Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Early Reviews Roundup

Originally Posted by Moriendor
The best thing -so far and by far- was the character creation with all those many choices and options. But the actual game was only OK up to this point.

In my case it was not the best thing, it was actually annoying.
Thanks to the previous game and inventory weight whatnot, knowing there is no nonplaying packmule waiting on the worldmap so I can not care about loot when I exit the map, I knew I want an animal companion.
And yet there is no option to show only classes with the pet possibility, but you need to browse one by one unless you are a Pathfinder expert and already know it - and I'm not.

The best thing in my case so far where I can't protest on anything are:
- Madman voiceover
- Humor in dialogues (and it has consequences!)
- KB/HoMM vulgaris minigames, so simple yet so much fun (hint: spend those 7.5K on reinforcements!)

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
good god that first home base defense fight goes on FOREVER

A bit of strategically placed Grease does wonders! ;-)

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
good god that first home base defense fight goes on FOREVER

It didn't last long in RTwP

Also, the fight is tougher unless:

Originally Posted by Moriendor
Same as Darkheart for me. Some minor niggles but no crashes and no huge, glaring issues so far, although I have only just finished the prologue and arrived in Act I.

I have to admit that I have sobered up a little after my initial enthusiasm. The best thing -so far and by far- was the character creation with all those many choices and options. But the actual game was only OK up to this point.

I'm not a huge fan of yet another RPG that has a demon invasion as a premise. That's probably the most unoriginal setting by now. At least I can't think of anything more unoriginal and overdone ad nauseam. The prospect of pushing back yet another billion demons is really not very motivating to me personally. YMMV.

The characters/companions are also only OK up to this point but it's early game so maybe the more interesting ones will show up later. The opening dungeon took a few hours (five, six?) in turn-based mode.
There are many, many fights and they last quite long because it's mostly *miss* .. *miss* .. *miss* .. *miss* .. *miss* .. you hit for 2hp .. *miss* .. *miss* .. *miss* .. you hit for 1hp .. and so on .

As always with RNG, you can't shake the feeling that the game may be "cheating" at times because it is almost unreal how unlucky you are sometimes. I played this initial run on 'Core' difficulty with a Ranger/Nomad.

For my real, full playthrough I will -as always- wait for the complete package with all DLCs and patches on board. I haven't finished Kingmaker yet and I intend to do so in the near future hopefully. The Ranger/Nomad was not too interesting so I will probably switch to a magic wielding class when playing the game for real because that should spice up things considerably. Until then I'll keep chipping away at my humongous backlog (including Kingmaker)…

I recommend going for RTwP for all the filler battles.
Only go TB mode for difficult battles.

Another hot-fix patch again on GOG. Now version 1.0.0u.

Seems I was correct it will have over 50+ patches and hot-fixes like Kingmaker.

Originally Posted by Pladio
I recommend going for RTwP for all the filler battles.
Only go TB mode for difficult battles.

Yes, when I play the prologue again then I will definitely do that since I also kind of know now which fights are filler and which ones require more micromanagement. With turn-based only and with a very completionist approach the opening dungeon is a real slog.
It made me miss the 'fast' option from Pillars of Eternity and Tyranny (yes, I know that Pathfinder has a toggle for faster party movement in the options menu and yes I have it enabled… I don't even want to know what it's like when you turn that off… 20 hours for the first dungeon? .

TB is too time consuming for me. I tried it on one battle I had difficulty with and it didn't help (at least not with the outcome of the fight, still lost, it did highlight how long it took to do certain actions I thought would be faster). What helped was simply better planning for the fight. As one person pointed out grease is a good friend, as are many crowd control spells.

The problem with TB be saved for big battles … I would fall asleep or die of old age if I had to play the defense of home base in TB. OMG what a nightmare that would be. Long enough as it is.

EDIT: I remember doing the goblin town/fort in BG3 in TB mode … it was like a 3 hour slog as I was unlucky enough to keep picking up strays which would then pull me into another group battle … and once I was in battle I wasn't going to restart from scratch to try another approach.

That being said TB was good to see how long it takes to do certain actions and helps give you some control over each person. In some ways I think its a valuable learning tool, especially for people not familiar with the rules or how things work. It gives a lot of time to study things, plan out, etc.,.

I am playing 3 TB games right now so my aversion to TB isn't as strong as it once was. Yet given a choice I will take RtwP any time. Mainly because I simply don't have the patience for TB anymore. It is nice to have as an option though and I may try it again on smaller but harder battles. Anything with tons of creatures though I avoid it like the plague.

I use grease at the two large doors to slow things down, take down the tossers, and let the soldiers help but not so much it damages the final outcome by weakening overall forces too much.

I finished chapter one and had no bugs or issues. If I really tried to nitpick maybe 2-3 times some path finding issues with spinning characters but issuing them a new move command resolves that quickly.

That being said playing RtWP which has been bug free overall.

EDIT: Quest wise I agree a lot get given to you but I found it no different than any other game I play. I remember recently in Encased when I arrived at Junk Town and got a dozen thrown at me, most by one person. My logs in Skyrim was always over-loaded with quests.

There are plenty of quests though but I don't find that a bad thing really although if a bit OCD or completionist I can certainly see how it could cause some stress - my OCD hates uncompleted or left over quests.

Originally Posted by Darkheart
A bit of strategically placed Grease does wonders! ;-)

Absolutely. Kind of embarrassing (didn't fully read the spell description) but at one point I used "Pit" in that way and caught a whole bunch of flies, but I thought they were gone, sucked down into the pit. I couldn't see them against the graphics backdrop. So I dismissed the Pit to reach enemies on the other side of it and they were all still laying there, haha.

I ended up quitting the fight at around round 13 last night because it was so late and I only had one character still upright. Today I'll leave that Pit where it is.

Originally Posted by Alrik Fassbauer
I'm always surprised - I still am - that no-one even tries to explain math based mechanics with words !
It's almost as if math people were carrying an inherent hate of words with them, cynically put.

What you really mean is most likely not math, but numbers. Numbers only are a part of mathematics.
And when it comes to numbers and sort of things happening to or with them, it's not easy to precisely describe these things with words. When you use words without numbers, you loose precision or even truthfulness. So I guess that's why words without numbers don't make much sense here.

Still liberating the city and enjoying the game. I finished some quests then got some more. Just a heads up you can easily miss many items, and secret locations.

Just found this today and partial agree with the writer.

Being evil sucks in Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - PCGamer

The main obstacle Pathfinder puts in the way of prospective monsters is one shared by too many RPGs: you are a chosen one, a hero everyone seems to have faith in, and no matter what you do you're always going to have this reputation as a saviour. It creates a dissonance straight away, letting you act like a complete arsehole with only a half-hearted acknowledgement. Just murdered a bunch of innocent people in front of your kind paladin? At best you'll get a critical comment, but then it's back to saving the world.

Now, this is a vast RPG that I've only played for 30 hours, so maybe the consequences of my actions will come back to haunt me, but that possibility isn't much of a salve. I don't want to have to wait 100 hours for the game to acknowledge the way I'm roleplaying my obviously awful necromancer.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Just found this today and partial agree with the writer.

Why only partially?

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
Just found this today and partial agree with the writer.

The main obstacle Pathfinder puts in the way of prospective monsters is one shared by too many RPGs: you are a chosen one, a hero everyone seems to have faith in, and no matter what you do you're always going to have this reputation as a saviour. It creates a dissonance straight away, letting you act like a complete arsehole with only a half-hearted acknowledgement. Just murdered a bunch of innocent people in front of your kind paladin? At best you'll get a critical comment, but then it's back to saving the world.

I haven't played any of the evil character/path so far so I can't comment on how good/bad it is, but I think the game explains why you get away with being evil.



I quite enjoyed going from evil to good alignment though, with my Lich run in beta.

I roleplayed a girl who was on the way to become a lich because she believed only then she would have enough power to win against demons - she was also confident that she won't become corrupted in the process. Now the spoilerific part:



Another quote from PCGamers:

See, you don't get Lawful Evil dialogue choices. You get lawful choices. And then you get evil choices.

IIRC, this change was made in WotR due to fan feedback that people didn't like specific [Lawful Evil], [Chaotic Good] etc options and preferred [Lawful], [Chaotic], [Evil], [Good] etc options instead. Guess you can't please everyone either way

I actually prefer the new system because (again, spoilerific):

Yeah, MAHak posted that several days ago in the other thread. I think it's naive to expect completely different dialogue choices and outcomes for all the alignments in a game as long and complex as Pathfinder.

Yeah, I've already said what I thought about this article. I'm just surprised you can get away with the companions if you start killing innocents, especially Seelah. There are other events that make them leave you, for sure. Perhaps it takes longer for the alignment to change, or perhaps companions are quite tolerant given the circumstances.

By comparison, in Encased that can happen very quickly with some of them. They let you know they don't like what you just did, and if you continue, they just leave. There is a reputation system that is not visible in WotR, or non-existent, but Encased is simpler in many other aspects. Each game has to set a limit on features somewhere.

Originally Posted by JDR13
Yeah, MAHak posted that several days ago in the other thread. I think it's naive to expect completely different dialogue choices and outcomes for all the alignments in a game as long and complex as Pathfinder.

I think the issue here ist not the game complexity itself, but the chosen adventure path being about repelling a demon invasion as the chosen hero. That's inherently a role for a somewhat altrusitic person. And altruism is the one thing that doesn't fit evil characters. The adventure path WotR just is an AP for good characters.
So it's really difficult to give the players with an evil main char a well-rounded experience here.

Originally Posted by Morrandir
I think the issue here ist not the game complexity itself, but the chosen adventure path being about repelling a demon invasion as the chosen hero. That's inherently a role for a somewhat altrusitic person. And altruism is the one thing that doesn't fit evil characters. The adventure path WotR just is an AP for good characters.
So it's really difficult to give the players with an evil main char a well-rounded experience here.

Oh I don't think there's any doubt about that. I found it kind of odd that the author didn't seem to take that into consideration.

Even in games where the role isn't as defined though, it's rare to see the evil choices as fleshed out as the good ones. I struggle to think of RPGs where it seemed like equal effort was put into both.

It might be that less people go evil and hence developers have to balance out their resources. I have yet to ever play an evil path myself, don't see the appeal and a lot of times I see people who want it they just want to be psycho-paths.

I prefer going the Lawful Evil route not the Chaotic evil kill everything only the strong survive because I'm a psychopath. As that path never interested me in any RPG.

A lawful evil villain methodically takes what he wants within the limits of his code of conduct without regard for whom it hurts. He cares about tradition, loyalty, and order but not about freedom, dignity or life. He plays by the rules but without mercy or compassion.

See Owlcat Games doesn't know how to write good evil paths. As the Lawful Evil route in Kingmaker was borderline Chaotic evil instead. Ties into what purple wrote above.

IRC, this change was made in WotR due to fan feedback that people didn't like specific [Lawful Evil], [Chaotic Good] etc options and preferred [Lawful], [Chaotic], [Evil], [Good] etc options instead. Guess you can't please everyone either way

Originally Posted by wolfgrimdark
It might be that less people go evil and hence developers have to balance out their resources. I have yet to ever play an evil path myself, don't see the appeal and a lot of times I see people who want it they just want to be psycho-paths.

You will be surprised - there are many who love going evil paths, altho it could be more mechanical reasons.

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
I prefer going the Lawful Evil route not the Chaotic evil kill everything only the strong survive because I'm a psychopath. As that path never interested me in any RPG.See Owlcat Games doesn't know how to write good evil paths. As the Lawful Evil route in Kingmaker was borderline Chaotic evil instead. Ties into what purple wrote above.

I'd disagree that Owlcats don't know how to write a good evil path - there are many evil companions in WotR and they are all fantastically written (especially Regill, god I love that purple gnome).

It's more that they the main character who are evil aren't given the same nuance (which is what the PCGamer article said, I think?)