decided to take Lich path, and the mechanics that got put in place for it on the Crusade side don't work. You simply don't get enough skeletons and zombies per victory to make the recruitment nerf and additional cost for mercenaries workable. My armies have ground to a halt. This is a shame because I was having a lot of fun with that story and my Lich-Witch got a sick spellbook full of goodies when I took that Mythic path. Now, caveat, you CAN just turn crusade mode over to the Computer and play the game to your heart's content. However, it's obvious they don't want you to do that - there are things you lose out on if you do (that's bad game design, to give people an opt-out and punish them for taking it) and you can't even progress on the Lich Path if you do, since there are choices you need to make in crusade mode in order to progress that part of the story. So if you're thinking about taking the Lich Path, put a pin in that until they've done some rebalancing or until someone releases a mod that does it for them. The Crusade interface is clumsy - one common refrain I noticed is people trying to figure out how to combine armies. It's not hard once you know how to do it, but it isn't up-front obvious either. Menus aren't easy to sort through and aren't even easy to find sometimes. I guess I'll delete those save files and start again, and try Angel or Golden Dragon or something.

First and foremost, I held off on this big time because of the reviews. I finally researched it, and the issue was fixed quickly. As of this review, there are toggles (default off) for data collection. If the possibility of you opting in to send user data is a problem, skip it. Otherwise, this has been an absolute blast. With how big it is, a review at 100% would be a long time out for me, but I'm far enough along to know I love how they translated the pen and paper experience. There is a ton of variety, it walks you through the pathfinder ruleset in an engaging way (I have not played Pathfinder to know it beforehand, but do have experience with TTRPGs), and it all clicks together pretty quickly. I will say that the character creation is very overwhelming if you don't know anything about Pathfinder, but I've yet to run into a situation on normal difficulty where not min-maxing has damaged my experience, and I've come across plenty of challenge without it clearly stemming from just picking what seemed fun. Character stories are some of my favorite bits in terms of story. It does a great job of creating personality for the different companions and meaningful background. The world lore is great, The main story does a fine enough job of making decisions worthwhile and pushing you forward in play, and it branches off from traditional fantasy in a few different ways that add excitement. I'll definitely update my review in the future if I have more to talk about or subsequent playthroughs reveal something that affects the score, but I feel these are key points that need to be shared since a developer mistake that has been corrected is what most people are going to see.