Pathfinder: Wrath Of The Righteous

If you are a fan of CRPG’s then you're not going to want to pass up playing Pathfinder: Wrath of the righteous. Owlcat games has taken everything from their previous title Kingmaker and expanded upon it. Never before have you been able to access so much of Pathfinders wealth of content in one video game. But no game is perfect and we'll get into that a little bit later. This is my spoiler-free review of Pathfinder Wrath of the righteous.

Every good campaign starts with character creation and if you are a fan of choices you are not going to be disappointed. Right from the start Pathfinder throws so many options for you to choose from. Hell even the difficulty options are abundant and fully customizable. If there's one teeny tiny part of the game you think is unfair you can adjust it or if you just want to have fun crank that thing right down, no one's going to judge you. From there you can select a pre-generated character but where the game gets real wild is if you choose to customize the character from the ground up. You pick a portrait and that gets you started but after that you are given the option of twenty-five different classes each with several subclasses. After that you select one of twelve races and depending on your choice of class you then have a series of other things to select and if you're like me this is wonderful but I can see some having some serious Choice paralysis and one other thing to note is if you're into the cosmetic appearance of your character just know that options are limited but you never really zoom in on the characters anyway. By the time I made up my own mind ninety minutes had already gone by.

Once you've created your character your plunked down in the middle of a celebration within a large city known for its past Crusades. Four of them in fact. Without getting into detail the city gets attacked.You somehow survive and join a resistance fighting to take back the city this is your primary goal during the first chapter. One thing I found about kingmaker was the story dragged bit and I'm glad to say with Wrath of the righteous I don't feel that way.The plot gets moving very fast, one minute you're partying the next you're fighting bad guys, or being a jerk if you decide to be the bad guy. I felt very engaged with the story and as someone who doesn't do a whole lot of reading this really motivated me to focus on what everyone was saying rather than just skipping dialogue which is important because not all dialogue is voice acted. Then when chapter 2 hits the stakes rise higher. You are put in a position to raise and command an army and you're also treated to the big draw to Wrath of the righteous. The Mythic path system!

At first you're only able to be a Mythic hero but as the game progresses you can straight-up turn into a number of demigod-like beings. These abilities make your character feel powerful and can really change up the game later on. If character creation Wasn't enough to incentivize you to replay the game then this might be the ticket. While we're talking about mechanics I'd like to get into the combat a little bit. I'm not going to to really touch on Many of the other mechanics because if you're familiar with CRPGs in general None of that is going to be really extraordinary. However what makes comment so special is you get the choice between real-time combat with pause or turn based. Although I stuck with real-time with pause for most of my playthrough both options felt fully functional. Just to be aware that if you choose turn-based fights are going to take a lot longer but that’s to be expected. I played this and kingmaker on the standard difficulty and I felt like some of the fights and kingmaker were not very fun but in Wrath of the righteous I once again I felt more engaged. Combat feels faster but not dumbed down, I had to reload a save on quite a few fights. On the normal difficulty you should expect to plan things out for some of the bigger fights.

I saved talking about this bit here due to lite spoilers but I felt it’s important to touch on this a little bit. After chapter one you end up leaving the city and are made the knight commander of the fifth crusade. You are introduced to an even bigger map and on top of your own travels you are now tasked with commanding armies to fight a full blown demon attack. You must gather troops and resources to use in turn based battles with the enemy. I found it to be a good distraction from the main adventure and enjoyed seeing them progress while I was continuing on my own personal journey. I can still see some people finding it to be a tacked on addition that feels lower in quality from the rest of the game but overall it shouldn’t impact your enjoyment and if it did you can actually turn the system to automatic in the difficulty settings.

In conclusion Pathfinder was a real treat to play and I can tell you I plan to be playing it for many more hours. This game has so many choices in character creation and it is quickly becoming one of if not my favourite CRPG. What can I say, I'm a sucker for character and class customisation. I thought about how in-depth I wanted to go with this review but this is one of those experiences you should experience for yourself cuz you're probably going to experience it a little bit differently than I do but if you're a fan of the genre then no matter how you experience it you're going to probably love it And I think many people would agree, Pathfinder Wrath of the righteous why you even be the CRPG of 2021.

Please check out a short review video that our good friend Billy-Ray AKA the Wired Rabbit did on our Obscured Gaming channel. Please send Wired Rabbit love and support if you enjoyed his review and amazing commentary by visiting his YouTube channel.  

https://www.youtube.com/c/WiredRabbit