Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition

An amazing cRPG, better than Kingmaker.

The story is fine enough, I really like the characters, the art and music are top notch as usual, but the combat, man. It feels like they took everything that worked with combat in the first game and completely tossed it out in favor of a system that is just one frustrating one sided encounter after another. The fights aren;t challenging due to cleverness, the only challenge comes from the ultimately poorly designed but overwhelming force type fights.

4/5 or even 5/5 for most of the gameplay, combat, character generation with multiple classess and races. 3/5 or probably less, for story and writing. 1/5 for plethora of bugs, performance issues, broken quests, etc. Kingmaker was even worse in this regard but that's not an excuse. Again, using players for testing. 1/5 for WXYZ agenda thrown at the player from all possible corners. You are greeted by two lesbians - hell, maybe even one of them shemale - that play very important part throughout the story. Later on you meet one gay, one male bi, each flirting with the player character from the start, few hours later a fallen succubus - which is probably the most sincere of them all - and some time later after reaching certain council, you get a sex offer from a demon lord in male form. At this point I'm kinda afraid of continuing. What's next? Optional demon orgy in the abyss? Is this really what the community wants from CRPG? Date/sex sim with all alphabet letters and configurations? If that's the case, I'm not sure I want to be a part of such community. I preordered Wrath because I liked Kingmaker. True, alphabetic agenda was present in the first one as well, but was entirely skippable as a side content. This time, not so much. I will not repeat that mistake. If I ever consider buying anything from Owlcat, I'll check first for any political crap they may force in the game. If it'll be like in the Wrath, that's a huge skip for me.

The short version: Give this game a hard pass. It’s a tedious waste of time. Go play Pathfinder on a table top, as it was intended to be played. Patches will not improve it. It’s flawed at its very core due to poor design, poor implementation, and poor writing. That said, it is a stark improvement over Kingmaker. Grade: D+ To start, let’s discuss the positives: 1. Good companions. Many of the companions are written quite well, providing interesting and often heartbreaking stories to compliment what drives them to fight the Abyss. 2. Interesting locations. The World Wound provides an interesting jumble of fantasy landscapes that all huddle together, and the game is set in late Autumn, allowing for beautiful winter vistas in some places. 3. A decent variety of classes. Note: decent, not good. There’s a wide variety of classes that give unique and different takes on different playstyles, providing some tweaks to different formulas. See Balance below. Now, the negatives: 1. Turn-based mode. It is garbage. The game doesn't use a logical turn-based mode system - instead, it tries to enforce as much PnP rules into a virtual environment as possible. Instead of having a smooth combination of turn-based and RtwP (think Neverwinter Nights), you have two systems that don't really work. 2. RtwP mode. It is also garbage. 3. Balance. I can hear you already – it’s a game with the Mythic rules. Who cares about balance? I really understand that perspective, and I share it to some extent. But, the Mythic system is probably the best part of the game. Otherwise, all the classes are horrendously balanced and there are options that vastly outclass other options. The mythic paths also favor certain abilities - making them mechanic choices, instead of roleplay choices. 4. The writing in general. This isn't Owlcat's fault, but most Pathfinder APs are just... Bad. I genuinely wish they'd just hire some writers and have Paizo approve their own storyline. It's power fantasy drivel.

It's a very very EPIC game. 80 hours of play, and still nowhere near end. Can you play it again? I don't know. Most notable positive things: - STORY. It's vast and awesome. - Translation tp major languages in fantasy style with modern slang. - Graphics are modern for isometric. - Companions are colorful, each with it's own story. Negative things I've encountered after 80 hours of play: - Loadings. loadings everywhere. And they are quite slow. - possible spoiler, beware. There is a certain changing city that changes and it's annoying as hell, because you cannot move where you want and need to WAIT for city to change again. It slows moving, and you cannot actually understand what is where. There is also tons of bugs with it, when you exit the building and appear in space. - FPS is random. From 60+ to 5-6. Can drop everywhere and without reason. - Overwhelming DnD settings? I'm used to lots of spells, but here you get so much of abilities, it's hard to understand what is for what. And you get them all the time. - Enemies saving throws are too much for normal game. It feels like all control spells are useless on rare+ mobs. - Mobs are getting overpowered. A tanky paladin with shield in defensive stance gets by a mob that don't miss at all with all 7!! attacks? And imaging 2-3 of them. - the whole crusade thing feels overpacked. But overall it's a tremendous game. Worth the money and more.