Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Release Day

Games out..

I looked into character creation - and was soon overwhelmed. A bit too many options there - but they shipped the game with a few pre-defined characters, too !

I guess that I'll need DAYS to understand all of these options …

Besides, there are also options for the game difficulty …
… And everything is nicely translated !

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
I looked into character creation - and was soon overwhelmed. A bit too many options there - but they shipped the game with a few pre-defined characters, too !

I guess that I'll need DAYS to understand all of these options …

It can be overwhelming, but it gets easier after a few hours of gameplay

They've also helped by showing the main focus of each class, when you look at the general class (not the sub-classes), and their difficulty level.

You can start with a pre-defined character, or with one of the familiar classes you're comfortable with. For most of the choices in character creation and level-up, there are helpful advice indicators like the green thumbs, they're safe to follow.

You can select auto-level up for the companions, in the difficulty settings. When they level up, you just have to click on "next" all the time (you can see what they choose).

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
I looked into character creation - and was soon overwhelmed. A bit too many options there - but they shipped the game with a few pre-defined characters, too !

I guess that I'll need DAYS to understand all of these options …

Besides, there are also options for the game difficulty …
… And everything is nicely translated !

Seems they went a bit nuts with the options since the first game…I always play paladins so I went with that.

As a note, custom avatars from the first game work.

Yea I have my favorite images made for portraits which is one thing I enjoy with this game.

I put a few hours in and absolutely love it so far. If you liked the first one you'll like this one. Its just a little more polished version of the same engine & gameplay and I couldn't be happier about it.
I'm still very much in the beginning but it feels like their art & level design learned some lessons from the first game. Writing feels better too.
So far no bugs and runs like a dream on my moderate rig.

I can't even get through character creation before the game freezes. Anyone else have this issue?

Originally Posted by Furnok
I can't even get through character creation before the game freezes. Anyone else have this issue?

Nope, sorry.

As expected, most of the day was creating characters and deleting them. Finally stuck with a dex-based Sword Saint female wielding a dwarven war axe thanks to Weapon Finesse/Slashing Grace feats. It's pretty ridiculous, we'll see how it works…

No crashes, but runs hot on my 5800X CPU. Noticeably more CPU-intensive than GPU, compared to Cyberpunk. At least for my system.

Was 2,5 h in char gen last night (mostly due to reading all the classes). Appropriately, I went with a half-elf Paladin Divine Scion. Sneak attacks with a greatsword sound fun ;-)

Originally Posted by ChaosTheory
Character creation is going to take all day. Or rather, create-a-character then playing the first hour only to change my mind and create another. …and another.

This. In the first I ended up having to read loads of different guides before I could make up my mind. So many choices…I reckon I'll be actually playing the game sometime around christmas.

And now to troll the thread!

It took me less than 10 mins to make a character I intend to complete the game with!

Played for several hours yesterday evening. Didnt encounter any bugs, of course that doesnt guarantee that later parts of game are not in worse shape. It seems its very well optimized. I suppose I will not move too deep in game till I try several characters. First one I started to play with is funnyli exactly same class as first party member to join me, so high chance that class will not be my final choice for first playthrough.

I have played for a couple hours. I did spend a good amount of time making my character, the character creation is extremely well done. So many cool choices.

Great ambiance and the game does seem more polished than Kingmaker in many aspects.

One negative I will say is I don't care for the party companions so far. The only one that is semi-appealing to me is the shaman woman. I might keep her but I need to find out where the rest of the companions are so I can dump these initial ones like a hot potato…lol. They could get very annoying to me, very fast. I can tell.

Originally Posted by Arkadia7
One negative I will say is I don't care for the party companions so far. The only one that is semi-appealing to me is the shaman woman. I might keep her but I need to find out where the rest of the companions are so I can dump these initial ones like a hot potato…lol. They could get very annoying to me, very fast. I can tell.

Did you take Lann or Wenduag? I've never chosen Wenduag but there must be something spicy there.

I'm not a fan of Ember, mostly I don't know what to do with her. Later, Sosiel seems a bit shallow or at least not my style.

Seelah is a peach! I enjoy Woljif and Daeran a lot too, more my style, and later, Arueshalae.

Originally Posted by Redglyph
Did you take Lann or Wenduag? I've never chosen Wenduag but there must be something spicy there.

I'm not a fan of Ember, mostly I don't know what to do with her. Later, Sosiel seems a bit shallow or at least not my style.

Seelah is a peach! I enjoy Woljif and Daeran a lot too, more my style, and later, Arueshalae.

I'm still just at the start basically, I haven't seen many of those you named. But I'm talking about just the starting ones, like Lann, Wenduag, and Seelah --
I dislike all of them so far.

The only one semi-likeable to me is Camellia, just because she is a Shaman and seems to me not as bad as those others.

I'm interested to check out some of those other ones you mentioned when I get further in the game, I just hope I like some of them better than these first ones, heh.

It's strange, because I really liked many of the characters in the first game. My party was made up of Amiri, and the blonde paladin of royal lineage Valerie (it was between her and Octavia for my favorite), and Tristian, (well written and very useful in the party - a powerful cleric) and then of course, Octavia -- all of those characters I liked and thought were awesome. (Linzi was the only one I didn't like, but it wasn't like I hated her or anything, just thought she was "meh" and kinda weak compared to the others.)

It might just end up being I don't like the writers and/or characters they made in this sequel, its just how I am, I can be very picky when it comes to this stuff, like the party members/written companions.

Originally Posted by Arkadia7
I'm still just at the start basically, I haven't seen many of those you named. But I'm talking about just the starting ones, like Lann, Wenduag, and Seelah --
I dislike all of them so far.

The only one semi-likeable to me is Camellia, just because she is a Shaman and seems to me not as bad as those others.

I'm interested to check out some of those other ones you mentioned when I get further in the game, I just hope I like some of them better than these first ones, heh.

It's strange, because I really liked many of the characters in the first game. My party was made up of Amiri, and the blonde paladin of royal lineage Valerie (it was between her and Octavia for my favorite), and Tristian, (well written and very useful in the party - a powerful cleric) and then of course, Octavia -- all of those characters I liked and thought were awesome. (Linzi was the only one I didn't like, but it wasn't like I hated her or anything, just thought she was "meh" and kinda weak compared to the others.)

It might just end up being I don't like the writers and/or characters they made in this sequel, its just how I am, I can be very picky when it comes to this stuff, like the party members/written companions.

I had pretty much the same in Kingmaker, sometimes Harrim when I could put up with his "enthusiasm" and badly needed a cleric

I don't dislike Lann or Wenduag, but I don't feel like discussing much with them either, so I understand what you mean. Lann may grow on you later (if nothing else, he's devastating with a bow!). And you'll meet Woljif soon enough, then Daeran and Ember just after. That should put some joy in your party!

Camellia is not showing her true personality right away.

You'll see that there is a more depth to the companions than in Kingmaker.

I had the advantage of playing both alpha and beta and hence already spent hours upon hours in the creator testing and trying out all kinds of combinations and ideas.

Even with that, however, I still spent over two hours tweaking and debating and adjusting with a couple of re-starts when I decided I was totally happy. I still regret putting that one skill point into nature lore and not religion lore … but I already left the first area so not going to restart over one skill point (I hope lol … I just hate any "wasted" points).

I love character creators like this and all the options. While a lot to choose from I love reading everything and trying to come up with a balance of role playing a character with also being viable at at my custom difficulty settings.

My primary is currently moving along - pure human feral champion Warpriest focused on using his claws, NG, with light armor (as I hate it when armor impacts the skills in a negative way like athletics and mobility and stealth). So a bit of a glass canon. Main stats, in order, were STR, CON, and WIS.

For RP I try not to give into the desire to min/max. For example as a background something like Acolyte would have been the most useful but doesn't fit his background at all. He worships Gozereh (Fenris Wolf really) and in his lore is immune to cold. So selecting the Warrior of the Linnorm (sp?) Kings with its small cold resistance was much more fitting. Likewise limiting his armor to light and choosing his skill choices, and some other things, were more around his personality then trying to max game mechanics. Found a good mix of being strong but also mostly true to his lore.

Secondary, for change of pace, I made two options but moving ahead with my Sacred Huntsman/Knife Master mix.

I really like the difficulty settings with all the options. I try to focus on fairness when I adjust the settings:

- Criticals, Damage to/from enemies, enemy strength, enemy abilities and similar areas I set to be no different from the player. To me I want to know the enemy is on the same playing field versus doing, for example, 20% less damage while my team does 20% more, just "because" or they can't do criticals, etc.

- Quality of life areas are the main ones I enable. Moving with extra weight, removing all negative effects and conditions after rest or after combat … those are things I have played toggled off and know I can manage but its tedious, time consuming, and not very fun for me. So if they survive a battle then rest is all they need to recover.

- Death's Door I use as it got tiresome either reloading at the lower levels (before it was easier to resurrect due to spells and more gold). This is balanced as the enemy is either dead or teleports away (something I can't do) so Death's Door is mute for them. It just helps get through an area versus having to pack up and leave or reload.

Granted if I get really frustrated with a battle after a few tries, or doing one of those really long slogs (i.e. fight after fight after fight) and my patience grows short I will temporarily lower difficulty to get through it. In that case it's a blessing from divine powers

My "normal" settings are pretty difficult but take away some of the tedium. I wish more games had these options but I can understand why they don't as the mechanics may not allow it.

I also liked that you could toggle regular or advanced AI behavior (i.e. use more spells and abilities by the enemy) and even toggle weather effects to be light or heavy (I went with heavy as I love weather in games and enjoy it being something you have to plan/work around).

There are no major spoilers below except that I list out the companions and mention some minor personality traits related to them and some may consider that a spoiler so I put it in tags to be on the safe side.

I'm a bit late to the party (micromanaging my time is more exhausting than doing nothing).

Won't buy season pass as the previous game had horrible DLC.
Means I don't need Mythic edition either.
That leaves me either core or commander edition and commander edition is kinda odd, combines ingame items and noningame stuff…

Whatever, I'm tired of these too many offers to confuse people, going for base game.
Someone please open a separate thread on tips and hints.

I went with Wenduag. Mostly because I decided I agreed with her about not wanting a bunch of rando villages charging into danger, but also because given my party composition to that point I needed a fighter more than I needed another archer.

It's kind of funny to read from several people that they liked Camillia best because it seems clear to me that you're meant from the very start to not like Camillia.