Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - epic RPG out now

[Sly Boots]

Sooo... I reached what I think is likely the last part of the game, and made the mistake of "starting" Kingmaker "just to see what it's like". 30 hours later I'm fully entrenched in that campaign and only just occurred to me I haven't finished WotR yet

Damn, these are good games.

[Wrathbone]

Finished! Not ready to put down all my thoughts yet, but it’s a superb, truly epic game… with a few flaws.

[Sly Boots]

Well done! I really need to go back and do the finale section, having been thoroughly waylaid by Kingmaker.

[Wrathbone]

Worth doing, as the finale isn’t overly long. I spent far, far longer toiling with the culmination of Nenio’s personal quest:

Spoiler

in the pyramid, after finding all the masks for the statues. I’m torn between whether that was a brilliant dungeon or an infuriating one.

[Sly Boots]

Worth doing, as the finale isn’t overly long. I spent far, far longer toiling with the culmination of Nenio’s personal quest:

Spoiler

in the pyramid, after finding all the masks for the statues. I’m torn between whether that was a brilliant dungeon or an infuriating one.

Yeah, that one went on for a while, pretty much the whole game really if you factor in finding the masks in the first place. TBH I'd probably lean towards infuriating, as I had to look up the solution to every puzzle (apart from the matching pairs ones) as I felt like the game didn't give me enough information as to how to solve them - that's including all the domino-style ones in the buildup as well.

[Wrathbone]

Yeah, the puzzles were poorly designed. A good puzzle makes it clear what needs to be done but is challenging nonetheless. These didn’t even make it clear what the goal was.

[Sly Boots]

Launching into the finale now, and there's a couple of annoyances:

Spoiler

The difficulty seems to become a cliff-face. I blundered through to the demon who was supposedly masterminding their army throughout the preceding game (Khorra-something), and he basically nukes my party with huge aoe spells and chain lightning, which I just couldn't mitigate. Then there was his monstrous AC which meant I could barely land a hit on him. This was all compounded by coming at the end of a long area of tough battles that prevented you from resting, so I'd already used up most of my healing and most powerful spells. I ended up knocking it down to the easiest difficulty to get past.

Second was the bit during that section where The Storyteller joins you for one of the fights as an NPC. This seemed like a boon, up until the point he repeatedly spammed the same aoe spell, that affected both allies and enemies, directly across my party, which made an already tough encounter infinitely harder and prompted a few reloads. Like, cheers dude.

[Sly Boots]

And finished

Would be interested to know which class you played Wrath and which mythic path/s you chose, for me:

Spoiler

I started as a bloodrider, but the class felt a bit one-note so I also tried out sword saint (which I didn't really enjoy) before finally settling on on a psychokineticst for the last part of the game. Had a bit of fun with that.

Mythic-wise, I started off as an Aeon, which had some good aura abilities, and it was interesting to try to role-play as the spirit of an unfeeling cosmos . But when it was offered, I couldn't turn down the chance to become a gold dragon, which was good fun. I didn't do a lot of transforming into dragon form, as it didn't feel as strong as my MC by that point of the game, however the stat increases and immunities are insane and the breath ability quite powerful.

For the ending, I decided to leave the Worldwound open and stand vigil over it, alongside Areelu who I was able to redeem - those were dragon-specific options so it would be interesting to see how playing as other paths affects that.

I played as a goody-goody throughout, so I'm looking forward to doing another run as an evil character, and trying out the demon or lich mythic paths.

[Wrathbone]

Sounds like quite a different ending to mine!

Spoiler

I played a no-frills paladin (also goody-good) and went down the Angel mythic path. I ended up closing the Worldwound by dropkicking Areelu into it, with her amazing final words of "I regret nothing". There was also a final scene where Areelu's soul is judged, which added some closure to things.

One interesting dynamic with playing a paladin is that good and lawful were often mutually exclusive options in dialogue, and if you go too far down the good route at the expense of the lawful route, your alignment ends up drifting to Neutral Good. The upshot is that you can only gain levels in Paladin if you're Lawful Good. I tried to find a reasonable balance, but ultimately when I got to level 20 I was too far into NG to bring it back, so I had to take my final level in Fighter.

In some respects I get what they're trying to do with the dialogue, as it forces you to make a choice with alignment rather than going for the same one each time. On the other hand, it does seem stupid that a paladin couldn't be more focused on goodness than laws, especially when many of the lawful options were horrifying. A misstep, I feel.

[Sly Boots]

Sounds like quite a different ending to mine!

Spoiler

I played a no-frills paladin (also goody-good) and went down the Angel mythic path. I ended up closing the Worldwound by dropkicking Areelu into it, with her amazing final words of "I regret nothing". There was also a final scene where Areelu's soul is judged, which added some closure to things.

One interesting dynamic with playing a paladin is that good and lawful were often mutually exclusive options in dialogue, and if you go too far down the good route at the expense of the lawful route, your alignment ends up drifting to Neutral Good. The upshot is that you can only gain levels in Paladin if you're Lawful Good. I tried to find a reasonable balance, but ultimately when I got to level 20 I was too far into NG to bring it back, so I had to take my final level in Fighter.

In some respects I get what they're trying to do with the dialogue, as it forces you to make a choice with alignment rather than going for the same one each time. On the other hand, it does seem stupid that a paladin couldn't be more focused on goodness than laws, especially when many of the lawful options were horrifying. A misstep, I feel.

Spoiler

Yeah, I also got the Areelu judgement scene, and I was able to intercede on her behalf and she got sent to a good dimension devoted to peace and spirituality.

All the way up to the finale I was ready to punt her in as well, but the option I was given not to sounded interesting, and in the previous meetings with her in Threshold I'd similarly tried to talk her round with my mythic dialogue options, and by the end she regretted what she'd done and was happy to try to atone for it. Also Noctitula was a little TOO keen for it to be closed so I was happy to also throw a spanner into her machinations.

Re the dialogue choices, trying to play an evil character is going to be interesting, as it felt throughout as if all the conversation options basically boiled down to "Grargh, I kill you now!" which is pretty dumb. I want to aim for coldly evil rather than froth-mouthed psychopath, so will have to see how that pans out.

[Sly Boots]

The evil dialogue options often leave a lot to be desired (mainly being a choice to kill whoever you're talking to), but every so often they do raise a laugh, like:

MC: Ember, tell me about your family.
Ember: Well, when we arrived in Kenabres me and my father were arrested by inquisitors and he was burned at the stake...
MC: Shut up, I don't care about your dead dad



I also enjoyed mouthing off to Queen Galfrey, rather than playing the obsequious peon I did in my first playthrough.

[Wrathbone]

Yeah, I've heard some bad things about the evil dialogue options as apparently it veers more towards chaotic stupid than chaotic evil. I think it'd be fun to go down the lawful evil route, or maybe even lawful neutral, because as previously mentioned some of the lawful dialogue options are truly vile.

I've so many games I want to play at the moment, I'm having to force myself from getting into Kingmaker again!

[Sly Boots]

Yeah, I've heard some bad things about the evil dialogue options as apparently it veers more towards chaotic stupid than chaotic evil. I think it'd be fun to go down the lawful evil route, or maybe even lawful neutral, because as previously mentioned some of the lawful dialogue options are truly vile.

I've so many games I want to play at the moment, I'm having to force myself from getting into Kingmaker again!

Lol, totally, I'm still about 2/3s of the way through the Kingmaker campaign, but put that down temporarily to launch into WotR again!

I'm enjoying it. I've gone down the route of filling my party with mercs, not because I didn't like the pre-made companions (I do), but because there are so many cool classes I wanted to try out a bunch of them together. I'm maining a hunter, with the rest being a skald, mutagenic warrior, grenadier, sorceror and an archer-slayer. It feels like a really strong group.

[Sly Boots]

Have to say I'm really enjoying my evil/demon run. Outside of dialogue, there are some fun options to choose (such as forcing my army to infest Drezen with vescavor swarms during the assault, killing as many of them as the enemy), and so far I've had two mini sections I didn't see at all during my good run - I understand different mythic paths, like Azata, also have lots of fun divergences.

The choices I've made during city management events have also had... interesting results.

Spoiler

I'm expecting my companions ro revolt at some point, Regill has almost come to blows with me a couple of times over my choices, and Arushelae has begged me to turn away from the path I'm following or she'll leave. Meanwhile, I'm expecting my campaign of belittling and chewing out Irabeth will result either in her succumbing to Stockholm Syndrome or killing me in my sleep

Also, having played this and Kingmaker basically concurrently, I have to say I love the extra depth and build options the mythic paths provide, even before I knew the each also have different scenes and events that play out.

This is a great game.

[Wrathbone]

I do enjoy how your companions don't just whinge about your decisions - if you go too far against their ideals then they can force ultimatums. As an angel, I outright killed one (maybe two?) of my companions because they'd crossed the line, and I never even got Regill in the party as I refused his help on the grounds that he was little better than the devils. Many RPGs will let you make extreme moral choices that the party just accepts against all reason. e.g. If you're super-evil in KOTOR:

Spoiler

and you command Zaalbar to murder his best friend Mission in front of everyone, the goody-good Carth won't leave or even attempt to stop you. He may as well stand there whistling nonchalantly and glancing in the other direction. Bet there were some awkward water-cooler moments on the Ebon Hawk after that.