"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.
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.