[Review] Rip and Tear Until It Is Done

Oh boy, here we go again. It's been almost four years since my review of Pathfinder: Kingmaker and, with the last DLC for Wrath of the Righteous finally out, I decided to go for it. Now, Wrath of the Righteous was a fun adventure path when it was released back in 2013. It was the first to use the then-fresh-off-the-press mythic rules and, as such, it was horribly imbalanced and overall a mess. Of course, we didn't really care at the time because it gave us a chance to play out our power fantasies.

A few years later, after reason prevailed and we were able to judge the AP more fairly in retrospect, Owlcat announced that they were converting the adventure to their next computer game, and boy was there some excitement in at least several poorly ventilated basements, I'm sure. All jokes aside, it gathered over $2M on a $300k goal on Kickstarter, so clearly people wanted more of what they were doing, me included. And now that all is said and done, let's see how they did in their second debut.

Story

The story of Wrath of the Righteous throws the protagonist into the role of a powerful mythic character who leads the next crusade to close the Worldwound — a joining of the material plane and the Abyss that threatens to consume the world of Golarion. It's an appropriately epic premise for a mythic campaign that promises lots of earth-shattering moments and roleplay opportunities. Owlcat did well in making the story centered on the single protagonist and making Areelu less antagonistic and more scheming instead. Overall, I enjoyed their spin on the adventure path and the way the mythic paths interact with it, though at times my engagement with the main quest was fairly low, and I was more interested in seeing what kind of power trips my character could go on in the side quests.

Replay Value

In terms of replayability, WotR is a bit better than Kingmaker was. Some of the mythic paths affect the main story in a fairly major way and, with 300 hours of gameplay for a single path behind me, I have yet to experience everything that I wanted to. It's safe to say that I will not be doing another completionist run anytime soon, but I might go back and do a speedrun with one of the other paths just to see how it changes things.

As with Kingmaker, the bulk of the replayability comes with trying out different character builds, different dialogue responses, and different companions.

Companions

Much like in Kingmaker, companions in WotR are a mixed bag. Some that seemed like they would be a complete miss ended up being some of my favorites (like my bro Lann), whereas others that you'd expect to be amazing end up being a complete snooze (sorry Aru, but you can't hold a candle to Fall-from-Grace). One thing to note is also that the romances were, in my personal opinion, completely soulless. I felt almost no excitement in any romantic endeavors with any of the characters, and at that point, it might almost be better if there weren't any, to begin with.

The most baffling decisions in terms of companions however were the available classes. There is significant overlap in terms of class roles and quite a few holes that they didn't bother to plug. Of course, with Pathfinder 1e being what it is, you can always just multiclass the characters to get what you need, but I feel like this could have been done better on Owlcat's part.

Gameplay

Like its predecessor, Wrath of the Righteous offers a fairly hardcore Pathfinder 1e experience. It also boasts a decent implementation of the mythic rules, further compounding the delicious complexity of the 3.P system that we all loved so much. You have the option to play with real-time-with-pause, real-time-with-slowdown, or fully turn-based to get the most out of the system (a virtual necessity on higher difficulties). Everything else likewise remains much the same as it was, with many quality-of-life improvements that now come prepackaged into the game.

On top of the standard old-school gameplay, WotR also features a slightly improved kingdom management system from Kingmaker, as well as a HoMM-like combat system to reflect the mass battles of the crusade. As with Kingmaker, both of these can be more of a nuisance at times than a fun feature and the game provides you with the option to manage the crusade automatically, though that can make you miss out on some parts of the game, including the secret ending.

Balance

What balance? You're playing a mythic character that throws around black holes and can change the laws of reality. Just enjoy the power trip and don't lose your mind when the enemies come with equally insane tricks.

Art

Visuals

Wrath of the Righteous comes with a lot more particle effects and general pomp than Kingmaker, but at its core, it's still the same "cartoony" game as before. It's not gonna win any awards, but it serves its purpose perfectly well. I am completely fine with them making all of their games like that. You can always play BG3 if you need to see the freckles on your character's face.

Sound

I did not get sick of the music after listening to it for over 300 hours and that's a fairly impressive achievement. Some of it was, in fact, quite catchy and I found myself humming along to it more often than not.

Voice acting is again passable but nothing to write home about. I tended to skip over a lot of the VA'd bits simply because it wasn't engaging or dynamic enough. I would like to have seen some more high-profile names on the cast list maybe, but I can understand them wanting to spend their limited resources on other parts of the game.

Modding

Wrath of the Righteous is still a Unity game and, like Kingmaker, sports a wide range of mods that enhance the game in one way or another via the Unity Mod Manager. Below are some of the mods that I think are a must-have for any run:

• ToyBox: This is your Bag of Tricks from Kingmaker. It allows you to control most aspects of the game with QoL improvements, shortcuts to save you time, or just straight-up cheats when the mood strikes.
• CompanionRespec: Allows you to fully respec your companions from the ground up, rather than just from the level at which you recruited them. With companion specs being what they are in the game, this was invaluable to me.
• Bubble Buffs: Managing your buffs in such a high-level campaign can be an absolute nightmare and this makes things much simpler. Set up your buffs and click a single button when you need them.
• Scaling Cantrips: Look, spellcasters don't need any more power than they already have, and with Abundant Spells abilities, you'll never run out anyway. This just makes them feel slightly less worthless when you're cleaning up trash on autoplay and not casting any actual spells.
• Tabletop Tweaks: So many good things. The base mod attempts to bridge the gap between the game and tabletop rules a bit more, but it also adds a ton of new features and there are several peripheral mods that add or change additional bits of the game. Highly recommended.

Conclusion

Owlcat proved with Kingmaker that they could bring an ambitious project to fruition and Wrath of the Righteous confirms it once again. It's not a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination, but it's what we need. I hope that for the next Pathfinder game (if they continue working with Paizo), they switch to the vastly improved Pathfinder 2e rules. In the meantime, I'll wait for the final DLC release of Rogue Trader, which looks like it'll be just as fun once it gets properly fixed and loaded with content.

Like Kingmaker, I'm gonna rate Wrath of the Righteous a 4 out of 5 owlcats.



Screenshots

Smile! by Keneth posted Nov 18, 2024 at 5:21 PM