In another universe, I would’ve completed Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous. It would’ve consumed all my free time and I might have played it multiple times. The reason why I did go through Baldurs Gate 3 and both Divinity Original Sin games was because they had multiplayer, but otherwise they are totally my jam. I simply do not have the free time to play massive RPGs like this on my own, there are just no available timeslots in my days. All of this rambling preamble to say that I really really enjoyed what I played of P:WotR and it really was my jam. Put me in a locked room, in a space frozen in time, and I’ll play through this gleefully.
After recreating my classic RPG character (Beardy Fullight the dwarven defensive paladin), through a few familiar-yet-different screens of character creation, I was thrown in a small introduction where demons attacked a festival. Already the lore started piling up, with words you could hover to get even more information. I’m not a huuuge fan of this mechanic in games because I feel like it overexplains terms that you could understand more or less from context. Did I really need to know exactly what “demons” were or the history and deep political tapestry around the city of Kanabres was in the first few lines of dialogue of the game? The dialogue choices are fairly standard, but I always enjoy having multiple options based on my class, race, or the vibe I want to give my character.
This game has a glut of mechanics like you would expect, as it’s based on the Pathfinder roleplaying rules, and it plays really smoothly. I was super happy that they had a turn-based mode because I never could vibe with the old “real time with pause” style of combat some of these games had. It’s pretty intuitive and fun, you have three actions types that you can take per turn, some skills have cooldowns, you have a wide range of options and strategies, fun stuff. I enjoyed how the inventory would warn me that I was trying to do something sub-optimal (like equipping two pieces of gear that gave a non-stacking bonus), and the small almost choose-your-adventure sections where the game becomes a bit more text heavy.
During the intro dungeon, you make some choices, meet some characters, it’s all very engaging. Disarming traps is still a bit clunky because you have to pause, stop your characters, figure out who’ll desarm a trap, and it’s still very possible to just fumble into the trap activation zone by mistake when you’re not careful. During rest, you have to choose who protects your campground with rituals and who stands guard, which is pretty fun. The characters caught my eye immediately, the starting group you meet and the ones you get fairly quickly after that are all really well written, with a bit of mystery and some decisions to make about how you deal with them thrown in for good measure. I wish I could’ve gotten to know them more.
I got to the town map with a bunch of sidequests under my belt and I told myself “I cannot keep playing this game in 20 minutes increments, it will take me a year to complete, even if I really want to.” From what I’ve seen, this is really good and if you enjoy RPGs of that style, you really should give this one a shot! Maybe someday I’ll go back to it, maybe…
