Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Preview @Wccftech
 

Wccftech have written a preview for Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous.

Thanks Farflame!

More information.

I like those in-game tutorials, Purple gave an example in her preview of WotR. The fact they pop-up right when it happens and that it's tailored to the names, stats and actual rolls makes them very didactic. A good implementation of hands-on teaching I suppose :)

How do you approach games like this? Are you reading bits of a rulebook before or when you stumble on something new? Or are you just checking the details of a roll with the UI?

Still 4 months to release, so a lot can change, but it's looking good in general. I like a lot to have detailed tooltips, even if as a toggle option.

Yup, these were amazingly good (other than a couple of bugged ones when I played).

They provide a great deal of information that is customised to your characters and the on-screen situation.

Some of them made me smile, especially in the 1st beta ;)

https://i.ibb.co/BKBZt7K/image.png

Another game to add to my list.

3 months, 15 days! :cool:

But who's counting!! :)

I have been sinking in major hours. I have taken 3 new characters completely through chapter one so far (well the third I will finish tonight). I can't make up my mind … almost too many options.

Lobo - Human Feral Champion Warpriest of Gozeh (sp? the sky and water deity .. and I was so pleased last night when talking to someone I got a chance to "push" my deity by explaining where the wind came from … don't want to spoil so keeping it vague). He fights with claws (natural weapons) which I am finding to be very unique and different from regular weapons in many ways. He is going with Azata Mythic path of good and freedom. Neutral Good.

Wulver - Tiefling Sacred Huntsman (Inquisitor) and Knife Rogue with wolf animal companion. He is chaotic good and will be going the Trickster Mythic Path.

Garouf le Loup - Aasimar Demon Slayer (Ranger sub-class) with Wolf animal companion. He will be going the Angel Mythic Path.

I still have not found anything anywhere online about the Mythic Legend and how you do that. I assume by not taking any mythic path but its vague if something would later disqualify you if you used mythic powers. Ah well will find out eventually.

Sounds like there is plenty of content to unwrap. Can't wait!

My current character isn't far from this one of yours: inquisitor / sanctified slayer, that I liked because it gives rogue abilities like sneak attack. To change from eldritch scoundrel or arcane trickster, that's a divine caster class. Chaotic neutral, and I think I'll take the trickster mythic path too.

Not easy to keep chaotic neutral, some of the decisions push me towards CG, some of which I disagree with, they look way more neutral than good.
It's only coming in the 5th chapter so you won't get that in the beta. You'll have to take some important decisions about your path in that chapter, and this option will come up among others (I don't know whether there are prerequisites for that one). Owlcat said that mechanically, this path was even more unique than most of the other paths, sounds very interesting.

First time I've heard of this. Thanks!
Sounds interesting. I'm not a big fan of the Mystic paths anyways.
If you find out more, I'd like to hear about it.

The mythic paths are the big feature of Wrath of the Righteous. It's actually very fun because it adds another layer of abilities to your character, and interesting quests.

That's what they say about Legend on the Kickstarter page:
I'm curious to see how it differs from the others. And there is apparently yet another path option they haven't revealed, they have to keep some surprises for the final release :)

Yep, I've played the alpha and got an impression.
Two reasons why I'm not a fan:

The first is merely a personal one. I don't ike my characters to become to powerful and "epic" too quickly. In a computer RPG this almost always happens by design anyway. It's desired to give players a feeling of progression, the possibility to play around with builds, and step by step exploration of new mechanics (e.g. spells, feats etc.).
Now with the mystic paths the problem is even bigger. The characters become more powerful even faster.

The second one is that I think it was a strategically wrong decision to include this additional layer in the base game. The pathfinder system already is quite complex by today's RPG standards. Adding another layer even more scares away new players who are not experienced with the Pathfinder ruleset.

In my opinion mystic paths would have been a perfect feature for an expansion or a sequel (with a character import from WotR). By then the players would have experimented with and fully explored the basic system. So the additional layer would really be a exciting feature.
Also the problem of the characters becoming too powerfull too fast would have been scaled down.

@Morrandir I see what you mean, those are valid points but I have the impression they go against the nature of this new game.

The player is meant to be more powerful to fight off the demons, which have held their territory for a long time and are now threatening to destroy what little is left. It's comparable to those extensions where you reach higher levels. It's completely different than Kingmaker, and very epic in nature. Yet they learned from their mistakes and don't want the game to stretch for 200+ hours, they opted for replay value instead (which is good, there are so many possibilities). So the whole evolution has to happen within a reasonable amount of time.

It's not that fast, IMO, still tens of hours before getting those first glimpse of power. And it's complex, for sure, but there's time to learn, and a very good support from the UI. However, I'm expecting to see new people to the genre commenting about complexity, there's nothing for it. It was the case in Kingmaker, especially since they ported that on consoles (usually a different audience).

In my opinion, they had to add this extra layer, otherwise there wouldn't have been much novelty, it would have felt like a mere DLC. They're growing, but they can't afford to work on several games at the same time yet, so the only way is a more ambitious game.

Yeah, i see know it fits the game setting, so it comes more natural.

Well, I don't think the long playtime was a problem in Kingmaker. I liked it. (I had 160 h while doing "everything".)
So the reduced playtime for WotR increases the problem again.

I trust that they're creative enough that they could have designed novelty in other areas. There's tons of possibilities for improvement in regards to Kingmaker.

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited for WotR and I'm sure I'll have lots of fun. But the mystic paths aren't what I'm looking forward to.

160 h is reasonable, you should get about the same in WotR according to the length of the beta, at least as completionist. You'll have to see, hopefully it's not too much power too early for you.
Well, that was just my impression and understanding from their communications, it's not as if I had a long experience in building and selling games so I may be wrong ;) They did improve on almost all features.

From what I saw, the mythic paths seem to rely on the pathfinder mechanisms. It's like two classes progressing in parallel, rather than additional rules and new concepts. So it shouldn't be overwhelming in complexity, at least to understand it, it only offers additional abilities and spells. It may be overwhelming in choices - I stared at my screen for quite a while before finally choosing the path and its abilities :D

I don't entirely disagree on complexity though. I have the feeling I will never been able to do more than scratch the surface of all the possibilities this game offers; the number of classes and archetypes alone is impressive. But I see that in a good way, not as a disadvantage. Was it necessary to add more? Maybe not, but I find it nice to explore, as long as it's not at the expense of the overall quality.

Ah, that sounds great. I feared it would be a lot shorter.

Strange how Owlcat always seems to feel the need to add unnecessary layers on the top of their very good games. Imo, Kingmaker would have been a better game without the kingdom management part. Hopefully, I won't feel the same with the crusade/army management of this new game,

That depends on what bothered you in the kingdom management. It feels more like a part of the whole story in WotR and less like a disconnected feature, but it's still something else than the regular exploring/fighting/questing, something parallel.

What I played of it felt much lighter than Kingmaker's kingdom management. Sometimes you have to take care of it to access new locations, but it's not comparable to spending hours on Kingmaker's kingdom management before unlocking the next chapter.

They said we could turn it completely off so that it runs in the background but we'll have to see exactly how that's working out.