I'm putting this on Shelved and not Abandoned out of sheer cope.

Damn, I'm fairly torn on this. On one side of the scale, it has a very deep implementation of Pathfinder that warms my heart. I got all the nostalgia fuzzies seeing everything - I spent a huge amount of time playing Pathfinder and it's what I learned to DM on, so I really loved that. Golarion is a fantastic setting as well, and it's really cool to see storytelling take place here with everything I'd only read in handbooks brought to life. I loved that so much.

Unfortunately, while in theory I should be gushing about this game, there's something about it that just does not hook me. The writing is solid, but the characters still somehow feel stale in execution, even when the ideas of the characters are solid. The gameplay system is a treat as well - as I said, I really enjoy this implementation of the ruleset's intricacies, but I can't help but feel that somehow the encounter design is a bit hollow. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it just does not click.

Still, I was enjoying myself and found myself sinking deeper and deeper in the game during Act 1, and by the time that finished was ready for the game to dive in and go for it. Then...I was hit with the Crusade system instead, which put a little bit of weight on the opposite end of the scale. I tolerated it in Act 2, but in Act 3 it gets even more robust and combined with everything else outlined above, this bit of friction firmly tipped the negative side of the scale downward, killing most of my interest in coming back. It feels like Owlcat made two separate games and then mashed them together, and it just does not work. I realize there is a mod that pretty much removes the Crusade component, but I think I'm done for now. I'll use that mod as my cope for labeling this as shelved and not abandoned. Maybe someday.

Playtime: 20 Hours

Not for me sadly. I was interested in this game since it was well reviewed and I have enjoyed some CRPGs in the past like Wasteland 3, PoE and Divinity Original Sin. There were some things I did like, such as the quality of life features in terms of looting and inventory management and that you can freely switch between turn based and real time with pause combat. However the game just has a dull presentation for me. The prologue section makes you think there will be a lot of voice acting but there really isn't unless its main missions or you meeting your companions for the first time. Most of the time you have to read a lot of text which I don't usually mind in games, but a lot of the writing can feel very long winded and dull to read imo. The combat also is very party based where you have to buff your party before going into battle but most of your spells have a limited use per day, which I know is part of the tabletop version, but its just not fun for me in a video game setting. By no means is this a bad game and I wouldn't tell you to not buy it, it just depends if your a fan of tabletop games or your willing to get into the systems and rule set. Unfortunately it wasn't for me.

All Games I've Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-games-i-have-played-and-reviewed-ranked/

In many ways Kingmaker was the modern Baldur's Gate, a faithful, ambitious, and rough implementation of tabletop roleplaying into a video game setting. Wrath of the Righteous is the modern Baldur's Gate 2, with much sharper writing, many gameplay tweaks, and an amazing reactive plot that weighs every decision and path you take meaningfully, allowing for a true role playing experience.

Starting off with the negatives, I don't love the encounter design in this game, admittedly there's a high chance im not utilising the mechanics at play to their fullest with every encounter (for reference I played a slightly modified normal difficulty) but there was a high occurrence of just turning a corner and finding your frontliner suddenly getting obliterated by some jackoff throwing 8 axes at the start of battle with a high initiative. Loot is also a bit inconsistent, there's a high amount of unique great loot, but as someone that focused purely on my MC using a dueling sword I legitimately could not find one come the penultimate act, leaving them relying mostly on the fact that they are the MC to carry that weight.

This game at its present state is also buggy, unsurprising given their last game, but still I ran into many bugs including not being able to ride my giant centipede, even though it was my mount which still devastates me to think about. As of the time of this writing, I can't even see the credits since it crashes upon them triggering for me. If bugs annoy you, I do recommend waiting down the line for a more polished experience like its predecessor.

The biggest and most glaring narrative has to be the crusade portion, or more specifically the crusade battles which take the form of a Heroes of Might and Magic rip off but there's no real strategy here, its all in the numbers and it takes a decade and honestly the actual battles themselves aren't worth your time, especially come chapter 5 where the game has the audacity to reset your armies. This portion isn't all bad though, decision making with the council is even stronger than Kingmaker's iteration, where there are more people contributing to discussion and potential solutions, it feels impactful with some strong storylines running throughout each council's major discussions. I would say don't turn on the Crusade auto mode however since it bars you from something as important as creating fast travel points, I do recommend downloading the mod Combat Relief to skip the battles but still engage with Crusade mode as the auto mode bars you off from certain Mythic Paths and other such important parts. I won't lie, crusade mode does pad your playtime out, and it is a drag so let's talk the best part of the game, the companions.

The companions in this game are fantastic, the writing quality for them is very strong and they are all fleshed out well with fantastic conclusions to every companion questline I finished. Riding off the main criticism of Kingmaker, the companions here regularly interact with each other, giving a proper idea of the relationships between party members. Western RPGs are normally pretty terrible at inter-party relationships, normally opting for an orbiting around the main character which WotR does not suffer from. Companion comments on events are normally further commented on by another, resulting in a back and forth mid conversation without involving the main character while adhering to character relationships, and it adds a crazy amount of personality to everyone. Yes, CRPGs have had ambient conversations between party members before like Dragon Age, but Wrath of the Righteous conversations being interspersed between every conversation gives them much more life than most western RPGs can claim.

Owlcat Games have also outdone themselves on the adaptational front, taking a malleable set of books intended for every Dungeon Master to put their own spin on to craft an excellent narrative that takes significant creative license where they could to completely overhaul the villains to function as an excellent story in it's own right, 10 excellent stories really since every mythic path (the system that sees your player character becoming unto a god) sees significant changes in main character identity and ambition, with a significant mythic questline to follow for each path boasting a different ending, and possibly a different final boss battle too in some cases. For this playthrough I played an aeon, an arbiter of cosmic space-time law thinking I'd be some sort of time cop, where I kinda am, but also my character frequently debated within themselves about the true nature of justice, impartiality and what it truly means to be a being with that kind of power. The aeon itself boasts several different endings depending on how your character combats this question, and I have to say the one I got for achieving what my mirror reflection decided was a true judge of cosmic law was an impressively bittersweet affair with significant gravitas and emotion behind what I had to do.

Highly recommend this game to any CRPG enthusiasts, this is one that should be remembered down the line along with the greats, and an incredible follow-up to Kingmaker.

woah

This game was a love letter to the original Pathfinder adventure path. That's what I believe. The game must have been made with a sort of reverence to the AP. There's just so much here, it would take me an hour to even describe all the systems in this game, all the dialogue choices, how deep everything really is. It's an incredibly faithful adaptation of Pathfinder's tabletop mechanics, and that isn't even the most impressive part of this game. The thing that really blew me away, that actually surprised me, the thing I've really not seen in another CRPG like this, is the depths to which you could roleplay your character, and how much your roleplay actually mattered. Who you are, what you say, what you do, the world reacts to it all. Dialogue changes, events change. I was consistently impressed by how the game acknowledged and respected who my character was. There was never a choice that I remember (long ass game btw), where I thought to myself, "I don't have a way of expressing my character here".

This game is nothing short of Impressive. And yet I have to wonder what Owlcat are going to do next. The Pathfinder system has PROBLEMS, especially when you get to high level play (this stuff is documented elsewhere, I don't want to write a freaking dissertation on a 12 year old TTRPG system). The last act of this game definitely suffered from the Pathfinder system. The other issue is with the encounters. I have to compare this game to Divinity Original Sin 2 (that's how good this game is!!). Encounters in DOS2 all feel handcrafted - the same cannot be said about this game. You will fight trash mob after trash mob, as the resource grind is necessary to make boss encounters difficult (or is it?). It's a limitation of the Pathfinder system. You grind the PCs down, then they fight the boss. It's how it Works. Except this isn't very engaging for a video game. In fact, at times, it's boring. It makes me wonder what Owlcat does from here. They clearly have the chops to produce these amazing ports of tabletop APs, but I can't help but feel like they're sort of trapped. Do they continue to port these games faithfully, or do they start designing fixes? I'm not sure, but I'm excited to see what they do next. I so want these games to be something I can recommend to people in the same way I can recommend DOS2. Like, this game deserves to have a million billion fans, it's amazing. BUT! There are so many issues inherent to it that I can't.

So, for now, I'll remember fondly the time I spent with Wrath of the Righteous. I'll meet it where it's at. I'll praise it for what it is, flaws and all. And, at the end, maybe one day, Owlcat will figure out a way to make the perfect game.

Insanely cool CRPG, which I don't play a whole lot of because so many of them tend to drag. WOTR is long, and it's wordy, but the writing across the board is super compelling and the gameplay is great. Not nearly enough d20 adaptations attempt turn based combat faithful to the tabletops, and fewer still do it so well.

I think one of the most impressive aspects of the game is its reactivity in the mid and late game. It's a little railroady towards the beginning, and thematically much of the game pushes the player in a Lawful Good direction, but ultimately the choice is yours and I haven't played a game that made being this evil this much fun in a very long time. It might have the best tyrannical undead lord RP I've ever played, full stop. Choices have meaningful consequences in both the dramatic and mechanical sense, with many decisions influencing events far, far into the game in ways you don't always expect, which is just fantastic in a genre plagued with meaningless binary Paragon/Renegade dialogue trees. Even when going for a particular alignment, I found myself making a lot of value judgments based on my feelings because the characters and the plot had me emotionally invested in the goings-on. There aren't a lot of games that truly make me feel rotten and satisfied in equal measure for doing something evil, or so torn over figuring out the right thing to do.

The character writing is (mostly) top notch, with the worst examples just being sort of dull in comparison to the high notes. When the character writing hits the high notes, it REALLY hits the high notes. The companions, especially the neutral or evil-aligned ones, are filled with some real charmers. Daeran, your sassy gay evil aristocrat divine caster, is a treat. He carries a tragic backstory tinged with mystery, but ultimately his alignment is what it is simply because he is a hedonistic dickhead, and he's all too happy to explain this to you, no excuses. Then there's Woljif, tiefling thief and dumbass scoundrel, who's a hoot, but heralds a subplot about confidence and powerlessness that adds depth to the character you wouldn't expect. Camellia, half-elf shaman is... well, she's unforgettable. Wenduag, fucked up bloodthirster and half-spider mutant, is fascinating, seemingly puddle-deep when introduced but later revealing a remarkable complexity behind her backstabbing tendencies and might-makes-right philosophy. Regill, who is essentially Darth Vader in gnome form, might be the coolest companion in an RPG in decades. There are no hidden depths to Regill. He just rules. Even the side characters and antagonists are full of life. Areelu Vorlesh might be one of my favorite RPG villains since Irenicus, and in my opinion rivals the latter for complexity in character and motivation.

When these elements mix, when the themes meet the characters and the characters meet morality, this is where the game's writing really shines. There's a particular young priest, a farm boy of no more than 20, introduced close to the start of the game. For much of the early chapters he is a background character, you hear his story and get a feel for his personality by talking to him - he's meek and ineffectual, but some great courage in him inspired him to drop his plow, pick up a sword, and leave home to come fight the demons in Sarkoris. Later, he transitions to being an important merchant, developing his cleric powers and learning to heal your troops on the march. You get a sense that this boy is finding his wings, that one day he will lead a great and noble legacy as a hero of the crusade. Then chapter 3 happens. In a completely missable sidequest, after investigating the temple he has been put in charge of protecting, you discover that in his cowardice he has been harboring a group of cultists in the basement. Their leader placed a curse on him so that if anyone ventures into their base, a swarm of rats will eat him alive from the inside out. And so he lies to you. Deceives you. Tries to hide the truth from you. It's hard not to sympathize, but the boy's lack of responsibility is quite literally getting dozens, perhaps hundreds of people killed. In a flash, the game demonstrates to you with a moral dilemma just how evil your enemy truly is, how hellish this war and its consequences, how out of his depth this peasant boy has landed, how he should 100%, absolutely never have left his comfortable home and journeyed to this horrible place. After that, the choice is yours. Do you venture into the basement to find clues as to the cultists' whereabouts? Do you take mercy on the poor child and agree to overlook the den, perhaps at the cost of more lives? Maybe you're an evil necromancer and your character chastises the boy, enters the basement without a second thought and resurrects the corpse of a noble warrior from within to serve as your thrall, the only price you pay being a rotten feeling in the pit of your stomach when you come back up the stairs and find the boy devoured.

I have to stress here that at this point you have known this character for, at minimum, a dozen hours. You were given time to grow attached, to dream of his ideal future before the cruel reality of this war rears its head and you are given power over his fate. Wrath of the Righteous is littered with stories like this, great and small, starting early and carrying forward into the heart of the game dozens and dozens of hours in before reaching their conclusions, and every time the power to influence these events lies in your hands - but sometimes the influence you have may not be as great as you like. So you think about them. You think about them hard. You struggle over right and wrong, fair and unfair, and perhaps ultimately go against your own conscience simply to play a role - you roleplay. And then you understand what the term "RPG" truly means.

The game's most glaring flaw, undoubtedly, is the half-baked nature of the Crusade Mode metagame that crops up in chapter 2 and beyond. It's HoMM-inspired, but lacks critical elements that makes those games work and is absurdly poorly balanced. Your first battle with a spellcasting demon general WILL result in entire stacks of units being melted by lightning bolts that do infinite damage for some godforsaken reason. You can turn this off, but you miss out on some useful magical goodies and what I think are some genuinely interesting RP moments that ultimately contribute a whole lot to the fun of picking a mythic path. After all, why would you deliberately skip the part where your undead kingdom begins to annex its neighbors? The solution, universally agreed upon by the playerbase, is to cheat. Just install the toybox mod and cheat through the Crusade layer. You'll miss nothing, as the real meat and potatoes of the game lies in the Pathfinder stuff anyway.

As an aside, it really pisses me off that Backloggd won't let me make this my game of the year even though it's still being updated.

Anyway, great game, highly recommend. Areelu Vorlesh did nothing wrong.

rolling 1d5..... it's a 4.5! yes i rolled a 4.5. it landed on its edge. shut up, i'm the gm here.

this was the jankiest, buggiest mfer i've played in a long time (possibly since kingmaker, lol)--and it was the ENHANCED EDITION, at that!--but.... (cue a pillar of light hitting the ground and the Mythic Power song kicking in) i fucking loved it!

what a wonderful, long ride it has been. wa'ah has everything i look for in an rpg: a big playable cast of interesting, intriguing, fun characters of all sorts and some great banter between them, myriad character progression possibilities and an addictive combat system that makes working out builds very rewarding, TONS of smaller side quests and side areas with their own little stories, often mysterious and fascinating and surprising, an epic story with lots of twists and turns and a good amount of player agency and, of course, an incredible soundtrack.

it's far from a perfect game, it has a lot of messy systems and bad ux, not to mention the bugs and the glitches and the jank, and i had to spend some time tweaking it with the fantastic toybox mod to really make it work for me, but it's 100% one of those more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts games, absolutely no doubt about that.

i would be here all evening if i went into all the details with a game as huge as this, so i'm just gonna say that wherever owlcat goes, i'll be there... just maybe not day one, or even year one. wotr is now easily one of my favorite rpgs which, by extension, makes it one of my favorite games because rpgs are My Jam, and it feels really good to feel this way almost a couple decades into this hobby. i absolutely cannot wait to see what the studio does with Rogue Trader.

before that, i have a LOT of rpg favorites to revisit, because boy did this awaken a thirst for more rp-gaming in me. 2023 truly the year of the crpg.

I've had only bad experiences with Pathfinder: Kingmaker but I actually am having a lot of fun with this game compared to its predecessor.

I think the main issue I have with the game is the combat, and it was an issue I also had with Kingmaker. I think there's more micromanagement in this game than in Kingmaker but I don't remember. I think what I dislike generally is the combat system.

Character customization and classes are 10x better than in 5e, which is what I've always loved about Pathfinder tabletop. There's so many more options and they did a fantastic job in WOTR. The fact you can upload your custom portrait is quite honestly amazing.

But yeah, I highly recommend this game more than Kingmaker. It's so much better and doesn't delete your saves like what happened to me.

I have not played too many crpgs to completion, but f**k me, this is an amazing experience. There are a lot of complaints about the game that I find truth in, the ridiculous power spikes, the sometimes weird dialogue choices, etc. However, despite all these flaws, I really think this is one of the best crpgs out right now, period. Each major character feels real, each decision feels impactful, and the fact there are 9 more paths for me to play, plus a secret ending, baffles me. I think what I find the worst about this game is just trying to learn the Pathfinder system as a whole, even as a D&D5e DM it was hard to adapt fully. It really carries the double-edged sword of being a gameplay challenge (where you can pick between turn-based or RTWP amazingly) and an invigorating story where companions and characters CARE about your decisions. It's an amazing experience, after I get the secret ending I'll decide if it's a 5/5 or not.

Starting my Backloggd with my 4-5th play-through (haven’t yet finished any of them). This is a complicated one. Really dug the first Pathfinder game but did not finish on account of bugs. Wrath shows a nice evolution in many aspects although I prefer the story and tone from the first. Never really connected with the whole demon centered theme but it has been slowly growing on me.

Notes for now:
Good:
- one of the best CRPGs available.
- impressive choices and consequences.
- very in depth character customization.
- good story. Nice characters.
Not so good:
- inconsistency in presentation: some parts are really impressive, with good animation and voice acting, while other parts fell unfinished and lacking.
- setting segregates some choices in character creation, prioritizing ones specialized in dealing with demons.

foolishly, i put this in turn based mode and had an okay amount of fun until i got to a defense mission where 20ish "allied" npcs take their useless moves one by one while enemy reinforcements spawn every turn. the fight took something like 32 turns and i uninstalled the game immediately afterwards.

honestly, i would have powered through even a little bit more than that, because there's something satisfying to me about pathfinder's ridiculous character building system, but the writing was the nail in the coffin: verbose, unengaging, boilerplate fantasy about angels vs demons, delivered in a combination of font and text box that made my eyes tire really quickly for some reason.

i'm sure there's a fun game in here if you're willing to look for it. not for me though.

very much felt like the characters did not care for the story they were in at all. dropped after ~7 hours because the ratio of funny comments/voices to actual interesting writing beats felt too heavily skewed heavily in the wrong direction. I'm fine with levity in games but you have to actually make me care about the plot before you start throwing it everywhere which this game failed to do

combat seemed good though I didn't have the time to properly grasp it, and character building was the most entertaining part of the game for me. you could waste hours here and always end up with something interesting, though I've heard it is possible to make "wrong" combinations that outright forbid you from progressing if you allocate your stats improperly. an unfortunate concession to make for a robust character building system

fairly sure i'm not even 1/3 through my first time through this game and i'm like 150 hours in (though i did restart once after like 20 hours lol). i have a feeling i'll have more to say later on; consider this a "first impressions" kinda thing, silly as that may seem after so much time with it.

getting some complaints out of the way, it's a pretty flawed game in terms of bugs and some extremely fucked balance (playing it on easier difficulty settings is highly recommended until you really know the game (and i still don't feel i do)) and moments of frustrating writing clashing with the roleplaying possibilities of its pnp systems (e.g. you can't always rescue someone from their fate due to a curse placed on them despite there being a spell called remove curse available and stuff like that feels... kinda bad, sometimes). that's pretty much it, i guess? i could probably complain about the overwhelming timesink crusade system introduced in the second act, but i switched that shit to automated/story mode so i could focus on the baldur's gate-style adventuring and such. the half-star i docked from my rating could probably be a bigger mark down, but, see...

what makes wrath of the righteous so compelling to me, aside from the incredibly deep character-building, is its campaign and setting: a realm torn asunder by the worldwound, a vast fracture in the planet's surface from which the abyss emerges - a place where gods and demons rally their forces in a game of chess... where they literally can't intervene too much because the conflict would simply obliterate this domain over which they struggle for power and influence. and this is where you come in: chosen by the good gods, granted the power to choose your path - even with the freedom to become a devil or a swarm-that-walks or whatever...! power fantasy to the extreme.

and this is what sets wrathfinder apart from its ilk: it features a variety of mythic paths for you to choose as you progress (angel, lich, demon, azata, trickster, legend, and several more) and a pretty large cast of possible companions - to the point that it feels more properly inspired by bg2 than most of these "new wave of oldschool crpg" games in terms of the sheer possibilities. for my first time through it, i'm going azata: chaotic good butterfly-winged friendship is magic superhero bard romancing a succubus who wants to be a good girl after being touched by the goddess of dreams and made aware of her sins. (you can either help her with this or decide to be a total fucker and corrupt her, destroying her newfound ability to love.) game's absolutely enormous and i'm likely to be playing it all year (irl circumstances willing (not to be overly cryptic, but my mental illness is catching up with me again)).

uh, anyway... yeah, game rules. also i love the very bg-styled music, all that Epic Brass Blaring Mightily.

Nocticula: gaslights, gatekeeps, girlboss
My Azata Protag: haha slay queen!
Ember: nonono, don't gaslight and gatekeep, only girlboss
Protag: hmmmm, maybe she's right.
Nocticula: hahaha, get out of here you stupid child
Ember and Protag leave
Nocticula: hmmmm, maybe she's right.

Abandoned: Sept 7 2021
Time: 11 Hours
Platform: Mac

I really wanted to like this game, I really did. Pathfinder Kingmaker is a game I'd considered playing many times during my last month or two of CRPG-binging, but one I'd stayed away from, mostly due to its daunting length and reputation for being a little stilted on the writing front. With this new one coming out though, and a promise to be more reigned in and a much greater focus on writing, I thought I'd give it a go.

Once I messed around with the settings enough to get it running smoothly on my machine, I hopped into character creation and whaddya know, it's literally just Pathfinder! If you don't know, Pathfinder is a tabletop role playing game heavily based on an older version of D&D, seeking to preserve some of the number-crunchyness that got left by the wayside in more recent editions. Anyways, this is probably the most faithful and expansive conversion of a ttrpg to CRPG I've seen since Neverwinter Nights 2, with a huuuge variety of classes and races and build options to choose from. Plus, the game has an option to operate either in real-time mode, a la Baldur's Gate and Pillars of Eternity, or turn-based mode, which is how Pathfinder on a tabletop is actually played. So if you want to be able to play Pathfinder by yourself, you'd be hard pressed to find a more polished and complete way to do it.

All that is great, and by all accounts improved from Kingmaker. But it's not really what I play these games for. I'm much more interested in the way tabletop mechanics interact with a story, especially with the way they allow you to fully explore a character's internal world when done best, and the way they can build a world that's believable as a bustling city, or a lonely hill in a forest. On this I'm kind of split with this game. The story is great, one of the better paced stories in a game like this that I've played, and the way it explores the mythology of Pathfinder and the world it takes place in is truly stellar, truly on par with the best. What I don't like, however, is the writing.

Now, I haven't played Kingmaker, so I'm not sure if it's any better than in that game, but what's here should be fun and full of character, and while it certainly is trying to be all of that, it just falls so short of any kind of naturalism or believability. The dialogue reads like it was copied out of a prebuilt D&D module. It's technically witty and telling about whoever's speaking it, but reading it in a game like this leaves me parched. There's an emphasis on dialogue, but no work to make it interesting to actually read that dialogue, outside of making the subject of what they're talking about interesting. But even with that it just feels like I'm reading a saltine cracker most of the time.

And that's not even mentioning the way alignment is implemented in the dialogue system!! Pathfinder has the same morality system as D&D, Good/Neutral/Evil and Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic, with any combination of the two axes providing a certain alignment (such as Chaotic Good, the Batman morality, or Lawful Evil, the morality of demons who need you to sign contracts before they take your soul). The way the game uses these, it treats them as two seperate axes. You can choose Chaotic choices in conversation, you can choose Good choices in conversation, but you can't choose a Chaotic Good option. That might not sound like a big deal, but the writing between the Chaotic option and the Good option sound like completely different characters. Same with Evil and Lawful. It's less liek you're role-playing a character with a certain morality to them, and more like you're choosing the good or chaotic options because your character is good and chaotic. A subtle difference, to be sure, but one that infects every part of the game, even the companion writing.

On top of THAT, there's this... crusade system. You see, you end up leading an army against the invading demon army. It governs the way you cross the world map, with demon encampments blocking your traversal until you build an army and deal with them, and it's just, like, boring and slow and all kinds of underbaked. Recruiting units is tedious and expensive, and battles feel like they have random outcomes. As a small, optional minigame in a much larger CRPG it'd be fine, forgettable, but not worth talking about. As not only a mandatory part of the game, but a sizeable chunk of the way you even get from point A to point B on the map? It's at best annoying and at worst utterly detestable, and it's what killed my motivation to continue the game.

It's not a bad game, not in the slightest, and if you're looking to play a ttrpg on a computer you could do much worse, but if you're looking for something with the quality of a Bioware RPG, or an Obsidian RPG, or hell even an InXile RPG you should keep looking.

Do you know what a crane is? Not the bird, the machine. They're operated via ropes, chains and/or pulleys, and at their core they’re actually composed of several smaller machines working in tandem.. Most of the time they're used for carrying heavy loads, and they can get pretty tall. Naturally, the saying 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall' applies. You can reinforce them with pneumatic stabilizers, supports, counterweights and all that jazz, needing more and more as it gets taller. Unfortunately the reinforcement you can offer is limited, meanwhile the loads and height are theoretically infinite. Eventually, it'll fall over, or something will break.

In many ways, Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (WOTR from here on in) is a crane, and the load is Owlcat's lofty ambitions. Even as I'm writing this, I'm not sure whether the game succeeds in hoisting them high or not.

There's a lot to this game. Even if we just spoke about the story in a vacuum, there are an incredible amount of plot threads - major and minor - running through and parallel to the main story that I can't really summarise them in a snappy tl;dr. Factoring in story-altering Mythic Paths, side quests, companion story arcs and all the mechanics? We'd be here for a while. At the time of this review my hour count is around 100~. That's not repeated playthroughs, it's just one, and I am well aware I missed a lot of content.

The first thing you see upon clicking "New Game" and selecting a difficulty is an infinitely complex character creator. This is both an omen of what's to come, and a filter. It seems simple at first, merely asking you for a portrait and race... Then there's everything else. Merely selecting something as simple as "Paladin" brings up a million options: What's your domain? Deity? Pick some feats. What's your character's background? Are they a normal member of their race or something else? Distribute some stat points, now some skill points. These aren't complaints, the complexity is great. There's a good vessel here for roleplaying and once you're familiar with the system the creation process is super intuitive.

There... are two problems with both of those - the roleplaying and the complexity - that we'll get to later. You may also notice that I specified "once you're familiar", and that's when the game's first real downside comes in: This game is not newcomer friendly.
While the game mercifully offers respecs for a fair price, the system is far from intuitive. For starters, levelling up does not immediately level up your chosen class. No, you have to pick the class again to level it up. This seems simple, right? And it is!
The problem begins to rear its head when multiclassing comes into play, and the game begins bringing up concepts such as Caster Level.
See, unlike in many other RPGs with classes/jobs/vocations/what have you, multi-classing is remarkably easy. Merely pick another class on level up, right?
When you read the phrase ‘caster level’, your assumption may be that it refers to ‘level of the caster’. I did too, and I’ve spoken to many people who made the same mistake. No, ‘caster level’ specifically refers to the level of the class from which a spell is derived.
Once you understand this, it’s clear as day. Until then… You may be tempted to put 1-3 levels into Sorcerer while playing as a Paladin to get some extra damage spells. You can do this, nothing is stopping you, but those spells will eternally be weak if they scale with caster level. Compounding this is the exceptionally low level cap: Only 20 levels are available to you, and they’re easily wasted while dicking around.
Again, the complexity on display is not a bad thing, and respecs are cheap - especially with how much loot you get. It’s just part of a larger issue with this game and onboarding, but we can talk about that when I cover gameplay.
As for the questing, I’ll say this: There are many games on Steam tagged as ‘choices matter’. Some of them in jest, some of them sincerely. Having played many of them, and many other games on other platforms/storefronts that purport to have ‘meaningful choices’:

Wrath of the Righteous is perhaps one of the only games I can think of where a lot of your choices have tangible, meaningful impacts on the story. Not just the main story, but side stories too. Even as late as the finale, things were popping up in response to dialogue choices I’d picked 40-50 hours prior.
This is not the modern RPG style of ‘choices matter’ either. You are not free to say and do whatever until the designated MAKE CHOICE prompts appear. Most things you do will come back to haunt you - for better or worse - later on. These appear early in the game and just keep going. An overarching theme of the game is that while your control over your own destiny is debatable, the consequences of your decisions are yours alone. Hell, NPCs even comment on your deity if it’s applicable.
Perhaps most impressively is that many of these choices are not binary, and oftentimes the player is given the choice to bail on something. Indeed, my pursuit of Lichdom in the main story was met with apprehension and a not-insignificant number of my allies begged me to stop as I cast off my humanity and defiled the dead. The option to bail was always there, yet I chose not to take it anyway. When the option was no longer there, and I felt horrified by the scorn thrust upon me or the consequences of my inhumanity, all I could think was…

I chose this.

The plot’s general outline is the same for everyone: The Worldwound has been dumping out demons for a century and you have to solve the issue. What really sets WOTR apart from other games and especially other RPGs is how much control you have over defining your character’s motives. Are they doing this as a bare-fanged power grab? Are they a zealot? Will they take extreme measures and cast off their humanity to win? How many ‘By any means necessary’ declarations do they have in them? Or are they forced into it?

The decision is in your hands. This is not The Witcher or FFXIV or your favourite story where the protagonist’s motivations are handed to you on a platter with no choice for a different serving.

Accentuating the story is the Mythic Path system; having received a mysterious but malleable grand power from an unknown source, you’re granted the choice to shape it how you will. These have an impact both on your character as a mechanical entity, but also the story. The power afforded to you and the shape it takes can act as a key, and like in real life not all keys fit all locks.
I played a Lich, so I can’t comment on the others, but I thoroughly enjoyed the personal story I witnessed. Playing as a Neutral Evil character, I decided to forsake my humanity and anything else in pursuit of closing the Worldwound. At first it was simply following the course of pragmatism, but eventually that wasn’t enough. Curious research gave way to new goals and with those came opportunities to command the dead.
But this is not Dragon Age: Inquisition, and the opposition are not idle. As they became more dangerous, I was met with no choice but to rise and meet the challenge. My allies whispered in my ear and begged me to reconsider, imploring me to stop what I was doing and hold onto my humanity.
I did not heed their advice.

The final act of the game was not triumphant. Iomedae’s glorious crusade had become a march of the dead, and many of my Good aligned allies deserted. The titular righteousness had deserted, and there were more corpses in my army than mortals by the time the credits rolled. Indeed, even party members deserted me for this. Many of whom I cared a great deal for, and enjoyed the company of.

By the end of the game, my allies were amoral fools, soulless pragmatists, and the eternal silence of death hanging over my base. This was both my punishment and my reward. I said up above that I was met with no choice, but the game was not going to give me the luxury of holding onto that particular delusion; my choices led me there. I, at every point, had the chance to stop.

WOTR’s strength in writing, however, comes from the characters more than the overall plot. Surprisingly for a game with a plot on such a grand scale, it is primarily driven by the machinations of its cast. This game reaches into topics I didn’t expect from an AA game and handles them with surprising nuance. Indeed, the characters themselves are multifaceted and people I’d dismissed as ‘boring’ or ‘one-dimensional’ turned out to be… well, not. Motivations and beliefs are laid out quite clearly, either upfront or through breadcrumbs, and by the end of the game only one party member (Nenio) struck me as shallow or one-dimensional.

Perhaps this game’s biggest strength is that it avoids a pitfall many other party-based games stumble into and never climb out of: There is no ‘The [Trait] Guy’. I’ve been playing RPGs - CRPGs in particular - since I had my own computer, and even the best of them have a party that can be boiled down to “the pragmatic one”, “the just one”, “the wildcard”, etc etc. Whenever those characters broke from their established ‘role’ it was always an out of character moment meant to show the gravity of the situation.

There’s none of that here. Characters you usually agree with will oftentimes make a statement or suggestion you find abominable, and sometimes the party members you think are assholes will be right. This is only compounded by interactions between party members, wherein the dynamics and ideals clash in a way that feels natural. I am being deliberately vague so as to avoid spoilers, but around act 3 the game truly took me off guard by having me go “Ah shit, [party member I hate] is actually dead on the money” a few times.

This luxury is not exclusive to the party, with many of the main and supporting cast being just as fleshed out. If a character has a portrait, they’re guaranteed to bring nuances and surprises to the table, but even many of the ‘faceless’ NPCs are nothing to scoff at. While the game does have its one-note characters, it’s rare for the more substantial storylines to feature tropey characters and the vast majority of the game’s story is spent dealing with characters who are a realistic composition of beliefs, traumas, ideals and neuroses.

Except Nenio. Fuck Nenio. Worst CRPG character.

We need to talk about Nenio. Not her as a character, but what she represents.

Do you remember my question about cranes? Well, I asked it to get you thinking about the process of lifting weights, and how you just cannot lift certain things without the mechanism - or you - starting to buckle. It’s a basic application of the laws of physics

Yeah, well, WOTR is a crane and it’s trying to lift Owlcat’s ambitions. For as much as I just gushed over the game, it’s definitely straining to hold them aloft. This game aspires to be and do so much that it was impossible for it to pull it all off cleanly.

One thing WOTR glaringly aspires to be is funny. It’s why I mentioned Nenio; she’s emblematic of the issue, often torpedoing serious scenes with annoying quips and dragging other (better) characters into her irritating one-note gimmick. That she’s a genuinely unpleasant person without any justification does not help.

Unfortunately, Nenio is not the only part of this problem. I’m not a particularly big fan of stories trying to be funny in the middle of a setpiece with heavy gravitas and a serious tone - it’s why later Final Fantasy XIV content irked me - and this game does it a lot. Not quite as often as FFXIV or, god forbid, Marvel movies, but there were more than a few eye-rollers. It’s particularly grating to be in the middle of a fairly grim, serious dungeon only for that one whimsical song to start playing and inform me that I’m going to bear witness to some utterly banal attempts at humor.
Perhaps the worst part is that WOTR is a funny game, but it’s often in the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moments and it rarely occurs when the game is trying. Interactions between party members have more intentional and accidental humor than most of the designed Funny Scenes.

…You know, to be entirely honest for a moment: I’ve been writing this review for two days. It’s the 4th of June right now and I finished it near about the 1st. In all this time, I’ve been putting off talking about the gameplay. As a general rule worth keeping in mind; I don’t like being unceasingly negative to things that don’t deserve it. It’s easier for me to rag endlessly on Warframe or Daemon x Machina or Daemonhunters or MASS Builder or just… any game that’s very quantifiably bad through and through. But for works clearly made with passion, love and an earnest ambition to be amazing, I struggle.

And… so does WOTR, once you look past the writing.

‘Adaptation’ is a word described by the Cambridge Dictionary as meaning:

the process of changing to suit different conditions:

In the context of videogames, adaptation often means taking a plot or mechanic from another medium. Tabletop games, as massive mechanical behemoths that have a few hundred interlocking systems regardless of rulebook, are often subject to this to avoid players being overwhelmed or turned off by the complexity. When Shadowrun was adapted to videogame format with the Shadowrun Returns trilogy, much was excised and cut down for the sake of a better videogame experience. When Warhammer 40k made its close-to-tabletop debut with Gladius, naturally much was trimmed down or streamlined both to prevent these issues appearing and to keep the game from being ‘outdated’ as newer editions come out.

With this is in mind, I would not say WOTR has ‘adapted’ the Pathfinder systems. Rather, it has adopted them nearly wholesale and merely provided a GUI for many actions. This, in a vacuum, is not a bad thing. There is a critical lack of CRPGs that’re willing to hit you with complex systems, often going for more palatable one so as to prevent the onboarding process alienating people.

No, the problem comes from how the system interacts with the more videogame-y numbers.

Let’s take combat spellcasting for example. In XCOM or Shadowrun or Divinity Original Sin, you merely click it and the game resolves the calculation.

Here? We have dice rolls, the staple of any tabletop.

There are a few dice rolls…

There are a lot of dice rolls.

When casting a spell, first you must roll to make a concentration check and then roll for the spell to succeed, which is two rolls to begin with. Then you must roll to actually hit, which is a roll calculated against a target’s armor class and spell resistance - so two more separate rolls, with the latter being affected by the caster’s spell penetration. From there, targets will make a fortitude and/or will save to resist further effects. Any of these can fail in sequence, and every single roll is affected by some other stat.

The overreliance of Dice Rolls is, in itself, not bad. The actual problem is how many additional bonuses are heaped on, owing to the fact that this is a videogame which can deal with far bigger numbers than a D20 can. “Characters make saving rolls'' wouldn't be an issue if enemies did not regularly appear with AC stats of around 50~ or higher and had access to feats and traits that give them bonuses to saving throws.

Perhaps in an admission of their own stat bloat, the devs quietly sneak you armor and shields with sizeable AC ratings early on. I wish I could say ‘these are just boons, you don’t really need them’ but the game spikes hard and fast. It is perhaps an unstated rule of videogames that any scenario where a token force defends against a swarm be populated by trash mobs, but WOTR offers you no such mercy and makes sure to dump a horde on you every now and then - with one such encounter taking place about 6 hours in.

In other RPGs (beside looters), minmaxing is seen as a self-imposed diversion and rarely considered mandatory for the main path. The focus is, after all, on playing a role. In WOTR, it’s considered standard, at least on Normal and above. This isn’t a game where you can safely dick around, pick some traits that seem fun, and experiment in the course of a playthrough. No, you have to commit or else you’ll eventually wall against an enemy with an AC/deflect value you simply cannot surpass.
In other RPGs, some options are simply “not-good” relative to the overall difficulty. In WOTR, some options are just outright bad and it can take a few hours of playtime to realise something’s off. Branching off of this, while the aforementioned class system does let you multiclass with ease, it is in fact a horrible idea to ‘try out’ other classes without knowing what you’re doing. XP is at a premium in this game and there’s only 20 levels, with a lot of classes having very powerful 20th level abilities.

Let’s say you’re a Sorcerer, and you decide that being squishy in melee is dull and that you want a level in Fighter to get a weapon feat. Valid on paper, and maybe even on the tabletop, but consider: The game expects you to be getting stronger on an upward level most of the time. In taking a level in Fighter, your caster level is not raising and you’re not getting any new spells. While you do have access to the weapon you chose, you have no additional weapon feats to augment it and having spent a few levels in Sorcerer means you’re likely missing out on that sweet Basic Attack Bonus and the bonus damage from Strength - a dump stat for Sorcerers.
The cruellest part of this system is that sometimes, multi-classing only a few levels into something is a valid choice. Referred to as ‘dipping’, many build guides will point you towards picking up 1-3 levels in something like Mutagen Warrior for the sake of a hefty buff. But, as with most of this game, it can only be known ahead of time.

This further extends to your party members. ‘Canon’ party members (i.e, provided by the story and not made via the mercenary system) are best left on autolevel, as trying to experiment with them will only continue the cycle of hurting. It is unfortunately a bad idea to build for a versatile party, with it often being a safer choice to simply make everyone a monoclass specialist and then rotate them out as needed.
The sole exception are party members who come with multiple classes; most notably Regill, who (as per the Hellknight lore) starts with levels in Fighter Armiger and Hellknight and a proficiency in the gnome hooked hammer. Refuse to respec them at your peril.

So we have stat bloat, restrictive class building, endless dice rolls that can make combat feel miserable and sharp/sudden difficulty spikes. Surely there can’t be more?

Sigh… Alright, let’s talk about weapons and feats for a second. At the start of the game, you’ll be given the option to pick a feat. Among these is Weapon Proficiency, and clicking it unfurls a MASSIVE list of weapon types. Everything from simple shit like spears and longswords to exotic weapons like curved elven blades, the estoc, and many more.

If you’ve played other CRPGs that let you pick a weapon archetype, you might think that speccing into one in character creation will simply give you one of those weapons, right?

Wrong, unfortunately. You get proficiency in that weapon type but are otherwise stuck with the pre-generated loot. Which, to your potential dismay, will likely not conclude any of the more exotic weapon types. If you spec into Longswords or Bows or Spears or anything common you’ll reap instant results, but good luck if you picked an Elven Curved Blade feat.

I bring this up because it really exemplifies WOTR’s habit of letting you make explicitly wrong gameplay choices that actively hamper the experience. These options aren’t inherently bad, and certainly serve metagaming/repeat players, but for a first timer they’re blatant traps.
Traps… traps… traps… Alright let’s talk about character select forcing.

Almost every major level has traps in them. Traps are disarmed by characters with high Trickery, and like every other stat in this game, the requirements to safely disarm them skyrocket over time. Unless you yourself have Trickery as a class skill, you will inevitably be forced into bringing a character who does have it. You might think this is common sense, and it is!

But you only have 6 party member slots. Including yourself, that’s 5. Add in a trap disarmer, that’s 4. Ah, but you absolutely need a dedicated healer as well. We’re down to 3… God, you need a tank as well, so that’s 2 left. You will inevitably need a caster as well to deal with enemies who are nigh unbeatable in melee, so you have one free slot left-

Wait, do I have ranged attacks? Ah shit.

Early in the game you’re given Seelah, a Paladin who will in most paths stay with you. She can tank a lot of damage, hits respectably, and carries a number of useful buffs and debuffs if you keep her as a Paladin. You get Camellia soon after, and she’s a ‘dodge tank’ who can be useful but will otherwise melt to a well placed hit. But hey, at least she sticks around!
A short while later, you’re given Lann or Wenduag. Strong physical ranged attackers who can burst down anything. After them, you’ll likely run into Woljif who is both a rogue and someone with high trickery. A few random events later and Nenio (regrettably) appears as a dedicated offensive caster. Blah blah blah, Daeran and Ember appear as your healers.

I tell you this because to me it is the game admitting that you shouldn’t really bother on a varied or interesting party and instead opt for a rigidly defined one. You can try to get by without the archetypes I listed above, but good luck doing that. There are only so many potions, scrolls and lockpicks in the game world, yet spells and trickery are functionally infinite.

Everything I listed above is a contributing factor to the game’s worst part: Combat length. My god, fights are long.

This isn’t so bad in the early game, where the more methodical pacing of Act 1 leads to fewer fights overall. Trash fights are quick, and more substantial ones are long but not annoyingly so. Unfortunately this goes out the window with Act 1’s final area, which features a gauntlet of fights against decently strong enemies and each fight lasts a while. To the point where it was surprising to find the final fight only took a few minutes, but in this sole instance there is a good plot reason.

As it happens, Act 1’s finale was an omen for the future. WOTR has an incredible amount of combat, and as early as Act 2 even trash fights begin to take a lot of time. Due to stat bloat, a surge in enemy counts, and the introduction of enemies with resistances that often nullify a certain party member, they can DRAG. Unlike say, Shadowrun: Hong Kong (to use one example), the number of fights per area is rarely if ever in the singledigits. Main story levels have a nasty habit of throwing you into a fight and then placing another one about a hallway away… Like six or seven times. By Act 3 I was already sick of fighting, having done too many fights that took an age even when they were against ‘trash’ enemies (who still had high AC and access to debilitating spells). This game isn't short, my first run took about 105 hours and that's with missing a lot.

So, after deciding that I simply hated one aspect of the entire game, I lowered the difficulty and switched to auto mode. It just stopped being fun past a certain point, and I was reassured that Acts 4 and 5 are much worse on that front. This game is merciful in that regard, you can turn off or dial down things that irritate you.

Except resting, a mechanic which I grew to hate so much that I nearly got into modding just to remove it.

As you adventure through WOTR’s world, you accumulate fatigue and become… well, Fatigued. Continue further and you become Exhausted. Both debuffs inflict major stat penalties, and annoyingly they accrue uncomfortably fast. You can rest for free to cleanse them, but doing so builds up Abyssal corruption which… debuffs you significantly, and then kills you. Thus demanding a rest at a safe zone.

Your mileage may vary, but I just can’t stand this system. On such a huge world map, it feels as though it serves little purpose than to arbitrarily restrict exploration. It only gets worse in Acts 3 and 5 - which see a significant expansion to the explorable space on the map - and it felt like I was becoming exhausted every few steps. This sadly isn’t something you can just power through, either; Exhausted debuffs most major stats by -6. Combine that with stat bloat and it’ll just turn your entire party into invalids.

Lastly on the gameplay side, there’s the Crusade mode. Some would described it as a poor man’s Heroes Of Might And Magic, and they’d be right. I understand the developer’s intent, they clearly wanted you as a crusader to actually partake in the crusade, but the execution is just awful. While it supplements lots of other systems (including the fantastic writing, which it provides more of), the actual gameplay of Crusades is a boring numbers-game version of chess where you have little meaningful choice beyond “Spam archers and a tanky melee unit, have your General dump spells on the enemy”. This does not get better in Act 5.

It’s rather telling that while the use of mods to skip certain elements (like rest) is contentious, the most common response to “I don’t like Crusades” is “Get a mod to skip the fights”. There is an option to automate it in the base game, but this locks you out of research projects, several powerful items and even the resolution to some character arcs. It’s a bad option, don’t pick it.

Much of my vitriol for Crusades comes from how interwoven they are with the rest of the game. There is some exceptional writing in the Council events but to get them requires Crusade progress. Want to explore the map? Your Crusaders have to clear the way first. Want to progress the story? Yup, Crusades. Because of the aforementioned issues with the built-in Crusade auto-mode, and the sheer amount of the map gated off by Demons, this truly is a mechanic you cannot safely avoid engaging with safely without mods.

It’s a shame, too, because the actual Crusade in the story leads to some of its best bits. Even with a demigod at the helm, you’re not immune to logistics, morale and politics. How you navigate those minefields can influence the outcome of character arcs and even the ending, to say nothing of how enjoyable the council discussions on each issue are. They even react to your mythic path, like the Lich path featuring events involving necromancers, vampires and followers of Urgathoa. I just wish they were attached to an actually enjoyable system.

This review begins with an analogy about cranes, and the reason my mind homed in on that particular comparison is because cranes are the sum of their parts. One part being out of line or faulty can (literally) bring everything else crashing down. WOTR is an incredibly ambitious game, probably the most ambitious CRPG ever made and released, but… I don’t actually know if it can support its own ambitions.

Again, the writing and characterization (not Nenio) are fucking phenomenal, and mythic paths are obscenely cool. The voice acting is solid (except Nenio) and the game does an excellent job at making you feel like part of a well-realized world. It is perhaps one of the most painstakingly accurate depictions of a tabletop system outside of actual tabletop sims like Talisman or Tabletop Simulator, and…

I just hate actually playing it, you know? The combat is good in theory, but it’s a huge drag and it felt like my punishment for chasing the story. The writing itself started to feel like a reward for suffering.

“Congrats on suffering through like 9 Shadow Volaries and cultists who have a ton of crit-heavy weapons, here’s a great rumination on whether power as an entity can be inherently good or evil.”

Ultimately, I still recommend WOTR. Mods and difficulty settings can alleviate most of your grievances, and the writing is worth whatever unavoidable grievances you may have. Hell, you might even like the things I hate! I’ll probably replay it in the future because my curiosity about the other mythic paths outweighs my aversion to the gameplay. I wish I could’ve praised the story and writing more, but there’s a lot to spoil on both the quest and character fronts.

WOTR is a bright shining star of CRPGs and it’ll be hard to top it in the future, but like every bright light… that sure is a dark shadow over there, huh- No wait, it’s just Nenio.

All of the bad elements of Kingmaker have been maximized, and any possible streamlining has been thrown to the wind. The puzzles are bad, for some godforsaken reason the combat log is harder to scroll through now, the companions are even more shallow than Kingmaker's, and the new timewasting minigame wastes even MORE time than Kingmaker's (congrats on that one, Owlcat). But hey, respecing characters is free now, and the score is pretty kickass! These are small comforts in the grand scheme of things, as the horribly balanced encounters and tedious overworld traveling inspire no excitement. Remember how in Kingmaker travel speed would increase as you conquered territories and established optimal travel routes? Well, you can forget about that, cause there are maybe two ways to get anywhere, and traveling has one speed: molasses! Bugs plague the game almost a year into release, as the turn based mode breaks cutscenes often, along with dialogue boxes spasming out during crusade events. You'd think Owlcat would've learned from Kingmaker's release, but I suppose not. Possible buyers will just have to wait for three years until the game's in a stable state like last time.

The upshot is that the story and mythic quests are well thought out and intriguing, providing a variety of options for the player in their quest to seal the worldwound. This is something that works DESPITE the dialogue system, which only offers caricatured responses to situations: expect to see '(Good) I will help you!' and '(Lawful) You should be arrested!' a lot with no leeway in-between. It's a pity that the polish in the story leaks into no other facet in this game: it's all number crunching and no soul. The aforementioned minigame this time around is managing a crusade, which has some rudimentary combat inspired by HoMM. The strategy is nil, as the only way to win is to pick a mage general or stack silly numbers of units to gib your enemy. No roleplaying, just yawn-worthy optimization. People loved crying about Kingdom Management, but it provided some insight into one's character and consequences to the ending: here, your ending slide has an arbitrary good/bad result based on how many blank armies you slaughtered, along with how many times you autoclicked the recruit armies option. To call this garbage bland and forgettable is being kind.

Conclusion: trash fire with an excellent OST.

Finishing my second run now.

Wrath of the Righteous (Wrath from here on) is Owlcats second implementation of Pathfinder 1E (which in itself is a branch of D&D 3.5E) adapted to digital form. While I wasn't incredibly impressed with their first attempt at the genre, this second game really does bring what Owlcat learned from the first to a new title. Wrath in itself is one of the most complex, intricate, and rewarding CRPGs on the market period. While it's generation contemporaries (which I consider to be Pillars of Eternity II and Baldur's Gate 3) definitely have their own flags, neither have convinced me of their gameplay, world, and narrative in the same way Wrath pulls off.

To break the ice, Wrath is really, and I mean, really hard for new players. It being my second CRPG after Divinity II really set me up for failure. The Pathfinder system is a deeply complex web of mechanics, classes, backgrounds, and more that overly fleshes itself out for the better and the worst. While this deep complexity really does let it operate on and entirely more complex plane of gameplay over its contemporaries, it makes it very hard to get into if you have not played Pathfinder 1E or a similar system. This is coming from someone who had been a gamemaster for D&D 5E a whole four years before playing the title. To say it may be hard to get into is an understatement, if you do not have the patience to read everything (and even if you do) you will hit a wall at some point in your game or frustratingly quit and come back another time for a new run. For me, I struggled through my first run and am finishing my second now, and I have very little patience, the reason I stuck with the game was the superb writing from the team.

Story
The story of Wrath is nothing unique, or even new, the story itself being based on a Pathfinder 1E module of the same name, but this doesn't stop Owlcat from not only putting their own spin on it, but making it feel new, fresh, and fun. However as a likely 98% of the readers of this haven't played the module, I won't explain the differences. What I can say is that the story encompasses the Player Character (the Knight Commander) leading the 5th Crusade against the Worldwound, a stitching of two planes of reality, and who has, by some miracle, been given mythical powers to aid the cause. However, this game's story is impacted quite heavily by both the player's choices and the players choice of Ten unique mythic paths ranging from slight story flavorings to entire story rewrites for the Fifth Crusade.

Wrath's contemporaries (BG3 and PoE II) both have their own unique implementation of character choice, but neither of them have the vast impact of choice that Wrath does in it's story. While some elements, and some villains will remain the same across runs, each run of Wrath feels like a unique take on a familiar story. A strange comparison I would make it a Disney Animated Classic and Live-Action remake, generally the same vibe and concepts, but major aspects are changed, except there are few (if any) bad renditions of this story. In a more general story sense, the characters (not companions) and the main antagonists are all very well thought out and each have their charm, they each feel like they belong in this story in some way or another, and while some side-quest areas or stories can feel out-of-place, there tends to be a resolution to them that fixes that distortion of writing, and normally in a way that makes them pleasing.

However, I would not say the story of Wrath, or it's ending is entirely better than it's contemporaries. I do think it outshines them both in scale by a fair margin (just by the game being a double to triple the length), but Pillars of Eternity II is definitely a better story, and Baldur's Gate III feels more like a tabletop game (whether for the subjective better or worse). I would say in this sense that Wrath's story works as it is, but it's not something I would praise entirely, as it might be unpredictable, but the themes and such are mediocre at worst and novel at best, but not exclusively unique. I'd put it below Pillars, but above Baldur's Gate in this realm.

Gameplay
As I briefly covered before in the introduction to this review, this game can be unrelentingly complex for new players, however, the tools are available to make that learning curve much less steep than you may think. This game has nearly 30 main classes and 160 subclasses, not including prestige classes (or classes you can only get later in the game), which is a metric onslaught of things to pick from. What's very impressive is not only the scale of this many classes, but the fact that at least 90% of them are playable on the 3 main difficulties (i'll get into that in a moment). As a player who loves customizing, this is a godsend of a choice from Owlcat, and a benefit of Pathfinder 1E being based on D&D 3.5E. Of course this can easily overwhelm players since it can be unclear what each class does or what is good, and in truth, this is a complaint I also have about the game. It's the only time I'd recommend using reddit or forums to pitch an idea or google a build idea and find what class or subclass fits it for you. Use the internet to your advantage. While you will have upwards of 20 companions (in some cases) you also need to build, you can also automate this (again, will discuss in a moment).

However, I am a big fan of this kind of choice. Unlike Baldur's Gate 3 and Divinity II, and more so like every other CRPG in existence, lots of Wrath's combat is purely top-down, not overly animated or detailed and so the fact that this many builds is possible is a testament to that fact. While this also means that some gameplay elements are lacking on the visual front, I would much rather have a mechanically deep or complex game over a much more streamlined game like BG3, however, many may disagree with that. The ace up Owlcat's sleeve however is the ability to please all parties, while some people can't play more classic CRPGs like the Planescape or early Fallouts due to their Real-Time with pause style of game, and an equal amount do not adapt well to the recent trend of turn-based only combat, Owlcat just does both, and integrates it very well. At any moment, and I mean literally at the drop of a hat, you can switch from Real-Time to Turn Based. Objectively speaking, this is the best way to have a CRPG and I'm really disappointed that newer titles (like Baldur's Gate 3) did not do this. Pillars II, albeit and earlier title, at least gave a choice at the start of the game for which mode the player wanted, but did not include and in-game switch to change the modes like Wrath. For me, this is a game-changer for a simple reason, trash-mobs. While a lot of people may be opposed to trash-mobs (or mobs that are essentially pointless) being in the game, I am a big fan for a few reasons. The first being that it adds a lot to the immersion for me, this is a Crusade after all, fighting hundreds, no, thousands of enemies makes you feel like you pushing against the enemy. Secondly, it really makes dungeon's feel intimidating and dangerous, it's no longer a "oh let's just freely rest here" as the game has a built-in mechanic to stop rest-abusing, and you really have to make an effort to prepare for long-hauls without break, adding to the care needed to build a team and items, making sure you've stocked up on potions, scrolls, what-have-you. Third, it's just fun to kill a bunch of things. For these mobs though, I don't want to do turn-based every time, the ability to just set it on Real-Time and blaze through is not only making it less of a slog, it actively makes me enjoy using it.

There is also the difficulty system, which literally lets you change the game on a macro and micro level. You can either pick from the 7(?) default difficulties or craft your own from complete scratch. I mean heck, you can even change the difficulty in the middle of the playthrough. I remember in my first run hitting an insurmountable wall, it would've sucked if I literally couldn't just drop the difficulty a stage and win the fight that way. It also helps newer players get into the game since they can change it on the fly. There is also entire modes (like the controversial Crusage Management) that can just be completely turned off. it really does value giving the tools to players to make the game their own. This is one of the games best aspects, easily.

When it comes to the shortcomings of the gameplay though, it comes back to the shortcomings of the system. Besides the utter complexity, Pathfinder 1E is really a numbers game. Baldur's Gate 3 lets you have maybe 30 AC or higher by end-game if you really work towards it, Pathfinder has 30 AC by level 4, halway through the game you'll have a team of an average 30, and tanks with upwards of 50, and enemies with upwards of 60 themselves. This makes the most important thing in the game item optimization and pre-buffing. You will spend 5-10 minutes before a dungeon just making sure you buffs are all on, and the same before a boss. This can be annoying, and it does make some aspects really a drag, and while I could rationalize it back to the "preparation" point I made before, it'd be a load of bull. This is not a fun aspect and most players agree. I also think this game lacks a clear sense of what content is difficult and what content isn't. You'll roll up to a quest and get abslutely hammered and have to come back later, or go to a quest and sleep through it. If Wrath had a system similar to Pillar II's skull-markings on quests this issue could be remedied, as it stands, it's annoying. There are other gameplay issues with specific paths, items, bugs, etc. However listing them all would take me another 20k characters alone, it's simple to say that many of these issues are at best ignorable and at worst a mild annoyance. If you don't like Pathfinder 1E, you won't like Wrath's gameplay, it's that simple.

Companions
This game has the best companions of any CRPG I have played, including Baldur's Gate 3 and Pillars of Eternity II, and I will not budge. Both of it's contemporaries have maybe 5-8 well-written and though out companions with genuine archs, but the downside of such a limited number is that hating one makes it feel a lot more annoying. Luckily, not only are a majority of Pathfinder's 13 mainstay companions each have development that is servicable, I would argue they are all on-par or better than companions from their contemporaries. Not to mentioned 2 hidden companions and 7 mythic path companions that are possible to add to your team. I've made a tierlist of the companions of Wrath and other CRPGs, and while I can't say every Wrath companion is better than every other companion in every other CRPG, at least when there's 13 of them, I can remove half of them, or never recruit them, and still enjoy my playthrough and my companions. Not to mention 7 of them are romancable, no, not the whole cast horny-as-hell BG3, but a significant portion, and each of the romances each have their own unique endings and moments in them, not to mention, some of the romance arches being some of the best archs I've seen in a game.

To not get too overwhelmed myself with how much I love the cast of this game, I'll simply cover the basics. While Badlur's Gate makes the companions feel like they are over-the-top stereotypes that players can latch on too and Pillars II has some of the most emotional depth of companions you can get, Wrath somehow manages to achieve similar levels of depth, and still make characters with standard archetypes deeply compelling. If you told me half of these characters on paper, I would not be interested, but playing the game with them, the only title I can compare it to is Mass Effect. Each character stands out and unique and feels like they fit in some weird way, you're not a gang of outcassts or vandals in any sense of the way, but what Mass Effect takes 3 games to do takes Wrath 5 Acts in one game (albeit with similar play time). On my second run, the one I am doing as I write this, I chose a new romance option and assembled a part of some-new some-old characters, and it really holds up. Yes I've seen the questlines for them before, yes I've heard this dialogue, but man, it really does still work on replays. Maybe it's the near hundred-hour runs that really make the payoffs pay off, or maybe its the fact I am drawn to these characters because I'm stuck with them, but to say it as it is, I would take one or two Wrath companions over an entire team of companions from any other CRPG I've played, and trust me, it's really hard not to gush over my romance choices or party characters as I write this, like damn, Owlcat really excells here.

The only minor problem with companions, geniuinely, is the fact that they have pre-determined classes at predetermined levels. Some start at level 1 so you still get a lot of wiggle room, but some start as late as 10 or 15, and it is really hard to justify using them or building them if they have a bad build or just don't arrive early enough to be in the party. However, only a handful (at most) suffer from this, and you get to use them for their quests anyways, so the complaint is really mute for me. It only limits you in the sense that you may not have the caster you want in your team if you are a caster, but being you have 6 character slots and not 4, you have a lot of free wiggle room for extra characters if you really want there to be.

HOW MUCH DID I WRITE?
I'll stop here, cause I've been drafting this review for the last few hours, but to make it simple, play the game. If you like Baldur's Gate 3 mechanically and not for the AAA-quality animations, Wrath of the Righteous will work great for you, even if it is a lot more difficult. I really am saddened that the game is in the Pathfinder 1E system, but honestly, with time I've changed my tune to enjoying the system in the game, it wouldn't feel as good in any other game system and I think that's part of the point (you know, being a module and all).

TLDR: The game is a deeply customizable and complex game that helps the player learn it's quirks and functions and has some of the best RPG writing, and writing period in any game I've ever seen with unforgettable characters, a pretty decent story, and the ability to fully make the experience your own, even if it ends up being 150 hours long. If you like all these things and can spare time for a few hiccups along the way, you enjoy the game by Act III, if not sooner.

"Pathetic, lifeless and dull" as a helpful party member would put. Maybe the expectation that Owlkot here would have more respect for their playerbase was misplaced (fool me twice?), Wrath of the Rattatas is, again, not a finished product... But hey, maybe with that new Warhammer game they get it right? :D Ten Thousand Delights, a blemish of a quest infamous for completely corrupting players' saves. Before we go full cope mode, open them peekers up fully for a moment and gaze that you are in fact dealing with the ENHANCED edition. EA, Blizzard, Bethesda, Ubisoft - it raises the pitchfork just thinking that these names would release a buggy product, but some ruski fellas? Yeah that's gonna be an overwhelmingly positive on steam from me (now thankfully at a very positive). What exactly was enhanced and what the regular edition was like one can only guess, a candidate for Guinness most likely.

But I suppose in this age we are used to games not working as intended, so bugs aside what's so special about this cee arr pee gee? Honestly not sure what people think is so much better compared to the previous outing. Wrath is definitely much faster, shit goes down after only a few minutes and you're right in the thick of it, with almost a full party straight away and no need to scrounge for a tank just because you picked a wrong dialogue choice. Speaking of which, it boggles the mind that the designated meat shield Seelah is the companion most people seem to have a problem with; a bro pally with actually good stats, who would want that? Her voice actress sounds so bored to be in the game sometimes, I related. But she's not a cannibal sociopath so naturally we throw shade. The rest are either unhinged in some way or dreadfully boring anime castaways, actually had to roleplay my main character getting a lobotomy to keep the smelly cat around. But that too is a stay from Kingmaker which had one of the more obnoxious parties out there. And once those chompers are sunk deep into the combat part it really becomes clear that it's all just essentially Kingmaker+. Which if you don't know the drill, translates to brainstorming for hours for creative character builds, realizing that dipping a level in the stripper class enhances your skill with poles for a percentage... and for what? So the countless trash mobs would roll over even quicker? The special encounters are really the only outlier, bosses with an armor class too high to penetrate or more puzzle-y encounters that usually come down to just using the right spell. The sound of glasses being pushed up echoed and I've been notified that I'm actually supposed to change the difficulty to custom and manually set the enemy threat to a desirable level, as if anyone should have to do that shit.

Common praises claim that the mythic paths make the whole character building part more interesting as well as the story more engaging. You have to get to the big chungus path which will unlock this and that, really most of it felt flavorful and not at all impactful. Once I saw that these give special dialogue choices I expected some kino responses, ready to convince these demonic baddies with my own radiance, but nothing really came close to this; a reminder that, if you didn't know yet... the East also exists? At most I just brandished a holy sword yelling how compelled they are by the power of Christ, not as kino. The lich path sounded cool, giving you options to raise some companions and even soldiers, but at the end of the day you HAVE to lead a crusade regardless of-

Right, the crusade. Kingdom management was such an obnoxious feature, a barebones unfun simulator that you simply couldn't completely avoid (at most you could limit your involvement with it) no matter how much defenders pretended otherwise. But Owlkot did us one better. You know when you stumble upon that very mediocre looking Heroes of Might and Magic clone and wonder why in the hell anyone would play it instead of the real thing? Those clones still run laps around this primitive mess to the point that I was hard pressed to find as many defenders of it. It was at best met with "it's not that bad" and "just get the Toy Box mod to give yourself troops and make it much less of a hassle". Even then, I still hold respect for these troopers, willing to trudge through such long ditches of excrement just to get to the parts they actually enjoy. My contempt is held exclusively for the defense squad that genuinely thinks adherence to the source material comes before the FUN of a V I D E O G A M E, grubby little gremlins I hope your Arue body pillows catch fire.

Somehow i liked Kingmaker better.
Too much busywork here tbh.
Writing was good, gameplay was eeehh, to complicated for a writing based game (for my liking anyway).
Music really good.
Also holy shit the puzzles here suck

One of the biggest and bestest RPGs out there! Character creation alone will be too much for some (which is fine) but the sheer amount of options you have - combined with the mythic path system which gives even more combinations - is insane!

Characters are great, the writing is amazing. The main story is captivating and leads through an immersive world filled with adventure!

The weakest part is the kingdom management, which is fine - but the HoMM inspired army fights are definitely not more than a fun gimmick.

Overall, must play for any CRPG fan!

The main problem of the whole Pathfinder series is primarily combat. Neither real-time nor turn-based mods work well and it pushes my tolerance limits as a player. They could have looked at Divinitiy Original Sin 2 as an example when developing these games. The turn-based combat system in the first Original Sin game was horrible, but the second was improved to near perfection. Games like this should either have a turn-based combat system like Divinity Original Sin 2 or a real-time combat system like Dragon Age Origins. Anything in the middle is mediocre and makes gameplay impossible. Also, the mediocrity of the combat mechanics makes it very difficult to see the good points of the games. At least Owlcat Games has managed to add turn-based combat that is close to DOS 2 in their newly released Rogue Trader. The combat still lacks smoothness, but at least there is an improvement now. But this is why I will never really like the Pathfinder series.

I feel a little conflicted with this game. Here I am, literally giving it a 4.5 but I don't feel like talking about what makes this game good. It's what it's missing here or straight up broken which frustrates me.

On one hand, a game that kept me entertained for 100+ hours is automatically a great game. Any piece of media that can get that kind of commitment out of me is special because I'm the kind of person who never sinks too many hours into one game. On the other hand, this game tries its best to keep you from having fun with its questionable design choices and how fucking broken it is as of the latest patch.

Instead of simply letting me go on an adventure with a lovable cast of characters in this cool world filled with interesting lore and do some of the most insane shit you can do in a CRPG like turning into a goddamn golden dragon that actually makes you feel powerful, I'm forced to play the awful Crusader Mode which is a poorly put together Might and Magic clone where you also make decisions about various issues happening around your periphery. That sounds cool on paper but when the outcome of these decisions ultimately, only really affect Crusader Mode, NOT the actual fun part of the game, like exploring and fighting etc.

The army battles in this mode require no strategy whatsoever and it's absolutely broken. A level 3 mage general can decimate a demon army while a level 6 knight general can do jack shit. Luckily, you can disable this mode entirely, the catch is, you'll miss a good portion of the side content and the game will make some decisions for you. Honestly, the less said about this mode the better, so if you value your sanity get the Combat Relief mod.

Another source of frustration is the lack of QoL and shitty interface. Why can't I stack items on my belt? why can't I open more than one window at once, turning comparing items into a chore? why is there no fast travel? why is the A.I. so retarded and you can't give even your companions basic commands like "fight defensively"? Just meaningless annoyances that makes me doubt they even play tested this thing, otherwise they would've realised how infuriating these mechanics (or lack thereof) are. And I'm not even gonna talk about the technical aspect, it's a whole new can of worms that isn't something new or shocking for anyone who has played Kingmaker.

This is a great game, but you should give it 6 months to get patched up, and then get the Combat Relief mod and enjoy one of the best CRPGs ever.