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.
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.