Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (opens in new tab) is a cool recreation, creaking beneath the load of all its methods, subclasses, sidequests, and God, that title (opens in new tab). It is also the sport that noticed me by first catching Covid, and retroactively my private recreation of the 12 months for 2021. Wrath of the Righteous additionally simply makes an outstanding first impression. Effectively, second impression.
Your first actual gameplay with WotR (I am submitting a grievance if I’ve to maintain writing it out) is cramped dungeon crawling in some caverns beneath the town of Kenabres. It is fairly commonplace CRPG tutorial/prologue fare, elevated right here by WotR’s punishing problem and tactically wealthy encounters. When you’re above floor although? Act one is juicy.
You are caught in a metropolis beneath siege by demons, together with your solely protected haven a fortified tavern within the thick of it. The powers that be saddle you with a pair essential aims like uncovering the enemy’s plans or rescuing a plot-important particular person, however you have additionally bought a bevy of non-compulsory aims like saving townsfolk or recruiting companions to pursue. Necessary areas to hit are sprinkled by a Baldur’s Gate-y world map of the town rendered in beautiful element—your occasion’s represented as a chess piece sliding round a parchment map in actual time, with this audible rasp as you scrape your method over alleys rendered in ink.
Here is the twist although: transferring by the map and resting to heal up after encounters takes time, and inside a couple of in-game days of beginning act one, your tavern base will come beneath assault (opens in new tab) by demons. Not solely is that this a supremely lengthy, difficult, and creative encounter with virtually tower defense-style gameplay transposed to Pathfinder guidelines, however plenty of these non-compulsory aims I discussed earlier get essentially altered or fail solely in the event you save them for after the siege.
I wound up enjoying up so far from the start 3 times my first playthrough. The primary, I took my time and luxuriated, liberally resting to refresh my well being and spells—the CRPG’s equal of fast saving each 5 seconds in case you are noticed in an immersive sim. I used to be barely in a position to make any progress on my quests, and wound up coming into the midterm megafight woefully underleveled. After thirty minutes of turn-based battling, I used to be down half my occasion however near the top, or so I figured. That is when an enormous previous miniboss of a hell-minotaur confirmed up and cleaved by the remainder of my guys.
Second spherical: I made it right through to the opposite facet, however a number of the quests I missed had been kinda load-bearing for the companion and construct decisions I wished to make. This significantly cheesed me off on the time, however now I consider it fondly—it is a uncommon recreation that has the center to say “fuck you, take care of it” while you miss one thing or mess up, and I really like a hardcore, unforgiving recreation. Anyway, I began my Groundhog Day loop over another time and completely beasted by Kenabres beneath siege, nailed each quest and stage up I used to be aiming for, and confirmed that hell-minotaur what for.
The remainder of Wrath of the Righteous is nice as nicely, however the tense, low-level, high-stakes gameplay of the primary act particularly speaks to me. It is onerous to do low-level d20 fight proper, however Owlcat nailed it like few others—after 2003 or so most RPGs wish to rush you previous the early ranges so you may get all of your juicy powers and cease whiffing assault rolls, and solely previous favorites like the unique Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale, and the Temple of Elemental Evil, or obscure gems like the wonderful Swordflight (opens in new tab)marketing campaign for Neverwinter Nights come to thoughts as actually luxuriating in and celebrating low-level RPG fight.
The tavern siege set piece is that this nice second of catharsis for all of the timed questing you had been simply speeding to get in, and I believe it is an all-timer CRPG fight encounter—splitting up your occasion to cowl the weaknesses on this perimeter then speeding to adapt because the scenario modifications, cursing out the gaggle of demon cultists that spawned proper the place you are most defenseless. I additionally love how Owlcat essentially limits your resting with this primary act’s time crunch, turning it into a chronic useful resource administration problem.
It is clear Owlcat realizes it hit on one thing particular with this primary act—WotR’s second DLC, Via the Ashes (opens in new tab), was a low stage journey with much more useful resource constraints set in Kenabres in parallel to the occasions of act one. Now I am simply hoping the studio can spark that very same tense, exhilarating feeling in its upcoming Warhammer 40K CRPG, Rogue Dealer (opens in new tab).
